Shadrach in the Furnace

It is too much for Shadrach — the fierce children, the woeful staggerers, the dirt, the unfamiliar density of the populace that throngs this tiny walled city. There is no way to escape the overwhelming sadness of the place. He should never have entered it; it would have been better by far to look out from his hotel balcony and think romantic thoughts of Solomon and Saladin. He is pushed, prodded, pawed, and elbowed; harsh-sounding things are said to him in languages he does not understand; he is beleaguered by offers to buy his clothing, to sell him jewelry, to take him on tours of the great religious sites. Without the help of guides he makes his way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a grimy and graceless building, but he does not go in, for some kind of pitched battle seems to be under way at its main entrance between priests of different sects, who shout and shake fists and tug one another’s beards and shred one another’s cassocks. Turning aside, he finds, just back of the church, a busy bazaar — more accurately a flea market — where sherds and tatters of the former era are for sale: broken radios, antique television tubes, outboard engines, a miscellany of gears and wheels and cameras and electric shavers and telephones and pumps and gyroscopes and vacuum cleaners and batteries and lasers and gauges and tape recorders and calculators and microscopes and phonographs and washing machines and prisms and amplifiers, all the debris of the affluent twentieth century washed up on this strange shore. Everything is seemingly broken or defective, but the traders are doing a brisk business anyway. Shadrach is unable even to guess what uses these remnants and fragments may now be finding in the Palestinian hinterlands. He actually spies something he wants for his own medical collection, a gleaming little ultramicrotome once used to prepare tissue sections for the electron microscope, but when he produces his credit planchet rather than haggle, the trader merely gives him a blank, sullen stare. The PRC has decreed that government planchets must be accepted as legal tender everywhere, but the old Arab, after examining the glossy strip of plastic without much interest, hands it silently back to Shadrach and turns away. There is a Citpol at the edge of the marketplace who appears to be watching the aborted transaction. Shadrach could call the policeman over and get him to make the trader honor the planchet, but he decides against it; perhaps there will be unforeseeable complications, even dangers, and he does not want to attract attention in this place. He abandons the microtome and walks off to the south, through quieter streets, a residential district.

In a few minutes he comes to steps that lead downward to a great opened space, a cobblestoned plaza, at the far end of which stands an immense wall made of titanic blocks of roughhewn stone. Shadrach ambles across the plaza, heading toward the wall as he studies his map and tries to get his bearings. He remembers turning left, then left again at the Street of the Chain — perhaps he is in the old Jewish Quarter, heading back toward the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa, in which case — “You should cover your head in this place,” says a quiet voice at his right elbow. “You stand on holy ground.”

A small compact man, seventy years old or more, ta

“Isn’t this whole city holy ground?” Shadrach asks, taking the skullcap.

“Every inch is holy to someone, yes. The Arabs have their places, the Copts, the Greek Orthodox, the Armenians, the Syrian Christians, everyone. But this is ours. Don’t you know the Wall?” There is no mistaking the capital letter in his voice.

“The Wall,” Shadrach says, embarrassed, staring at the great stone blocks, then at his map. “Oh. Of course. You mean this is the Wailing Wall? I didn’t realize—”

“The Western Wall, we called it, after the reconquest in 1967, when the wailing stopped for a time. Now it is the Wailing Wall again. Though I myself do not believe much in wailing, even in times such as these.” The little man smiles. “Under whatever name, it is for us Jews a holy of holies. The last remnant of the Temple.” Again the capital letter.

“Solomon’s Temple?”

“No, not that one. The Babylonians destroyed the First Temple, twenty-seven hundred years ago. This is the wall of the Second Temple, Herod’s Temple, leveled by the Romans under Titus. The Wall is all that the Romans left standing. We revere it because it is for us a symbol not only of persecution but of endurance, of survival. This is your first time in Jerusalem?”

“Yes.”

“American?”

“Yes,” Shadrach says.

“I am also. So to speak. My father brought me here when I was seven. To a kibbutz in the Galilee. Just after the proclamation of the State of Israel, you know? — in 1948. I fought in the Sinai in ’67, the Six Day War, and I was here to pray at the Wall in the first days after the victory, and I have lived in Jerusalem ever since. And the Wall to me is still the center of the world. I come here every day. Even though there is no longer really a State of Israel. Even though there are no longer any states at all, any dreams, any — ” He pauses. “Forgive me. I talk too much. Would you like to pray at the Wall?”

“But I’m not Jewish,” Shadrach says.

“What does that matter? Come with me. You are a Christian?”

“Not particularly.”

“No religion at all?”

“No official religion. But I would like to go to the Wall.”

“Come, then.” They stride across the plaza, the short old man and the tall young one. Shadrach’s companion says suddenly, “I am Meshach Yakov.”

“Meshach?”

“Yes. It is a name from the Bible, The Book of Daniel. He was one of the three Jews who defied Nebuchadnezzar when the king ordered them to—”

“I know,” Shadrach cries, “I know!” He is laughing. Delight bubbles in him. It is a delicious moment. “You don’t have to tell me the story. I’m Shadrach!”

“Pardon me?”

“Shadrach. Shadrach Mordecai. It’s my name.”

“Your name,” says Meshach Yakov. He laughs too. “Shadrach. Shadrach Mordecai. It is a beautiful name. It could be a fine Israeli name. With a name like that you aren’t Jewish?”

“The wrong genes, I think. But I suppose that if I converted I wouldn’t need to bother changing my name.”

“No. No. A beautiful Jewish name. Shalom, Shadrach!”

“Shalom, Meshach!”

They laugh together. It is almost a vaudeville routine, Shadrach thinks. That Citipol lurking over there — is he Abednego? They are right by the Wall, now, and the laughter goes from them. The enormous weatherbeaten blocks seem incredibly ancient, as old as the Pyramids, as old as the Ark. Meshach Yakov closes his eyes, leans forward, touches his forehead to the Wall as though greeting it. Then he looks at Shadrach. “How shall I pray?” Shadrach asks.

“How? How? Pray any way you want to pray! Speak with the Lord! Tell Him things. Ask Him things. Do I need to tell a grown man how to pray? What can I tell you? Only this: it is better to give thanks than to ask favors. If you can. If you can.”

Shadrach nods. He turns toward the Wall. His mind is empty. His soul is empty. He glances at Meshach Yakov. The Israeli, eyes closed, is rocking gently back and forth, murmuring to himself in what Shadrach assumes is Hebrew. No prayers come to Shadrach’s lips. He can think only of the wild children, the organ-rot, the blank despondent faces along the Via Dolorosa, the posters of Mangu and Genghis Mao. This journey of his has been a failure. He has learned nothing, he has achieved nothing. He might as well get himself back to Ulan Bator tomorrow and face what must be faced. But the moment he articulates those thoughts, he rejects them. What of that sudden upwelling of optimism as he sipped tea with Bhishma Das? What of the moment of delight, of warm fellow-feeling, that he experienced on first hearing Meshach Yakov’s name? These two old men, the Hindu, the Jew, both so sturdy of soul, so patient and steady under the weight of the world catastrophe — has nothing of their strength rubbed off on him?