By Dawn's Early Light Page 9

  “Lie still, Rabbi,” one of his students whispered, his hand firmly upon Baram’s chest. “We have called the ambulance. They will take you to the hospital.”

  “I am not sick.” Baram struggled to sit up, but strength had fled from his body. His limbs felt as weak as water, helpless.

  Baram closed his eyes again, resigning himself to what would certainly follow. They would take him to the hospital and run tests; they would assume he had suffered a stroke or heart attack. If he told them what he had seen, they might take him to the psychiatric ward, for not since Moshe, of blessed memory, had any prophet ever received a prophecy unless he was sleeping or in a trance . . .

  Had he been in a trance? The quick question needed a thoughtful answer. The ancient writings listed several criteria by which a prophecy could be judged as true or false. One was that a prophet would be physically troubled after the receiving of his vision, and that much was true. Baram felt as though the strength had been drained from his body, and his eyes still burned with the memory of that fiery light. Another criterion was that the recipient could not will a prophecy; only HaShem, blessed be He, could will it. That also was true, for Baram would not have wished for this experience; he was not worthy.

  He heard the deep voice of Rav Greenspan, another teacher at the yeshiva. Perhaps, for now, it would be better to remain silent and endure the fussing of his friends. He needed time to consider the meaning of what he had just seen and heard.

  The double doors of the assembly hall swung open in that instant, accompanied by a metallic clacking sound. As Baram’s eyelids lifted, the circle of boys parted to reveal a team of emergency technicians with a metal stretcher. He smiled in honest surprise. If the medics had already arrived, he must have been unconscious longer than he realized. So perhaps it was a trance.

  As the technicians lifted and strapped him to the gurney, he caught the hand of one of his students. “Send for my children,” he told the boy, managing no more than a thin whisper. “Do not delay—understand?” He did not release the boy’s hand until the lad nodded in assent.

  The IDF chaplain general’s office sent two officers to Devorah’s classroom— one to take over the teaching, another to quietly inform her that her father had been taken to the hospital. “The paramedics are afraid it was a heart attack,” the ensign told her, staring at the floor as if afraid to meet her eyes. “Apparently he was leading prayers, then froze and clutched at his chest. Your brother has been informed as well.”

  Urgency set Devorah’s blood afire. “Which hospital?”

  “Bikur Kholim,” came the answer, but she had already begun to move out the door. She was running by the time she reached the parking lot, and her heart kept pace with the broken turn signal that clicked in an agitated rhythm as she sped through the streets.

  She found her father in the emergency ward, behind a printed curtain. She heard his voice before she saw him, and something in her melted in relief when she realized he was arguing—heatedly—with the doctor. “I am not sick, I tell you!” he bellowed. “I am as healthy as any man my age ought to be.”

  Devorah stopped just outside the curtained cubicle. “Abba, I am here,” she called, not wanting to intrude upon his privacy. “Asher is on his way.”

  “Come in, Devorah.” Even now, her father’s voice rang with stubborn pride. Devorah stepped through an opening in the curtain and took in her father’s appearance in one swift glance. He sat on the table, his white shirt unbuttoned, tiny circles and wires pressed to the expanse of flesh beneath his graying beard. But his cheeks glowed with indignation, and his eyes flashed dark fire.

  She suppressed a smile. This was not a man suffering a heart attack. The doctor, however, was not inclined to let a patient slip through his fingers without at least performing a few tests.

  “Rabbi Cohen.” The doctor, a youngish fellow who appeared to be about Devorah’s age, folded his clipboard beneath his crossed arms and fixed her father in a steely gaze. “Sir, today you have had a bad fall, if nothing else. Your students say you went quite pale, you clutched at your chest, and you fainted. I cannot allow you to go home until we know what caused this odd seizure.”

  Her father looked at the doctor and blinked hard. “Does the Master of the universe mean for you to know everything, Doctor? Now, if you please, I would like to go with my daughter. She will take me home and put me to bed, if you like. If I return to your hospital tomorrow, you may shake your head at me and call me a foolish old man. But I do not think I will be returning.” With a determination born of pride, he plucked the adhesive circles from his chest and flung the wires toward a machine on which a bouncing line suddenly went flat.

  “Abba,” Devorah infused her voice with iron, “you must trust the doctor. If he wants you to remain overnight, what harm will it do? You have been working hard, and sometimes the body does not know when it is stressed—”

  “My body knows it does not belong in a hospital.” Reaching out to steady himself on the doctor’s shoulder, her father eased himself off the examination table, then began to button his shirt.

  Devorah looked at the doctor and shrugged. “I will take him home and put him to bed.”

  Asher, breathless and pale, burst into the cubicle at that moment. He was dressed in an olive green jumpsuit, the uniform of an IDF paratrooper on patrol inside the West Bank.

  “Is this how the Master of the universe answers my prayers?” A broad smile lifted her father’s pendulous cheeks as he lifted his hands and brought them to rest atop Devorah’s and Asher’s shoulders. “You see, Doctor, this morning I prayed for my children and HaShem, blessed be He, has sent them flying from the ends of the earth to visit me.”

  Asher’s worried eyes met Devorah’s. “Is he all right?”

  Devorah nodded and caught her father’s hand. “Isn’t he always? He was arguing with the doctor when I arrived.”

  Ignoring her, her father plucked his coat from a chair and impatiently shrugged his way into it. “Let us go home, my children.”

  He turned, searching for his prayer shawl, and Devorah pulled it from a table. As he draped it over his shoulders, she quietly mouthed a question to her brother: “Have you leave to stay with him a while?”

  Asher nodded, his eyes still filled with the blind panic she had known only moments earlier.

  Devorah gave him a knowing smile and took her father’s arm. Though he seemed perfectly healthy now, something had caused him to faint in the yeshiva. She would not rest until she knew what it was.

  With her father and brother in the backseat of her blue Fiat, Devorah drove to Me’a She’arim, the spiritual heart of ultraorthodox Jewry and the location of her father’s house. The streets in this neighborhood, only a few blocks northeast of Jerusalem’s center, were filled with black-hatted Jews who tended to reject every aspect of modern Israel. On weekdays the quarter felt more like a medieval European village than part of a thriving modern city, while on Sabbaths the streets emptied of traffic while men in fur hats clogged the sidewalks on their way to services at the synagogue.

  She drove past the yeshiva where her father taught, then turned onto Etyopya Street. A few moments later she pulled up outside a quaint stone cottage. Some of the city’s grandest nineteenth-century houses lay on this avenue, but her father’s home was neat and modest. A grateful former student had given it to him, and only the possibility that he might dishonor his student by refusing the gift convinced him to accept.

  “We are home, Abba.” Her father had been unusually silent on the drive, and a recurrent gnat of worry returned to torment her. She caught her brother’s eye as she got out of the car. Asher stood outside on the curb, his hand extended to help her father, and from his expression she knew he was just as puzzled and worried as she.

  They spoke of little things as they helped their father into the house, led him into the kitchen, and forced him to sit down at the table. Asher helped him take off his shoes while Devorah filled a teakettle and set it on the gas stove.r />
  “Now, Abba,” she said, stepping into the open space that served as his dining room, “suppose you tell Asher and me what happened this morning.”

  Without replying, he looked up as she slid into the empty chair across from Asher. For a moment she thought she detected a gleam of apprehension in his dark eyes. Her father, afraid? She had never seen him exhibit fear, not even during the Gulf War when Saddam Hussein sent Scud missiles flying toward Jerusalem.

  “This morning,” her father began. He pressed his hands to the surface of the dining table as if he could pull strength from it. “I did not have a heart attack this morning. I received a vision—a prophecy.”

  Devorah absorbed this news in silence, but a soft gasp escaped Asher’s lips.

  Her father pointed a warning finger in Asher’s direction. “Do you doubt me? I will admit what I saw was no ordinary sight. I have been a rabbi for many years; I have prayed the Shacharis over twenty-two thousand times, yet I have never seen or heard what I saw and heard this morning.”

  Devorah settled her elbows on the table and steepled her fingers. “Did anyone else hear anything? Did any of the yeshiva students see this vision?”

  A suggestion of annoyance hovered in her father’s eyes. “Since when does HaShem, blessed be He, send visions to groups of yeshiva students? At the time I was praying for you and Asher, and God spoke to me alone.”

  Asher’s face flickered with uncertainty. “You were praying for us?”

  Her father leaned his head back to better gaze into Asher’s eyes. “I prayed that my son and daughter would accept the true faith. That they would become Jews in their hearts, not just in their minds.”

  Listening with rising dismay, Devorah tugged upon his sleeve, hoping an affectionate touch would distract him from unpleasant realities. “Abba, we don’t need to go into this now. Why don’t I see you to your room? I will stay with you for the rest of the day, until we’re certain you’re better. Asher can ask for leave tomorrow, and if there’s a need I can stay with you tomorrow night.”

  “Why won’t my children listen?” He looked at her with burning, reproachful eyes. “Do you not want to know what the Master of the universe told me this morning? Adon Olam, the Master of the world, appeared as a bright light, the most pure and brilliant light I have ever seen. And He said, ‘I will show myself holy through them in the sight of many nations. Then they will know that I am the Lord their God, for though I sent them into exile among the nations, I will gather them to their own land, not leaving any behind. I will no longer hide my face from them, for I am the Sovereign Lord.’”

  “The prophet Ezekiel,” Asher whispered softly. Devorah cocked an eyebrow at her brother, then sent him a look of relief and thanks, which he acknowledged with the slightest softening of his eyes. She had been schooled in the Hebrew Scriptures, too, but most of her biblical knowledge had been relegated to the mental equivalent of dust-covered filing cabinets.

  “Don’t you see, Abba?” Leaning forward with her arms on the table, she fixed her father in a steady gaze. “You were tired, and your mind tricked you so that you heard what you wanted to hear. Science has documented many similar situations—some people see hallucinations, glowing worms, or auras of colored light right before a migraine attack. You may have experienced something—a mild stroke or some sort of headache—and your body fooled you into thinking you experienced a heavenly visitation. But such things are impossible.”

  A thunderous scowl darkened her father’s brow. “Who am I, and who are you, to question the Master of the universe?” A glint of wonder filled his eyes, and the hand he lifted trembled. “I doubted at first, too. HaShem, blessed be He, has not sent us prophecies in so many years, at first I doubted that He would send one to me. But I did hear God’s voice.”

  Devorah bit down hard on her lower lip. “You didn’t, Abba. Why should God speak to you?”

  “And why now?” Asher added. “This was not a vision, Abba. You are overworked and exhausted. You must get some rest.”

  For a long moment her father glared at Asher, matching his determination look for look, then he transferred his gaze to Devorah. She lifted her brow, not yielding.

  The light in her father’s eyes dimmed as his jaws wobbled and his face rippled with anguish. “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah,” he whispered as Asher stood and placed his arm under her father’s. “Even if he delays, I will wait for him to come.”

  Devorah stood, too, and moved to her father’s other side. Together she and Asher helped him from the table and guided him toward the stairs.

  Her father continued, and his voice, though quiet, contained an ominous note. “I believe in Ikveta Meshicha, the footsteps of the Messiah. The time is upon us, Adon Olam has spoken. He who does not look for the Messiah or long for his coming actually denies the Torah. So I will wait and watch for his footsteps and listen for his voice.”

  Devorah stepped away from the narrow stairs and allowed Asher to guide her father up to his room. She sank to a lower step, waiting as Asher put her father to bed.

  Why were the old ones so stubborn? Her father belonged to another generation, an era when superstition and ignorance were the rule rather than the exception. Ritual ruled his life, study occupied his days, prayer filled his nights. She knew for a fact that he recited the two-thousand-year-old Asher Yatzar prayer every time he went to the restroom.

  Why couldn’t he see that Judaism had accomplished its purpose? God, if He truly existed, had given Moses a list of commands to unite the Jewish people. That ancient set of commandments had been added to and reinterpreted over the years, and the Torah had proved to be the concentrating force that preserved the Jews as a unique race during the generations of the Diaspora. The rituals, the prayers, the rules against intermarriage had sustained them through the Roman occupation, the Crusades, the Holocaust. But now Israel was free and at peace, even with her Arab neighbors. The need for law and ritual and prayer had ended.

  The stair above her creaked. She turned and gave her brother a weary smile as he moved toward her.

  “I will stay with him for a while,” she whispered, hugging her knees as Asher sat beside her on the step. “You go back to the base, and I’ll ask Dr. Dayan to come over. I want to know Papa is well before I go back to work.”

  Asher crossed his arms atop his knees and stared thoughtfully at the blank wall before them. “I never thought anything like this would happen.” He lowered his head to his arms as he looked at her. “Papa has always been as strong as an ox, physically and mentally. I never thought he’d be the type to suffer delusions.”

  Devorah tucked a curl behind her ear. “It could be some form of dementia, I suppose. He’s only sixty-two, but I think certain conditions can begin at almost any time.”

  Asher’s brown eyes grew somewhat smaller and darker, the black pupils of them training on her like gun barrels. “What if he’s telling the truth?”

  Devorah winced. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am. He believes, and we don’t. So God would never speak to us . . . but how can we say HaShem would not speak to our father?”

  Devorah crossed one arm over her bent knees and chewed on the end of her thumbnail. For that question she had no answer.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Moscow

  Noon

  VLADIMIR MOVED TO THE STEREO, ADJUSTED THE VOLUME, THEN CLOSED HIS eyes as the Rachmaninoff concerto swelled to fill the room. He lifted his arms and cued the strings, then opened his eyes and caught sight of himself in the gilded mirror over the fireplace.

  He lowered his hands, glad that Alanna was still dressing in the bedroom. She never laughed at him, but she had never caught him acting out one of his fantasies. Soon, though, she would join him in his greatest fantasy, and together they would bring it to life.

  Double-checking his image in the mirror, he straightened his back, tugged down his uniform, and plucked a strand of lint from the notched edge of his collar. He must not ap
pear shabby today. This was a special occasion, a time of celebration and significance.

  A buzzer chimed from the foyer, and Vladimir called a warning to the butler as he crossed the living room. “Nyet! Keep to your work. I will see to our guest.”

  Col. Oleg Petrov stood outside the door, his blond hair sparking in the light from the hallway. At the sight of Vladimir, he clicked his heels and snapped to attention. “General! I’m sorry, sir, I expected a servant.”

  Vladimir returned the salute, then took the bottle of wine from Petrov’s hand and led him into the foyer. “I did not want to distract the servants; they are still setting the table. After all,” he broke into a relaxed smile, “I knew it was you.”

  Petrov’s lips parted in a dazzling display of straight, white teeth. “You are too kind, General. May I say again how honored I am to be invited to this dinner with you and your—” A deep, painful red washed up his throat and into his face as he hesitated.

  “Her name is Alanna,” Vladimir remarked, his voice dry. “One day, when the time is right, she will be my wife. For now, you should call her Madame Ivanova.” He lowered his voice. “And we shall speak English tonight, for her sake.”

  “Of course, General.”

  Vladimir paused to hand the bottle of wine to the butler in the kitchen, then led Petrov into the living room. He was about to invite his guest to take a seat, but Alanna chose that moment to step out of the hallway. She came toward them, cool, shining, and smiling, and her beauty caused an instant crisis in his vocabulary.

  Petrov recovered far faster than Vladimir. He bowed, a hank of blond hair falling forward on his forehead, and Alanna laughed softly as she came forward to take his hand. “I suppose you are the very capable Colonel Petrov. I have heard many good things about you.”

  As Petrov took her hand, an unexpected weed of jealousy sprang up in Vladimir’s heart. Alanna was closer to Petrov’s age than his, and, like her, Petrov was young, charming, and well-favored. But Petrov was also ambitious and intelligent enough to know he would not go far by toying with his general’s lady.