Chapter 9
I’m going to print out the manuscript,” I said. I’d been grappling with a French text the entire morning.
Halimi’s morning revolved around never-ending phone calls.
He hustled and kidded around on the one hand and projected ice-cold, threatening politeness on the other.
He strung along potential interviewees, made pointed remarks to subordinates, and laconically agreed with his superiors.
I tried to block out the sound of his voice with Chopin in my earbuds.
I couldn’t resist escaping to Facebook, permanently open on my laptop, scrolling through the feed as if possessed by a dybbuk.
Someone won a prize in Denmark and posted photos from Copenhagen.
Someone else shared a complex historical anecdote, funny and enlightening, with a beautiful engraving from the seventeenth century.
There were photos from a day spent wandering through Tel Aviv, selfies with friends and dogs on the grass.
Reluctantly, I returned to the French text. My eyes strayed toward the sea. I took out my pouch of tobacco and rolled a cigarette. I placed it beside my laptop and went to get myself a glass of water.
I sat outside, replaced my earbuds, lit the cigarette, and forced myself to focus. My eyes wandered again and again toward the horizon and to Halimi, who was also smoking while he chatted on the phone.
At a certain stage in the conversation, Halimi’s body language became particularly feline—he lounged across the wooden chair on the balcony, his smile deepening by degrees.
I switched off the music but left the earbuds in, my finger hovering over the wheel of the mouse.
I guessed he was talking to a former reality TV star—she gave a first impression of being brainless but was really quite sharp.
Halimi had interviewed her a few weeks ago.
Halimi gave me a look when I snapped my laptop shut.
“I can’t possibly read on my laptop, my brain’s going to explode,” I grumbled. He nodded at me, still talking on the phone. It was obvious he wasn’t listening.
As I went out into the quiet street, I gained a sense of calm. Instead of jumping into the car and driving to the post office to print the manuscript, my legs took me northward to the sandstone ridge. What’s the big deal? I thought. I’ll stretch my legs a bit. No biggie.
It had rained heavily the night before, unusual for the end of April, but by morning, the weather was brighter. The sun shone warmly for a few hours, the air hung thick with mist, and the street was cobbled with shiny puddles. I wanted to find that spring.
I paused and looked back at the houses in the neighborhood, then ahead to the path that led to Le Destroit.
It was at least a half-hour walk to get to the Narrow Passage.
On Friday, I’d barely noticed the distance I had traveled, but now, when there was lunch to make and Lily to pick up from preschool, I realized it was quite a trek there and back.
I turned around and began retracing my steps.
When I got back to the neighborhood, I sat in the car and switched on the radio and started the engine.
Instead of turning toward the post office, I continued north on the coastal road.
I’ll just cruise a little, I told myself.
I stopped the car behind the eastern ridge of the Narrow Passage and got out.
I leaned against the car and examined ancient Phoenician letters engraved into the stone.
I wondered whether my sneakers would get ruined if I walked through the thick mud.
I started walking, the coin hanging low around my neck. I gritted my teeth and increased my pace. The air grew thick.
I stopped. Rummaging around in my bag, I found Lily’s ten-agorot coin.
I held it in front of my eyes and examined it.
“I’ve probably lost my mind,” I told the coin.
I thrust my hand into the pocket of my jacket and cradled the coin in my fist. I climbed up the ruined structure and surprised a couple sitting there, their heads close together, looking out at the sea.
I stood on top of the structure, which was covered with mud.
Then, I climbed carefully down and started wandering across the plain.
I glanced back at the ruins; the couple was still there, and for a moment I saw the place as it looked so many years ago—a stone building blending into the ridge with narrow slits in its walls, probably for shooting arrows.
I closed my eyes, then gritted my teeth and walked toward one of the carob trees, the one I found myself under when I woke from my hallucination.
A sizable puddle pooled under the tree trunk. Goodbye sneakers, I thought.
I knelt by the puddle, one hand resting on the trunk for support. I bent down until the ancient coin around my neck dangled into the puddle. I lingered like this for a few seconds, eyes closed, not knowing what to expect. I’m insane, I thought again.
I straightened up a little, and the coin lifted up out of the water.
I opened my eyes and chuckled again, half-disappointed, half-relieved that everything was the same.
Twang, twang. I heard a faint strumming.
My hand slipped off the tree trunk as I started to turn around.
I fell precariously, my hand plunging into the puddle, and the coin hit the water again.
Boom, an explosion inside my head, and I was sucked into the water.
Sweet water, and then salty. Dizzying currents, and then the billowing of a gigantic wave. Impossible to hold my breath any longer. I’m about to die. A cautious intake of breath because there’s nothing to lose. Joy encompasses me. I can breathe underwater.
“Good God in heaven!” Jean d’Ibelin, Count of Arsur, shouted, accompanied by earsplitting barking.
I inhaled gratefully, filling my lungs with thirteenth-century air.
Different, dense scents invaded my nostrils, both fetid and delightful.
I was once again lying on the ground, my legs dangling into the spring.
The rest of my body was on dry earth; there was no mud here.
Beyond the canopy of the carob tree, which looked much older—its treetop thick with foliage—thin rays of sunshine flickered.
I blinked and pulled myself up into a sitting position.
“I don’t believe it,” I whispered. I looked around.
Everything was dry, but much colder. Jean knelt before me on a mat, wide-eyed with astonishment.
By his side was his satchel and a small musical instrument that looked like a banjo.
He must have been sitting there for quite a while.
His beard was shorter and more groomed. His hair was pulled into the same half-ponytail, tied back with a strip of leather. The cowl had fallen away from his head.
In stunned silence, Jean pulled out a ceramic bottle.
Brunette stood by his side, barking wildly, and when he held the bottle out to me, she gave a whimper and fixed her gaze on me.
I pulled out the cork and sniffed the contents of the bottle.
Wine. “Do you have any water?” I asked. Without taking his eyes off me, he reached for his leather water canteen, which lay on the ground.
He handed it to me, and I drank from it as if nothing had passed my lips for days.
The water tasted faintly musty. I went over to the spring, collected water in my hands, and drank some more.
“How … how? What?” Jean stammered. He shook his head from side to side and laughed to himself, as someone unaccustomed to being surprised. Brunette gave a sharp yap.
“It’s the coin,” I said, realization dawning on me as I held the necklace. The coin looked new. The cross with the widened edges on one side and the tower gate on the other and the inscriptions. I took Lily’s ten-agorot coin out of my pocket; it looked like a toy coin.
The right thing to do, I knew, was to hold Lily’s coin and immerse my hand in the spring—the coin from my time, or my dimension, whatever that might be. To go back, right now. But I wanted to collect my senses. To calm down.
I knew that if I went through that luminescent explosion again so soon, and that fantastical drowning, my heart might give out.
Jean took the ten-agorot coin, examining both sides. As he handled it, somehow a mysterious odd tingle also pulsed in my lower back, somewhere between my coccyx and up my spine. Brunette came up to me, sniffed the coin, and retreated.
“And what brings you here?” I asked. Might he have been waiting for me all this time? How could he have even known I would try to return?
Jean looked around with a touch of embarrassment.
“Well …” he said, “this place is beloved to me. When I am a guest at Chateau Pèlerin and the military tumult of the Templars disturbs my thoughts, I come here to contemplate and pray by this holy spring.” He took a deep breath in order to say something else—and then changed his mind.
“After all, this is where we met last time,” he finally added, as if to reinforce his claim.
“Have three days passed here as well?” I asked, as I rose to my feet.
“‘Here as well?’” he repeated, jumping up. We moved out from under the tree’s canopy. I breathed in the crisp, faintly salty air and looked around.
My heart pounded, and I almost threw up, this time out of wonderment.
I was overwhelmed by the sight of buildings that stretched across the ridge.
Then, I turned toward the sea and cast my eyes over the gardens and vineyards that sloped down between the ridge and the sea, delineated by the town walls, close to the gigantic fortress.
I felt a kind of strange envy that in my world, this magnificent fortress was an inaccessible ruin.