20. December 1995, Haifa
C
HURCH OF
E
LIJAH BY THE
S
PRING
FROM CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESSED TO BROTHER DANIEL STEIN
5 December 1995
T
O
F
ATHER
D
ANIEL
S
TEIN
FROM THE GENERAL OF THE ORDER OF BAREFOOT CARMELITES
In accordance with a decision of the General of the Order of Barefoot Carmelites, Member of the Order Priest Daniel Stein is hereby banned from further service. By 31 December of this year he is required to surrender all documentation relating to the renting and exploitation of the Church of Elijah by the Spring to a commission consisting of a representative of the Order of Carmelites, a representative of the Roman Curia, and a representative of the Jerusalem Patriarchate.
GENERAL OF THE ORDER OF BAREFOOT CARMELITES
This letter was delivered after the death of the addressee in a car crash on 17 December 1995.
21. 14 December 1995
E
NVIRONS OF
Q
UMRAN.
C
HURCH OF
E
LIJAH BY THE
S
PRING
Above a cave entrance blocked by stones, Fyodor carved a small cross and beneath it in Hebrew letters, but from left to right, the name ABUN, and beneath it a small ‘φ’ in Cyrillic script. He finally felt at ease. This sense of ease and a soaring feeling told him he had done everything properly. He bade farewell to the grave and climbed down the mountain.
He walked along the road. Several times cars stopped to offer him a lift and then he turned off and walked as far as possible through the hills. When a path came to an end or led off in the wrong direction, he returned to the road, moving northwards until he reached Jericho. He walked part of his way through the Jordan valley and at Jiftlik turned west toward Samaria, which he crossed unhurriedly until he reached the sea at Netanya. He took pleasure in the walking and slept at night wherever he found a place to lie down. Sometimes this was a pile of dry twigs, sometimes a bench in the children’s playground of some nameless village. One time some men who’d had a bit to drink bought him a meal in a café, another time an Arab shopkeeper gave him pita bread. In the fields he could forage for grapes.
Fyodor had long been used to eating very little and was barely sensible of hunger. His black cassock was bleached by the sun, a rucksack containing three books and a bottle of water bounced up and down on his back. It also held a censer and a small supply of incense. His dry hands clutched a long woollen rosary.
From Netanya he walked toward Haifa, in the footsteps of crusaders and pilgrims.
He knew now the full extent of the deceit. The Jews had tricked the whole world by tossing it the bauble of Christianity but keeping back for themselves the great mystery and the true faith. There is no God in the world other than the Jewish God, and they would keep Him to themselves until the secret was taken from them by force. This little Jew who pretended to be a Christian knew the secret. Abun had said they had secret knowledge. They possessed God. God listened to them. For all that, what mattered most was not the secret knowledge they had gained but their theft. They had stolen our God, and tossed the world a bauble. Abun understood it alclass="underline" they had let us have colored pictures, a fairy-tale Virgin, saints’ calendars, and thousands of abstruse books, but God they had kept for themselves.
Fyodor stumbled and the strap of his sandal came away from the sole. He threw it aside and went on, wearing just one. A breeze was blowing from the sea but the shore, unlike the shore at Athos, was flat and inexpressive and the sea had not the same intoxicating smell of spirits that it had in Greece. He spent a night and half a day at the archeological remains at Caesarea, feeling suddenly lethargic in the morning. He lay in the shade of an ancient wall and dozed until noon. Then he walked on. On the third day he approached Haifa. Now it was no distance at all.
He climbed up to the Church of Elijah by the Spring in the evening. There was nobody there but the watchman, an Arab called Yusuf, a distant relative of Musa and like him also a gardener. Hilda had employed him eight years earlier. Yusuf was deaf and Daniel joked that Hilda had a special talent for finding help. She had a deaf watchman, a lame courier, and it would be best if Daniel washed the dishes himself because she would be sure to hire a dishwasher with one arm.
Fyodor lay down behind the arbor and fell asleep. When he woke it was already dark. He went to the church. He needed to examine the books in there to see if he could find the ones he needed, the ones with the secret. The church was locked so Fyodor went to a window, took off his cassock, folded it in quarters, and deftly pushed the glass out. In no hurry, he put the cassock back on, looked around, found a candle, and lit it. He immediately intuited the internal layout of the building and moved through to the extension, pushing the door. It opened. The desk and cupboard were locked.
He had a knife in his belt and the rigid sheath had been digging into his stomach all the way there. He grasped the sheath and pulled the knife out. It was an Arab knife with a black horn handle and a bronze insert between the horn and the blade. It was not a knife for slaughtering livestock. The book cupboard opened as soon as he touched it. Fyodor laid the books in neat piles and began leafing through them.
What an idiot I am, he chided himself as he read the spines. He recognized the Greek Typikon, the Slavonic Psalter, and several books in Polish, but everything else was in languages of which Fyodor had no knowledge: Hebrew, Latin, Italian. Even if the secret was writ large in them, there was no way he would be able to read it.
He set the books to one side and started on the desk. The middle drawer was double locked and the bolt did not yield. Fyodor picked at the faceplate with his knife, trying to remove it and with it the lock. He did not hear Yusuf come into the room. Yusuf had seen light in the window and decided that Hilda or Daniel must have come back unnoticed. Seeing the burglar, Yusuf cried out and seized him from behind. Fyodor twisted round. The knife was in his hand and before he could think, he had slashed the watchman’s neck. Blood spurted everywhere. There was a strange gurgling.
Fyodor immediately saw that all was lost. Now he would be unable to coerce the Jews’ secret out of Daniel. He had needed the knife not for murder but only for extracting the great secret. The lifeless watchman lying in an excessively large pool of blood had spoiled everything. Fyodor would now never learn that thrice accursed secret of the Jews. Ever. A great rage seized him. He threw the books aside and went out into the church itself and smashed everything that could be broken. The force of his madness was so great that he demolished the altar which had been put together from heavy stones by four strong lads. He trashed the benches and lecterns, wrecked the collection box at the entrance, and smashed his fist into Mother Ioanna’s last icon which, in anticipation of the move to its ultimate home in Moscow, was hanging in accordance with her wishes in the Church of Elijah by the Spring.
Fyodor suddenly became placid and squatted down by the outer wall of the church. Nobody came that day because they were at Daniel’s funeral service in the Arab church where he had once officiated. The service was conducted by Roman, with whom Daniel had once fallen out over plots in the cemetery.