Reb Menashe was not a connoisseur of art. He stared at the painting, and at first he saw only the bright-red fruits; it was an old debate precisely which fruit had tempted Khava, the apple, the pomegranate or the peach. The room portrayed in the painting was also familiar to him: the so-called Chamber of the Last Supper was situated directly on top of the tomb of David in the Old City.
“All the same, the picture speaks of a purely Jewish chastity,” he decided, looking at it. “He has replaced the people with pomegranates, that’s his trick, poor man.”
Reb Menashe had been born two days after the declaration of the state of Israel. His grandfather was a Zionist who had organized one of the first agricultural colonies. His father had lived for the underground army, the Hagana. The rabbi himself had both fought and dug the land. He was born under the walls of the Old City, by the Windmill of Montefiore, and the first view he remembered seeing from the window was of the Gates of Zion.
He was twenty when he followed the tanks and entered these gates for the first time. The Old City still smelt of fire and metal. He had scrambled through it, exploring its maze of Arab streets, the roofs of the Christian and Armenian quarters. The Christian holy places of Jerusalem seemed dubious to him, as did many of the Judaic ones. The Chamber of the Last Supper aroused his particular mistrust: it seemed highly unlikely that this secret paschal meeting would have been organized over the bones of the Great King. But David’s tomb itself raised serious doubts. This astonishing world which he so loved, of weak white stone, fluctuating light and hot air, was filled with historical and archaeological implausibilities, unlike the world of bookish wisdom, which was organized with crystal clarity, without approximations or anomalies, rising intelligibly upward with paradoxically logical convolutions of great beauty.
He had understood for the first time what this land meant for him when he left it. He was young then; he had graduated from university and had been sent to Germany to study philosophy. A year of concentrated study exhausted his interest in European philosophy, torn off from its living roots, which he recognized exclusively in the Torah. This ended the brief period of his academic education, and in the second half of his third decade, he embarked on the traditional path of Judaic science which is more accurately called theology.
He had married a silent girl who shaved off her vibrant auburn tresses the day before the wedding, and since then he had enjoyed the harmony which comes from a life whose every detail is regulated with clockwork precision, and from the intellectual rigours of being at the same time both teacher and pupil.
His world had completely changed: the information which most people receive from radio, television and the secular press passed him by, and he was nourished by the ancient code of Shulkhan Arukh, the table laid for those who wish to partake of the Jewish spiritual heritage, and by the high-voiced clamour of his many children.
Five years later his first book was published, an exploration of the stylistic differences between Saadia’s commentaries on Daniel and the Chronicles. Two years after this he moved to Tzfat.
His world was biblically simple and talmudically complicated, yet all its facets connected, and his daily work with his medieval texts cast a shadow of the eternal over the present. Below him at the bottom of the mountain shone the blue Sea of Galilee, and he experienced a deep feeling of gratitude to the Almighty—Christians might call it Phariseeism—for the happy fate that had been granted to him of serving and knowing, and for the holiness of this land which appears to many as a dirty, provincial eastern state, but which for him was the undisputed centre of the world, in relation to which all other states with their histories and cultures could be read only as commentaries.
The priest had already removed his surplice and was pushing through the crowd of guests towards him. “I hear you’ve come from Israel to teach a course of Judaics?” he asked in school-book English.
Reb Menashe stood up. He had never talked to a priest before. “Yes, I’m lecturing on Judaeo-Islamic culture at the Jewish university here.”
“They do some wonderful courses, I once read a book about biblical archaeology published by that university.” The priest broke into a happy smile. “Your Judaeo-Islamic theme is presumably developed in the context of the contemporary world by some sort of trade-off?”
“Trade-off?” Reb Menashe didn’t understand the expression. “No no, political parallels don’t concern me, I’m interested in philosophy.” He seemed agitated.
Alik called to Valentina. “Valentina, keep an eye on those two and make sure they don’t stay sober!”
Valentina came over, pink and plump, holding more paper cups to her chest. She put them before Leva, and the three men drank together. A moment later their heads came together, they nodded their beards and gesticulated. Alik looked at them with deep satisfaction and said to Libin: “I think I’ve successfully played the role of Saladin today.”
Valentina sought Libin’s eyes and nodded towards the kitchen. A moment later she was squeezing him into a corner. “I can’t ask her, you’ll have to,” she said urgently.
“I see, you can’t, so it’s down to me.” Libin was offended.
“That’s enough. We must pay right now, at least for one month!”
“We’ve only just been asking for money.”
“Just—a month ago,” Valentina shrugged. “Why should I fork out more than anyone else? I paid the phone bill last month, it was all out-of-town calls. Nina talks a lot when she’s drinking.”
“She’s only just given money,” Libin sighed.
“Okay, ask someone else then, how about Faika?”
Libin burst out laughing: Faika was up to her ears in debt, and there wasn’t a person in this room to whom she didn’t owe at least ten dollars. Libin had no choice but to go to Irina.
Money wasn’t just a mess, it was a disaster. In the years before Alik became ill he had sold few paintings, and now that he had stopped working and could no longer run around the galleries his income was virtually zero, or rather less than zero. Debts grew: those which had to be settled, such as rent and phone bills, and those which would never be paid, like medical bills.
As well as this there was another unpleasant story, which had dragged on for several years. Two gallery-owners from Washington had organized an exhibition for Alik and had failed to return twelve of his works. Alik himself was partly to blame for this, and it would never have happened if he had gone back to the gallery on the day the exhibition closed, as they had agreed, and taken everything back. But he was enjoying in advance the sale of three of his paintings, and had borrowed the money to go off to Jamaica with Nina, so he didn’t make the final day. Even when he came back he didn’t go immediately. The cheque for the paintings didn’t arrive for some reason, so he phoned Washington to find out why. They asked him where he had been, and told him the works had been returned and had had to be put in storage, since the gallery had no space for them. This was a barefaced lie.
Alik had asked Irina to help. Another fact emerged: when he signed the contract he had left his copy with the gallery-owners. This blunder gave them the upper hand and made them even more brazen, and there seemed to be almost nothing Irina could do about it. All she had was the catalogue of the exhibition, which contained information about the paintings and a reproduction of one of those that had ostensibly been sold. She embarked on the process of suing the gallery, and while the case creaked on she reluctantly made Alik out a cheque for five thousand dollars. She told him she had screwed it out of them; in reality she still was fairly hopeful of recovering some of the money.