Transgression Read online

  “Rope-a-dope,” Ari muttered, lapsing into English.

  “I do not understand,” Baruch said.

  Ari hesitated. How did you explain Muhammad Ali to a first-century Jew? Or boxing? “It is a saying in my country. It means to give way before your opponent, causing him to waste his strength.”

  “That is what Renegade Saul has done,” Baruch said. “This week, he will go with our brothers to the Temple, and then all our people will see him, and they will say that Saul is no renegade, but a righteous man, a Pharisee, an observer of the commandments.”

  “Does it matter what people say?”

  “Yes. The truth matters. And it matters what Renegade Saul does in foreign countries,” Baruch said. “We hear that he teaches Jews to forsake the ways of the fathers, to eat meat sacrificed to idols, to abandon Torah.”

  Ari saw nothing wrong with any of those things. He could forgive Saul for abandoning Torah. But he could never forgive Saul for establishing a Gentile Christianity which would someday rise up and persecute his people. Why wasn’t Baruch concerned about that?

  Obviously because he could not see the future. But Ari had seen the future, and it was ugly beyond belief. Because of Saul, an endless stream of Jews had met violent deaths. Because of Saul, the blood of Jews stained the pages of history. Because of Saul, his countrymen had met the sword and the stake and the rack and the oven.

  And because of Saul, Christian feet had trampled Ari’s father to death in a village only a few kilometers from here. For all that, Saul was guilty. Indirectly, yes, but still guilty.

  “You are quiet, Brother Ari,” Baruch said. “Are you sleeping?”

  “I am thinking.” Ari yawned mightily. He decided to change the subject. “I fear for my friend, whom I lost outside Jerusalem. I do not know where to begin looking. The city is very crowded.”

  “That is an advantage,” Baruch said. “There will be many witnesses. Was he dressed in strange clothing like yours?”

  “She was dressed somewhat like me.”

  “A woman!” Baruch said. “You did not tell me you were married!”

  “She is not my wife.”

  “Brother Ari, is it the custom in your country to travel with a woman who is not your wife?” Baruch sounded shocked.

  “We were not traveling together.” Ari wondered how best to explain this. “She came first, and then I meant to follow and meet her.”

  “Then why did you have no money?” Baruch asked. “I do not understand. Your country is so strange, I cannot even imagine this place.”

  “It is late,” Ari said. “I will explain tomorrow.”

  “Sleep well, Brother Ari.”

  “And you also, Brother Baruch.”

  Ari smiled into the darkness. Already, he was beginning to talk like these people.

  Tomorrow, he needed to find Rivka and go home before he started thinking like them, too.

  Chapter 16

  Ari

  “BROTHER ARI, YOU MUST WEAR the clothes you wore when you arrived,” Baruch said.

  Ari pulled off the tunic Baruch had loaned him and stepped into his blue jeans. The T-shirt with the physics equations was dirty and wrinkled, but it was all he had. He put it on. “Aren’t you going to take off your phylactery?” He pointed to the small, black leather box strapped to Baruch’s forehead.

  Baruch looked surprised. “I wear this always, except on Shabbat. Do they not do so in your country?”

  “Only during prayers,” Ari said. And of course he himself never wore phylacteries, but he saw no point in saying so.

  Baruch accepted this without question. He seemed to be getting used to the bizarre customs of Ari’s country. “In which language is the writing on your tunic?” he asked.

  “The language of the wise men of my country.”

  “Please read to me how HaShem created light.” Baruch pointed at the four lines of equations.

  Ari quoted them from memory. “The curl of the electric field equals the negative of the time-derivative of the magnetic field. The curl of the magnetic field equals the time-derivative of the electric field plus the current density. The divergence of the electric field equals the charge density. The divergence of the magnetic field equals zero.”

  Baruch’s face shone with delight. “I would like you to teach me this language sometime,” he said. “It seems that you have many words for each letter.”

  “The language is very powerful,” Ari said. And that was a mystery he had never understood. Why was mathematics so “unreasonably effective,” as Wigner had put it? 10 But he had no time to think philosophy right now.

  “It is time for us to find my friend.” Ari looped his backpack over his left shoulder. “Her name is Rivka, and I fear for her safety.”

  “Which gate did you enter the city from?” Baruch asked, as they went out into the street.

  Ari pointed in the general direction of the southeast corner of the city. “Near the Pool of Siloam.”

  Baruch nodded. “We will begin there.”

  They spent twenty minutes walking to the pool. It was not very far—less than a kilometer—and the crowded streets buzzed with a festive atmosphere.

  Children dashed in and out, playing games. Men stood in the streets, gossiping in little clusters. Women talked in their own small groups. Ari saw virtually no mixing of the sexes. Merchants hawked their wares on the street. Everywhere, the smell of roasting meat and pickled vegetables filled the air. Ari loved it.

  Baruch said little as they walked downhill toward the city gate. When they came near the gate, Ari caught Baruch’s arm and pointed toward the Pool of Siloam. “I went in there first, right after I entered the city. There were many young women, and they tried to speak to me, but I could not understand them.”

  Baruch hesitated a moment.

  “Is something wrong?” Ari asked.

  “It is said that many of the water carriers here are zonot,” Baruch said.

  Obviously, Baruch had lived a sheltered life in a Pharisee home. If he actually talked to a zonah, Ari decided, maybe he would learn that they were real people too. “We must go in there. When the women saw me, they pointed at my blue clothes. I think they may have seen Rivka. We should ask them.”

  Baruch’s face tightened. “Surely there are others who may have seen your friend.”

  “Yes, but it makes sense to try first where Rivka was likely to go. And I now remember that Rivka once asked me to show her this pool. It is almost certain that she came here.”

  “Very well.” Baruch did not look happy. He threaded his way through the crowd to the gate leading into the pool area.

  Ari followed him. Once inside the gate, he looked around the area again. He recognized several of the faces.

  Evidently, they recognized him also, because they shrank away. He still hadn’t figured that out. “Brother Baruch, I don’t think they like me.”

  “Then stand here near the entrance and I will speak to them alone,” Baruch said. He walked toward the nearest group of women.

  Ari stayed, trying to look harmless.

  Baruch spent some minutes talking quietly with the women. Remarkably, they did not appear to fear him, and several of them even seemed quite friendly. Ari found this amusing.

  Baruch turned and pointed at Ari, and then asked the women another question.

  Several of them answered at once, nodding their heads in excitement. One of them pointed out of the gate and up the hill toward the Temple. Another interrupted, and then a third, each correcting the one before.

  Finally, Baruch nodded and turned away from the group. One of them called after him in an unmistakably ribald way. Baruch’s face reddened, and he hurried toward Ari.

  “They saw the woman Rivka here about noon on the day before Shabbat,” he said. “She left with a zonah named Hana. The women have given me exact directions to her house.”

  Ari grinned. “It seems that they were willing to give you much more than directions, Brother Baruch.”

&
nbsp; Baruch turned toward Ari and his face darkened. “Please do not speak of it again, Brother Ari. I am a man, subject to the lusts of the flesh. I do not wish to sin against HaShem and against my own self.”

  Ari swallowed. “Forgive me, Brother Baruch.”

  “Of course,” Baruch said. “Now let us find your Rivka. It chills me to think that this woman Hana may be teaching her the arts of the zonah.”

  It chilled Ari, too. Together, they walked up the hill as quickly as they could push through the crowds.

  After some distance, Baruch turned to the right onto a side street. Ari followed him.

  Two more turns, and then Baruch stopped. He pointed at a small house. “That is the place. I do not wish to enter the house of a zonah, my friend. If any brothers of The Way saw me, I would have difficulty explaining myself.”

  Ari thought that the explanation would be rather easy. And they were far from Baruch’s house. What would one of the brothers of The Way be doing here? But he had already given Baruch enough grief for one day, so he asked, “Will you wait here?”

  “I…would rather return home to pray,” Baruch said. “When you have found Rivka, you must bring her to visit me. Can you find your way back to my house?”

  “Easily,” Ari said. He slapped Baruch on the shoulder. “I respect you, my brother. You are a righteous man. I want very much for Rivka to meet you.” And wouldn’t she be shocked when she found out what Jewish Christians were really like?

  “Shalom,” Baruch said. He turned and hurried back the way they had come.

  Ari waited until he disappeared. Then he turned and went up to the door and knocked. Rivka was going to be so incredibly relieved when she saw that he had come to rescue her.

  * * *

  Damien

  Damien had spent half an hour waiting impatiently while Rivka and Hana discussed possible locations for the Chamber of Hewn Stone where the Sanhedrin met. He had no rational reason to be impatient, he reminded himself. He had worked out the chronology of this coming week a long time ago. Paul wouldn’t show up in the Temple for two more days. Damien would make his first attempt there. Only if that failed would he need to know about the Chamber of Hewn Stone. This whole little excursion today would be a fail-safe, just in case. A precaution. You could never be too careful.

  He didn’t understand what was taking them so long, but at least it gave him a chance to admire Hana.

  A knock sounded on the thin wooden door.

  Damien stood closest. “I’ll get it.” He stepped to the door, slipped the latch, and pulled it inward.

  Ari Kazan stood in front of him.

  For a second, both of them stared at each other in stunned disbelief. Then Ari dropped his backpack and charged at Damien, hands groping for his neck.

  Damien backpedaled into the room, wondering how on God’s green earth Ari Kazan had come through the wormhole before it vanished. Not possible! Damien’s back slammed against the wall of the house. He raised his arms to protect his face.

  An instant later, Ari hit him hard.

  Damien absorbed most of the force with his arms, but his head smacked painfully against the stone wall behind him.

  He heard the women screaming. Ignore it. Focus on this fight. Ari had just wasted all of his force—foolishly. Now he would pay for that mistake.

  Damien jerked both elbows up, catching Ari’s chin, popping his head back.

  Ari gurgled and swung, but without any real power.

  Damien lifted his left knee, taking the easy groin shot.

  Ari staggered backward, his breath hissing.

  Damien followed, bunching his right hand into a tight fist. He jabbed hard to the solar plexus.

  Ari toppled over into the dirt.

  Now what? If he were alone with Ari, Damien would have simply killed him. Lying there on the ground wheezing, Ari had no more defenses than a snail on the sidewalk.

  But Damien had the women to think about. Women didn’t like violence. He still needed Rivka Meyers. No sense alienating her.

  Time to do the sweet-reasonableness thing. A dog and pony show. “Ari, Ari, Ari.” Damien shook his head slowly. “You can’t let go, can you? Why have you come here to attack us? And how did you escape the police?” He turned to face Rivka. “Miss Meyers, I’m terribly sorry that I had to use force on him. I told you he had gone crazy, didn’t I? Such a waste of a brilliant mind.”

  Rivka’s face showed stark disbelief. Her legs wobbled, and then she sank to her knees. She looked ready to faint.

  He hadn’t anticipated this response. “Miss Meyers, are you all right?”

  But no, this presented an opportunity. He could escort Ari away from here by force, take him to his rented quarters, and kill him there. Five minutes and he would silence Ari for good.

  “Ari, are you hurt?” Rivka asked.

  Damien began worrying. Women always sided with the loser. The underdog thing. He had to do something.

  “More to the point, Ari Kazan, why did you do it?” Damien said. “Why did you create the wormhole without my permission? We had an agreement that we would both be there. Why, Ari?”

  “What are…you talking…about?” Ari’s voice came out in little gasps. “You powered up the wormhole yourself, without asking—”

  “It won’t do to lie,” Damien said. If he could bait Ari into attacking again, that would help his case. Women didn’t like aggressors. “Miss Meyers already knows the truth. You were going to strand her here, weren’t you? Why, Ari? Over one little argument? That’s truly pathetic.”

  Ari lunged up off the ground, swinging wildly.

  Damien stepped sideways, caught Ari’s right arm, twisted it around, and kicked Ari’s legs out so that he fell in the dirt facedown. Damien sank down on his back, twisting the arm high and hard behind Ari.

  “You jerk!” Ari gasped. “What’s your…game, West? Why did you make…the wormhole? And why drag Rivka into this?”

  Damien ratcheted Ari’s arms up another notch. “Ari, that’s a strange gambit. A man of your intelligence can do better than that. What I’m wondering is how you escaped from the police. What did you have against Miss Meyers? She’s really a very nice woman. I don’t like it when you mistreat people, Ari, and I’m not going to stand by and let you get away with it.”

  Ari began to say something, then coughed violently.

  Damien’s brain raced. Time to pack Ari out of here. He looked up at Rivka. “I’m terribly sorry that he’s attacked us like this, Miss Meyers. If we tie him up, I could take him back to the house I’m renting. Then I could hold him there peacefully while you take a few minutes to decide what to do.”

  “Yes, I would like that,” Rivka said. “I’ll ask Hana to find us some rope.” She spoke rapidly to her friend. Hana nodded and went out.

  Ari finished coughing and lay still, his chest heaving. “Rivka.”

  Danger, Will Robinson! Damien couldn’t afford to let Ari talk. He yanked on Ari’s arm. “Sorry, I can’t allow you to verbally abuse Miss Meyers.”

  Rivka came over to look at the prisoner. “Dr. West, I want to hear what Ari was saying. Could you ease up on him just a little?”

  Damien winced internally. That was exactly what he didn’t want to do. But he couldn’t see a graceful way to refuse. “Right, Miss Meyers.”

  “Rivka.” Ari coughed again. “I came to ask you…to forgive me.”

  Instinctively, Damien yanked again on Ari’s arm. He couldn’t let Ari talk like that. Women ate up that kind of thing.

  Ari cried out in pain.

  “Dr. West, will you please back off just a little?” Rivka sounded agitated.

  Hana returned just then with a length of rope.

  Very good. Damien felt his pulse slowing a little. He would get things under control in a minute. Damien tied Ari’s hands behind his back.

  “Rivka.” Ari’s voice sounded desperate.

  “Don’t listen to him, Miss Meyers.”

  “Dr. West, I’m a big girl, and I’l
l decide who to listen to. Got it?”

  Damien cleared his throat. He had gone overboard, and he knew it. “I’m sorry, Miss Meyers. You’re quite right. Whatever you say.”

  “Good,” Rivka said. “Now I want you to leave for a while. I need to—”

  “I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Damien said. An ice cube of panic shivered down his spine. He could not let her—

  “I’ll decide what’s a good idea and what’s not.”

  She was getting uppity again. Dumb chick. If he didn’t need her, he would…. Never mind. That line of thought would get him in trouble. Be cool. Be rational. Think calming thoughts.

  “Dr. West, I want you to leave. Right now.”

  Damien stood up.

  Hana began jabbering at Rivka. Rivka argued back. Damien waited, hoping Hana would talk some sense into her. He suddenly felt angry at himself. He ought to have killed Ari at once, then tried to sweet-talk Rivka afterward. Too late for that now. Hana would just have to win this argument.

  The women talked for several minutes. Damien put on his most humble, aw-shucks face. Finally, they finished the argument.

  Damien shrugged apologetically. “How about if I take Ari away for a few minutes and just talk to him quietly?”

  “No,” Rivka said. “I want you to leave now.”

  Damage-control time. “As you like,” Damien said. “Please be careful, Miss Meyers. Don’t believe anything Ari tells you. He’s dangerous.”

  “Don’t worry,” Rivka said. “Hana and I will get the truth out of him.”

  Which was exactly what Damien was afraid of.

  Chapter 17

  Rivka

  RIVKA PICKED UP ARI’S BACKPACK and closed the door behind Dr. West. Ari lay on his face in the dirt, his arms tightly bound from wrists to elbows. Why had he come? If he were really a madman, as Dr. West said, then what was all this about forgiveness? That didn’t sound like a guy gone bonkers.

  “Who is this man?” Hana said. “I do not trust him.”