Acts of Faith

  He turned toward Deborah and touched her gently on the shoulder.

  “Are you nervous?” he whispered.

  “Why should I be?” she asked, trying to be nonchalant.

  “A rabbi’s daughter must have led a very sheltered life.”

  She looked at him for a moment, and then conceded, “You’re right. I feel sort of … uncomfortable with you. Besides, didn’t you yourself say that kibbutzniks are like brothers and sisters?”

  “Yes, that’s true,” he said softly. “But I didn’t grow up with you. To me, you’re attractive as a woman.”

  Though Avi was unaware of their significance, his words struck her like lightning. In the nearly twenty years of her lifetime she had been variously referred to as a girl, a shayne maidel, and a sweet young thing—but never as a woman. And what was more astonishing, she felt like one.

  She welcomed Avi’s arm around her shoulder and tried to enjoy his kiss, but she was worried that he might try to go too far.

  Yet it was his questions that became too intimate.

  “Why did your parents send you to Israel?”

  She hesitated, then replied unconvincingly, “The usual reasons.”

  “No, Deborah,” he said firmly. “I’ve lived on this kibbutz long enough to tell a volunteer from an exile. Were you involved with someone?”

  She lowered her head.

  “And they didn’t like him?”

  This time, she nodded in the affirmative.

  “Did it work?” Avi asked quietly.

  “What?”

  “Did the separation cure you?”

  “I wasn’t sick,” she answered pointedly.

  Avi was silent for a moment and then asked, “And are you still involved with him? I mean, in your heart?”

  Her feelings had been pent up for so long that she wanted to shout: He’s the only person in the world who’s loved me for myself.

  Yet the voice that answered Avi was barely audible. “I think so … yes.”

  His questions followed with a delicate persistence. “Do you write to each other?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t have his address.”

  “Does he have yours?”

  Again, she shook her head.

  A look of hope—or was it relief?—crossed Avi’s face.

  “Then it’s just a question of time,” he murmured. “Sooner or later, when you’ve mourned enough, you’ll be free.”

  She shrugged. “I suppose so.”

  He held her by the shoulders, whispering, “And when you are, I hope I’ll be right there.”

  Then, trying to raise her mood, he said jauntily, “I’d better get you home. I’m due back at the base by six.”

  As the motor revved, he shifted the gears and drove back to the road and into the parking lot.

  “How are you going to get there?” she asked, as they walked to her new srif.

  “I’ll hitchhike, how else?”

  “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “No,” he joked. “Thumbing a ride here is perfectly safe. It’s only when you get in with an Israeli driver that you risk your life.”

  He squeezed her hand, kissed her on the cheek, turned, and headed down the gravel road, finally vanishing into the shadows.

  Deborah stood there and watched him, suddenly having seen through his bravado and discovered the sensitivity it tried to camouflage—the constant fear of living a mere sixty-second scramble from mortality.

  She only wished with all her heart that she could like him enough to forget Timothy.

  27

  Timothy

  Tim’s plane landed in the early morning at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport, where a bus was waiting to transport the five seminarians through the ocher hills of Umbria to Perugia.

  As they entered the city, Father Devlin expounded on the remnants of numerous cultures standing side by side—Etruscan, Roman, Carolingian, Early and Late Renaissance—reminding them that though civilizations rise and fall, the Faith abides forever.

  “And perhaps most significant of all,” Father Devlin waxed floridly, “Perugia is the home of the only sensual delight that isn’t a mortal sin. I mean, of course, their chocolate.”

  The bus pulled up at the Ospizio San Cristoforo—only blocks from the eighteenth-century Palazzo Gallenga, the Italian University for Foreigners.

  During their first few days in Perugia, Tim began to wonder if their group was not being deliberately subjected to an ordeal, some trial to measure their resistance to temptation.

  Although the university arranged for special classes that included only seminarians, and half a dozen full-fledged priests who were being transferred to the Vatican from other countries, outside the classroom there was no way of concealing other students from the celibates’ view.

  Perugia in summer was a lodestone for American college girls, all vying for the maximum of masculine attention by wearing the minimum of clothing. They were there learning Italian, not as a foreign language, but as a Romance language.

  “I can’t believe it,” remarked Patrick Grady, a member of Tim’s group, shaking his head in bewilderment. “I’ve never seen girls like this in my life. I could never be a priest in this diocese.”

  They were walking back to the Ospizio for lunch, stifling in their cassocks, as a pair of Texan nymphs in the flimsiest of summer attire wafted across their path.

  Grady’s eyes bulged.

  “Stay loose, Pat,” Timothy remarked. “The strain will be over in a few more weeks.”

  “Do you mean you’re actually impervious to all this, Hogan? How do you do it?”

  Tim pretended not to understand, but Grady persisted.

  “Look, we’re normal men. In my hometown, most of the guys our age are already married—and just about all of them have lost their virginity in the back seat of a car. You can’t make me believe that you don’t at least—you know—sometimes … relieve your tensions.”

  Tim merely shrugged. How could he tell a fellow seminarian that he had thoughts far more passionate than his and hence was indifferent to the local temptations?

  At mealtimes, each of them took turns saying grace and vied with one another in the sophistication and length of their prayers.

  Tim was no match for the articulate Martin O’Connor, whose benedictions were often so long, it took several coughs from Father Devlin to remind him that the tagliatelle were growing cold.

  Since there were no afternoon classes till the language labs at four, most of them had adopted the local practice of taking a postprandial siesta.

  While the others slept, Tim would sit in a shady corner of the cortile, diligently memorizing the Italian irregular verbs.

  One torrid July afternoon, as he was mastering the principal parts of rispóndere, out of the corner of his eye Tim noticed George Cavanagh walking furtively through the portico toward their rooms, a look of anxiety on his face.

  “Are you all right, George?” Tim called out.

  Cavanagh pulled up short, and then immediately demanded, “What makes you think anything’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” Tim answered ingenuously. “You seem distracted. Maybe it’s just the heat.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Cavanagh allowed, walking toward him. “It’s like a broiler out there.”

  He sat down, withdrew a cigarette, lit up, and inhaled deeply.

  Tim sensed that Cavanagh wanted to confide in someone.

  “Want to talk about it, George?” he offered.

  After another moment’s hesitation, Cavanagh said softly, “I don’t know how I’m even going to be able to confess this.”

  “Come on,” Tim reassured him. “Whatever it is will be forgiven.”

  “Yeah, but not forgotten,” George murmured in pain. He looked at Tim with a pleading glance. “You promise you won’t tell a soul?”

  “Yeah, I swear.”

  Cavanagh blurted out—albeit still in a whisper—“I’ve been with a woman, a prostitute.”

 
“What?”

  “I’ve had sexual intercourse. Now do you see why I can’t confess?”

  “Look,” Tim said, “you’re not the first to give in to temptation. Think of St. Augustine. I know you’ll find the courage—”

  “But that’s just it,” Cavanagh agonized. “I’ll never find the strength to keep away.”

  He put his head in his hands and rubbed his forehead in despair. “I guess you despise me for this, huh?”

  “I don’t make moral judgments,” Tim responded. “Just don’t surrender, George. Have a talk with your Spiritual Director and work out your feelings.”

  The anguished seminarian looked up into the innocent eyes of his classmate and muttered, “Thanks.”

  “Carissimi studenti, il nostro corso è finito. Spero che abbiate imparato non solo a parlare l’italiano ma anche ad asaporare la musicalità di nostra lingua.”

  The course had ended. Tim and his classmates rose to affirm, with their applause, that they had learned not only to speak Italian but also, as their professor had put it, to savor its music.

  That afternoon as four of the five seminarians hauled their luggage to the back of the minibus, Father Devlin congratulated them effusively.

  George Cavanagh was not there. For reasons he had confided only to Father Devlin, he was spending the weekend in nearby Assisi.

  When apprised of this conspicuous display of devoutness, Martin O’Connor muttered audibly, “Showoff.”

  In Rome, they were in for a surprise.

  The special summer courses at the North American College still had three weeks to run. And, since they could not yet be properly housed, the members of Tim’s elite American group were offered the option of either spending the time on retreat in a monastery in the Dolomites, or—for the more adventurous—joining a group of young seminarians from Germany and Switzerland on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

  The group was led by Father Johannes Bauer, a pious old man with a slight stammer and a complete ignorance of any language but German and Latin—which sounded identical when he spoke them.

  Once again, Tim saw divine intervention in this undreamed-of opportunity. He quickly signed up for the tour, regretting only that George Cavanagh and Patrick Grady elected to do likewise. Ever since their intimate conversation in the Ospizio courtyard earlier that summer, George had been discernibly cool to him.

  Tim had hoped that during these three weeks at least he would have been able to escape the saturnine glances of his classmate.

  The moment George learned the group would be divided into pairs for lodging, he teamed up with Patrick, leaving Tim cast adrift on an untranslatable sea of German with a red-cheeked Bavarian named Christoph.

  Yet in their very first half hour together on the plane, Tim and Christoph discovered that they could indeed communicate. Timothy had not forgotten his Brooklyn Yiddish, a language largely derived from medieval High German. When he suggested that their ability to converse would make the tour a gryse fargenign, Christoph smiled.

  “Ja, ein sehr grosses Vergnügen.” In either language, a mutually comprehensible pleasure.

  It was late evening when they reached Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport, where Israeli Immigration officers questioned them to be certain their motives in visiting Israel were sacred and not subversive.

  One of the seminarians lost his temper.

  “You’re only doing this to us because we’re German,

  An officer—a dark-haired woman in her late twenties—replied sweetly, “Ja.”

  Timothy and Christoph were the very last to be interrogated. Paradoxically, the fact that the blond-haired American seminarian spoke Hebrew made him even more suspect than any of the Germans. But once the senior Duty Officer had elicited from Timothy that he had begun his career as a “Shabbes goy” and could quote verbatim from the Old Testament, he broke into an effusive welcome, and as a token of friendship, offered him half his bar of Elite chocolate.

  “Baruch ha-ba,” he remarked. “Blessed be your arrival.”

  Then the two young men grabbed their suitcases and started out into the heavy August night toward the bus, where the rest of the group was waiting with growing impatience.

  Their energetic Israeli driver whisked them to Jerusalem at what seemed the same speed as the plane they had flown. As they passed the Judaean hills and were approaching the city itself, Timothy—unlike the others—was not gazing out the window.

  Instead, with the help of a small flashlight, he was studying a map of the Holy City he had picked up while waiting in line at the airport, trying to memorize the route between Terra Sancta College, the Franciscan hostel where they would be lodging, and the YMCA on King David Street.

  Yet, when the bus actually turned the final corner and he saw “Welcome to Jerusalem” illuminated in flowers on a bed of grass, his soul stirred. Looking out at the city of a stone so white it could even be seen in darkness, he whispered to himself, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: They shall prosper that love thee.”

  As he carried his bag into his tiny room, Tim overheard through the wall the irritated voices of George and Patrick.

  “This may be the only chance I get to see the Holy Land, and if you think I’m going to waste it with a guide who can’t speak a word of English, you’re crazy.”

  “I agree, Cavanagh. But what can we do about it?”

  “Why don’t we just tell Father Bauer the truth?” George suggested. “We’re grown men. I’ve got four guidebooks in English. Maybe he’ll give us permission to travel on our own.”

  “Good idea,” Grady replied. “Let’s just pray he allows us to go.”

  Timothy said an inward amen.

  To his great relief, Tim’s classmates did not invite him along when they petitioned the German leader next morning. From their smiling faces as they sat down to breakfast, he could see that the request had been granted.

  Now it was his turn.

  In Tim’s case, however, Father Bauer was more reluctant.

  “But there are so many inscriptions in Greek and Hebrew you could help us translate,” he protested in a German Tim could comprehend with great difficulty.

  “That’s just it,” Tim pleaded in Latin. “I’d really like to spend some extra time in the places where Our Lord preached—especially in Capernaum.”

  “How could I deny such an admirable request,” Father Bauer conceded. “Very well. Placet. Anyway, you have our itinerary, so you can rejoin us at any time you wish. Can I count on you to be back here by six P.M. precisely on fifteenth September?”

  “Absolutely,” Tim replied.

  “Then off you go,” Father Bauer smiled. “Join your American friends, and breathe deeply of the Holy Land.”

  Tim could barely constrain his joy as he turned to leave, rationalizing to himself that he had not actually lied to Father Bauer.

  The German had not specified which American friends.

  His first stop was the mail desk at the YMCA, where he inquired diffidently, “How long do you keep letters here if they’re not picked up?”

  “Forever,” the clerk replied. “My boss is crazy. We’ve still got stuff from the fifties that’s turned completely yellow.”

  Feeling his spine grow cold, Timothy asked, “Is there anything for Timothy Hogan?”

  “I’ll see,” the clerk replied, picking up a brown carton labeled H and beginning to search. Finally, he looked up and said, “Sorry, nothing for Hogan.”

  Tim could barely breathe. He had only one slender hope. “Could I ask—is there anything for ‘Deborah Luria’?”

  The clerk riffled through the pile of L’s and replied, “Sorry. Nothing under that name either.”

  “Does that mean she might have picked up the letter?” Timothy asked with growing excitement.

  Bemused by his anxiety, the young man smiled.

  “That’s a pretty logical conclusion to make.”

  Tim dashed out of the building, down the wide front steps, along the cypress-lined path to
ward the Central Bus Station.

  He soared on wings of hope.

  Even before he had left Italy, Timothy had done sufficient research to know not only where Deborah’s kibbutz was located, but what number bus would get him there from Jerusalem.

  During the last tension-filled days in Rome, he had hoarded his pocket money to have more to spend on the journey.

  Now his sacrifice was rewarded. For at eleven-forty that morning, he boarded a bus for Tiberias—one that would drop him within walking distance of kibbutz Kfar Ha-Sharon.

  As they sped along, the driver’s voice on the loudspeaker called their attention to scenes of the most dramatic events of the Bible.

  Under ordinary circumstances, Timothy would have stared awestruck as the driver remarked: “On your right you can see ancient Bethany, the home of the sisters Mary and Martha, where Jesus raised their brother Lazarus from the dead.” Instead, he spent most of the time gazing out the window with unfocused eyes. He was in a kind of hypnotic state, yet was not so numb that he could not feel the ache of fear. How would Deborah react? After all, she had read his letter and not left an answer.

  Somewhere near Afula, Tim saw a road sign indicating Nazareth to the left.

  How could he not feel moved?

  Could his feelings for Deborah be even stronger than his love for Christ?

  28

  Deborah

  “Deborah … Deborah!”

  She was busy working in the fields when one of the ten-year-old boys came running toward her, shouting.

  “Be careful, Motti,” she warned. “We’re not growing mashed potatoes here.”

  She wiped her brow with a handkerchief already grimy from a morning’s sweat.

  “Deborah,” the boy cried once again, “Boaz wants to see you.”

  She straightened up and answered, “We break for lunch in half an hour. Can’t it wait?”

  “He told me ‘right away.’ ”

  Deborah sighed, stabbed her fork into a mound of earth, and began trudging toward the kibbutz headquarters.

  Halfway up the hill, a thought struck her. Could someone in her family be sick—or worse? She grew apprehensive. Boaz would not call her from the field for something trivial. It had to be bad news.