AA dubs us once and future alcoholics. Others, naively, call us recovered. They’re wrong. Capping the bottle doesn’t end the alcoholic dance. Nothing does. It’s in the double helix.
One day you’re queen of the prom. The next you lack reasons to get out of bed. One night you slumber the sleep of the newborn. The next you’re awake, anxious and tossing, and uncertain why.
That night was one of those nights. Hour after hour, I lay staring at the minaret out my darkened window, wondering for whom the spire reached. The god of the Koran? The Bible? The Torah? The bottle?
Why had I been so short with Ryan? Sure, we’d spent hours and learned almost nothing. Sure, I’d rather have been solving the mystery of Max. But why take it out on Ryan?
Why did I want a drink so badly?
And why had I been such a klutz with the Coke? Ryan would have a field day with that one.
I drifted off after midnight, and dreamed disjointed dreams. Phones. Calendars. Disembodied numbers, names, and dates. Ryan on a Harley. Jake chasing jackals from a cave.
At two, I got up for water, then sat wearily on the side of the bed. What did the dreams mean? Were they simply a replay, brought on by headache and the afternoon’s tedium? Was my subconscious attempting to send up a message?
Eventually, I slept.
More than once I awoke, bedding twisted hard in my fists.
33
I CAN’T SAYIWAS UP WITH THE MUEZZIN. BUT IT WAS CLOSE.
The sun was rising. The birds were singing. The headache was gone.
The demons were gone.
After clearing papers from my bathroom floor, I showered, then went the extra mile with blush and mascara. At seven, I called Ryan.
“Sorry about yesterday.”
“Maybe we can get you into a ballet class.”
“I don’t mean the Coke spill. I mean me.”
“You are a gentle flower, a winsome sprite, a creature of loveliness and-”
“Why do you put up with me?”
“Am I not the most gallant and wonderful being in your world?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And sexy.”
“I can be a pain in the ass.”
“Yeah. But you’re my pain in the ass.”
“I’ll make up for it.”
“Tap pants?”
You have to admire the guy. He never gives up.
Friedman called during breakfast. Kaplan wanted to talk about Ferris. Friedman offered to pick Ryan up and leave me the Tempo. I accepted.
Back upstairs, I rang Jake, but got no answer. I assumed he was still asleep.
Wait? No way. I’d been waiting two days.
The Jerusalem Post is headquartered off Yirmeyahu Street, a main artery that begins at the Tel Aviv highway then loops toward the religious neighborhoods of North Jerusalem and joins up with Rabbi Meir Bar Ilan Street, famous for its full-contact Sabbath rock throwers. Jewish motorist or not, these guys didn’t want you driving on their holy day. Ironically, in my stumblings on Friday, I’d passed within a block of the Post ’s doors.
I parked and walked to the building, checking my back for cruisers and jihadists. From Friedman’s sketch map, I knew I was in the Romema neighborhood on the far western edge of West Jerusalem. Thequartier was definitely not a tourist destination. Actually, that’s being generous. Thequartier was ugly as hell, all garages and fenced lots stacked with tires and rusting auto parts.
I entered a long, low rectangle with JERUSALEM POST chiseled on one side. Architecturally, the place had all the charm of an airplane hangar.
After much security, and manyshalom s, I was directed to the basement. The keeper of the archives was a woman of about forty, with a pale mustache, and dried makeup around the corners of her mouth. Her hair was fried blonde and dark for an inch out from her scalp.
“Shalom.”
“Shalom.”
“I’m told you keep old articles on file by topic.”
“Yes.”
“Is there a Masada dossier?”
“There is.”
“I’d like to view it, please.”
“Today?” Her tone suggested she’d rather release files to kindergarteners with finger paints.
“Yes, please.”
“My staff is primarily here to get the archives online.”
“That is such overwhelming work.” My shoulders sagged in sympathy. “But so valuable.”
“We’ve got materials going back to the days when the paper was the Palestinian Post. ”
“I understand.” I smiled my warmest greeter-at-the-Wal-Mart smile. “And I’m in no hurry.”
“You can’t check it out.”
“Of course not.” I looked appropriately horrified.
“Do you have two pieces of identification?”
I showed my passport and my UNCC faculty ID. She looked at both.
“Are you researching a book?”
“Mm.”
She pointed to one of several long wooden tables. “Wait there.”
Rounding her counter, Madam Archivist crossed to a bank of gray metal filing cabinets, opened one drawer, and removed a bulky file folder. Placing the file on my table, she almost smiled.
“Take your time, dear.”
The clippings had been glued onto blank pages. Scores of them. A date had been written to the side of each article, and, on many, the word “ Masada ” had been circled within the headline or the text.
By noon, I’d learned three important things.
First, Jake was not exaggerating. Save for brief mention at a press conference following the second season’s excavation, the cave finds were never reported by the media. The Jerusalem Post even ran a special “Masada Section” in November of ’64. In it Yadin described all the sensational finds from the first season, mosaics, scrolls, the synagogue, themikvehs, the palace skeletons. Not a word on the cave bones.
Second, Yadin knew about the pig bones. A March ’69 article quoted him as saying that animal bones, including those of pigs, were found among the various human remains at Masada.
Elsewhere, Yadin stated that officials from the Religious Affairs Ministry had suggested pigs might have been brought up to Masada to help with garbage disposal. Apparently, that was done in the Warsaw ghetto in the forties.
I couldn’t see it. If the zealots had a garbage problem, they’d have chucked it over the side and let the Romans deal.
And Yadin didn’t back off from the statement he made in ’69. In an ’81 interview he told aPost reporter that he’d advised Chief Rabbi Yehuda Unterman in ’69 that he couldn’t vouch for the Cave 2001 remains being Jewish, since they were commingled with pig bones.
Third, Yadin asserted that radiocarbon tests were never done on the cave remains. In the same ’81 interview in which he’d discussed the pig bones, he stated that carbon-fourteen dating wasn’t requested, and that it was not
