“I have no idea.”
“But what do you think?”
“I said I have no idea. Do you?”
Hornkastle shrugged. “Since the whole Near East once was honeycombed with mushroom cultists, I suppose it’s possible that one group has hung on. Especially here. I’m familiar with Allegro’s notion that Jesus himself never existed, that Jesus is just a code word for the sacred mushroom that rises from the ground, the phallic-looking son of God that is eaten and shows the way to the Godhead. And this is Jesus’ own turf, after all. But presumably these cults were all suppressed thousands of years ago.”
“Presumably.”
“It’s exciting to think that the belief simply went underground instead. I want to find out.”
“With luck you will, my friend.”
“Take me into the village?”
“Eventually.”
“Why not now? While we’re actually here.”
“Your impatience will be your ruin, dear Hornkastle. We must move very slowly.”
“If you understood how eager I—”
“I do understand. That is why there must be no haste.”
They rounded a bend in the road. An Israeli soldier was standing beside an overturned motorbike, signaling for help. Ben-Horin halted and there was a brief colloquy in Hebrew. Then the soldier clambered into the car, apologizing in mild, inexact English as he jammed himself next to Hornkastle and made room for his machine-gun. “We will give him a lift back to Jerusalem,” Ben-Horin explained. That put an end to any talk of sacred mushrooms.
As they passed through the village again, Hornkastle noticed that a younger man had emerged from COCA-COLA and stood outside it, arms folded. For an eerie moment Hornkastle thought he was the falafel seller—the same face, wide cheekbones, pointed chin, bulging, brooding eyes—but of course that was unlikely; this must be a cousin, a brother. In these villages everyone has the same genes.
“I will drop you at your hotel,” said Ben-Horin.
Itchy, irritating frustration assailed Hornkastle. He wanted much more than this, and he did not want to wait, and if impatience would be his ruin, so be it: he was impatient. He felt irritable, volatile, explosive. With an effort he calmed himself. Ben-Horin was right: only by moving slowly would anything be accomplished. The trouble was he had moved so slowly so long, all through his tame disciplined academic life. Now those disciplines seemed to be breaking down, and he stood on the brink of strangeness, awaiting the dive.
He said, “When will we meet again?”
“In a few days,” Ben-Horin replied. “I must deliver a lecture in Haifa tomorrow, and then there are other responsibilities. I will call you.”
The bartender at the hotel recognized Hornkastle and asked him if he wanted arrack again. Hornkastle nodded gloomily and studied the liquor, watching the ice-cubes turn the clear fluid cloudy. Shadows were starting to lengthen over the domes and parapets of the Old City. He was working on his third drink when two tourists came in, obviously mother and daughter, say fifty-five and thirty, good-looking long-legged golden-haired women with delicate slender faces, fragile sharp noses. British, he guessed, from the severe cut of their clothes and from their imperfect, somewhat bucked teeth. Before long he managed to draw them into conversation. British, yes, Claudia and Helena, cool and elegant and self-contained, friendly. Helena, the daughter, asked what he was drinking. “Arrack,” he said. “Anise liqueur, like the Greek ouzo, you know? The Turkish raki. Same stuff from Indonesia to Yugoslavia.” The daughter ordered one; the mother tried it and called for sherry instead.
Before long the women were on their second drinks and he was ready for his fourth and everyone was a little flushed. There was a pleasant sexual undercurrent to the conversation now, nothing obvious, nothing forced, just there, mature and not unattractive man sitting with two mature women in strange land. Anything might happen. He was fairly certain of the glow in Helena’s eyes—that same you-need-but-ask shine that he had imagined he had seen in Geula Ben-Horin’s, but this did not seem like imagination. And even the older one had a spark of it. He allowed himself quick foolish fantasies. The mother tactfully excusing herself at the right moment; he and the daughter going off somewhere for dinner, dancing, night of exotic delights, breakfast on the veranda. Or maybe the daughter pleading a headache and disappearing, and he and Claudia—why not? She wasn’t that much older than he was. Or perhaps both of them at once, something agreeably kinky, one of those nights to treasure forever. They were widows, he learned, their husbands killed in a freak hunting accident in Scotland the previous autumn. Helena spoke matter-of-factly about it, as if being widowed at thirty was no great event. “And now,” she said, “mother and I are pilgrims in Jerusalem! We look forward so much to the Easter celebrations. Since the mishap we’ve felt the presence of God by our sides constantly, and Jesus as a living force.” Hornkastle’s dreams of a wild threesome upstairs began to fade. They had been Church of England, said Claudia, very high church indeed, but after the mishap they had turned to the Roman faith for solace, and now, in the Holy Land, they would march with other pilgrims along the Via Dolorosa, bearing the cross—
Eventually they asked Hornkastle about himself, and he sketched it all quickly, UCLA, experimental psychology, divorce, sabbatical, hint of severe inner storms, crisis, need to get away from it all. He intended to say nothing about sacred mushrooms, but somehow that slipped out—secret cult, hallucinogens, mysterious village in the desert. His cheeks reddened. “How fascinating!” Helena cried. “Will you take us there?” He imagined what Ben-Horin would say about that. He responded vaguely, and she swept onward, bright-eyed, enthusiastic, chattering about drugs, California, mysticism. He began to think he might be able to get somewhere with her after all, and started to angle the conversation back toward dinner, but no, no, they had a prior engagement, dinner at the rectory, was that it? “We must talk again soon,” said Claudia, and off they went, and he was alone again.
A suspended time began. He wandered by himself. One night he went down to the Old City—dark, a mysterious and threatening warren of knotted streets and sinister-looking people. He ate at a little Arab place, grilled fish and mashed chick-peas for a few shekels. Afterward he got lost in a deserted area of blank-walled houses. He thought he was being followed—footsteps in the distance, rustling sounds, whispers—but whenever he glanced back, he saw nothing but woebegone lop-eared cats. Somehow he found his way to Jaffa Gate and picked up a taxi.
He rented a car and did standard tourist things, museums and monuments. Jerusalem, he decided, looked a little like Southern California. Not the inner city, God, no, but the environs, the dry tawny rocky hills, the vast open sky, the clusters of flat-faced condominiums and whatnot sprawling over every ridge and crest—he could almost blink and imagine himself somewhere out by Yorba Linda or Riverside. Except that in the middle of it all was the city of David and Solomon and Herod and Pilate, and the place of the cross. Had any of that really happened, he wondered? A slender bearded man lurching up the Via Dolorosa under the weight of the two massive wooden beams? What is it like to carry the cross? What is it like to hang high above the ground in the cool clear springtime air of Jerusalem, waiting for your Father to summon your spirit?
Hornkastle prowled the Old City constantly, getting to know his way around in the maze. His path often took him past the falafel stand. When he bought sandwiches from the Arab, his hand trembled, as if the falafel-seller who had so many times devoured his own god held some awesome numinous power that instilled fear. What wonders had that man seen, what strange heights had he ascended? Hornkastle felt brutally excluded from that arcane knowledge, half as old as time, that the Arab must possess. Looking into his bloodshot eyes, Hornkastle was tempted to blurt out his questions in a rush of tell me tell me, but he did not dare, for the Arab would pretend not to speak English and Ben-Horin, when he found out, would simply disown him, and that would be the end of the quest.