Vigil by Robert Masello Page A

was little. ”
    “Oh,” Carter said, “sorry. How about if I tell him to tiptoe?”

NINE
    All day long he had encountered nothing but resistance, interference, and meddling. Why, Ezra wondered, couldn’t they just leave him alone, stay out of his way and let him do the work that he, and he alone, had been destined to do?
    It had started at Dr. Neumann’s office where, the moment he sat down, he noticed the telltale letterhead of Dr. Herschel Stern, his psychiatrist in Jerusalem, on a batch of papers in her lap. So, she’d been in touch with him, after all. He knew what was coming even before she mentioned the words Jerusalem syndrome.
    “I’m sure you’ve heard of it,” she said. “In fact, I believe Dr. Stern discussed it with you?”
    “He might have.”
    She pressed on. “It’s an affliction that befalls certain people—evangelicals, religious laypeople, scholars like yourself—who come to the Holy Land and become overwhelmed by it. They are so absorbed, so moved, so changed by the experience that they become, to some extent, delusional. In the most extreme cases, they become convinced that they are, for instance, the Messiah.”
    “Yes, I’m aware of the syndrome,” Ezra replied, “and no, I am not suffering from it. Trust me, I know I am not the Messiah, Moses, or the Angel of Death.”
    “I’m only mentioning it as a preface,” Dr. Neumann replied. “There are other kinds of disturbances”—she uttered that last word, Ezra noted, with the same caution with which she’d used delusional a moment ago—“that can also crop up there. It’s very fertile ground, very potent, and Dr. Stern has written me and told me a little bit about your work in Israel. I must say, it’s no wonder you began to feel a certain strain.”
    “Did the good doctor also inform you of the difficulties I got into? With the authorities?” Ezra had no particular desire to go into it himself, but he felt he might as well find out exactly how much she knew.
    Dr. Neumann paused, as if she wasn’t sure how much of her hand she should show yet.
    “The Dome of the Rock?” Ezra prompted her.
    “Yes,” she finally admitted.
    Ah, so he’d told her that, too.
    The Dome of the Rock, the holy Muslim shrine, erected above the ruins of the Second Temple. That was the key. Ezra had read the scrolls, and he knew what they were saying. No one else ever had, no one else had ever put it all together. He knew that if he could burrow, unobstructed, into the foundations below the dome, he could find there the most holy relic in all the universe. In fact, he’d almost succeeded. He’d found the subterranean tunnel; he’d seen the clay tablet sealing the aperture; and he had heard, in the chamber within, the sound of all the winds in the world.
    The rumbling groan of a living, breathing God.
    The sound of Creation itself.
    But it was then, before he could get any closer, that the Israeli security agents had grabbed hold of his ankles and dragged him out.
    It was a sound that still sometimes filled his ears.
    “I’m concerned that your work here, the work you’re doing in New York, is tied to the work you were pursuing there. Some of the things you said at the time of your arrest”—and here she’d stopped to put on her reading glasses and refer to her notes—“are powerful, and troubling. ‘I’ve communed with angels.’ ‘Creation can be unlocked. ’ ‘I can show you the face of God.’” She took off her glasses and looked at him. “You’re a very intelligent man, Ezra, so I need hardly point out to you the nature of these comments—the self-aggrandizement, the epochal content and context, the messianic fervor. What do we do with those thoughts and those emotions? And even more to the point, do you still feel them?”
    How was he supposed to answer that? On the one hand, he could lie, and keep Dr. Neumann where he wanted her—acting as his psychiatric parole officer, guaranteeing any authorities who asked after him