It was snowing furiously outside.

The elevation of Jerusalem is 800 meters and it is sometimes subject to heavy snowfall, which brings the life of the city to a halt. Things must have been the same even 3000 years ago when King David established his capital here. From the hospital room, one could see Mount Herzl and its dark forest, the trees now snow covered. The branches were probably bending under the weight.

Daniel Bar-Sela lay in bed attached to life support equipment by several tubes, drowsing most of the time except for the early morning.  Although he could not move his limbs, he was still able, with some effort, to think. His blank eyes went past the trees and wandered around the empty skies beyond the city buried in the falling snow.  He was recalling a scene he had witnessed many years before, one that appeared time and time again in the depths of his heart.

Following the Israeli War of Independence, Jerusalem was divided and for 19 years, the Old City, as part of Jordan, was closed to Jews. Then, with Israel’s victory in the Six-Day war, East Jerusalem, including the Old City, became Israeli territory. Jews were able to enter the walled city; Daniel went there for the first time in his life.

The big building faced the Via Dolorosa, the path where Christ is said to have walked carrying the heavy cross on his shoulder on the way to his crucifixion. As Daniel walked through the building’s high-ceilinged stone corridors, he felt pleasantly cool, as if the scorching midsummer heat outside were no more than a dream. He went up to the roof top above the fourth floor and was amazed at how closely the roofs of the stone houses were packed together, with here and there small round roofs floating, like bubbles, among the flat ones. Jerusalem was like a huge caldron full of thick boiling porridge and the little round roofs were like foam thrown up from the simmering pot. It looked like if you leaped from roof to roof, you could arrive in one bound at the Dome of the Rock with its round roof shining golden above a hexagonal wall.

Viewing the scene of the solidly packed roofs, the idea that the history of three religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam—that shared even the same scriptures and yet had repeatedly cycled through war and co-existence was layered underneath there seized him and a deep emotion welled up in him. Everybody who lives here inherits the city’s history.  Were not the Arabs and we Jews like brothers? The building that Daniel entered had originally been built as a hospice for Christian pilgrims who came from Europe. There were innumerable lodgings like it in Jerusalem’s Old City and now tourists could stay there too. This place had at one time been a hospital but when one passed through the high stone wall that enclosed the lodging, one found tables under the trees and a café where one could eat Viennese pastries, a little Europe set within the Muslim quarter of the Old City.  Directly in front of the building was a coffee shop run by Arabs, and diagonally across from it directly beneath this building’s stone wall was a food cart selling kebabs. The smoke rising from the kebabs as they broiled to a turn wafted over the wall along with a cheerful voice inviting customers to partake.

Daniel left the building and strolled around, inhaling with his whole body the chaos and confusion of the walled city, whose narrow alleys ran every which way like a maze, and the atmosphere of the souk where everything was so mingled as to be indistinguishable. At the end of a dark alley, in a place like a cave carved out of stone, that looked several hundred, no, several thousand years old, there was a barbershop, a vegetable store, even a video game center. Ordinary daily life went on even within the walls of the Old City. And it was the same daily life for both the Arabs and the Jews. They are here, he thought, and we are here. So we have to live together as neighbors, side by side. …

During his army service Daniel had been sent to the Golan Heights base during the height of the conflict with Syria. The enemy had had many more tanks and so when Daniel’s unit came under a surprise attack, it was decimated. Daniel and his close friend Moshe were wounded but survived and were saved by the support unit. It was almost a miracle that they did not become prisoners of war.

To suddenly be put on the front lines with no experience of a real war must have been too much for him psychologically. When he returned from the battlefield he could only remember what had happened as if it were a hallucination, and his personality underwent a profound change. In this country where everyone tried to get ahead of everyone else and speaking loudly was normal behavior, he had always been on the reserved side, but now he became even more so. He always seemed to be moody or absent-minded. His wife suspected that he had PTSD, the psychological syndrome returned soldiers were prone to, but he adamantly refused to see a psychiatrist. He himself may not have known what the problem was….. He just became more and more uncommunicative.

After a year, his wife took the children and left. He managed to support himself by working at a shipping company but aside from that, he did not leave the house. He often awoke from nightmares covered in sweat. After several years, his wife filed for divorce and Daniel mutely signed the papers he received from her lawyer. To his wife, it seemed he had completely lost interest in her or in any kind of relationship with the outside world.   

“If he had collapsed in his own home he might have died before being discovered”, said the doctor who met his ex-wife when she rushed to the hospital. Daniel had been increasingly absent from work without notice, spending most of his days at home but it so happened that he had gone to get some things at the super market and suddenly had a stroke. A bystander and a shop clerk had called an ambulance at once and his life had been saved but he was left with paralysis on his right side. His speech too was impaired and he had so much difficulty in pronouncing words that he could hardly talk.

If that was all, he might have had a chance of recovering half of his previous functioning through rehabilitation training. However, detailed examination revealed that his internal organs were dysfunctional in several places. His ex-wife explained that it must be due to his crazy life style after returning from war—drinking, smoking, eating at irregular times, and severe insomnia.

The doctor nodded in bemusement and said, “It sounds like he was trying to kill himself.”  As if to herself, the wife said, “He must have lost his desire to live.”

Three months passed and Daniel was still in the intensive care unit.

His ex-wife had moved to a town outside Jerusalem after the divorce. Even though they were no longer married, she wanted to look after him as much as she could but besides the distance there was her job and she could not go to the hospital as often as she wanted. She explained the situation to one of Daniel’s high school classmates who lived near him and apologetically asked him to help. Fortunately, he responded positively and every day after work came to the hospital and did what he could for Daniel. Not that there was much to do for him as long as Daniel remained in the intensive care unit.  After another five months, Daniel was moved to another room on the same intensive care floor. It was not that his need for sophisticated medical machines and intensive care had diminished. The explanation was that the measure was taken because another patient in need of emergency care had been admitted. Daniel was still attached to the same tubes.      

Daniel’s classmate, thinking that it might be good to give him some stimulation, asked if there were not anyone he wanted to see, but Daniel shook his head in negation almost as though he was annoyed. The classmate attributed his mood to the stroke, so did not take Daniel’s glum attitude personally. He kept coming faithfully.

Shortly thereafter he asked about the medical diagnosis and the doctor told him that even leaving aside the after-effects of the stroke, the damaged internal organs were not responding well to treatment and there was little hope of a turn for the better.

The classmate, hoping it was not too late, without asking the sick man’s permission, revealed to those he could reach that Daniel might be nearing his end. Almost everyone came as soon as they could except for one person. This was Moshe, the friend who had been with him in the army during the battle on the Golan Heights. Daniel’s classmate knew that the two had been close friends since high school. Moshe, who worked  in the IT industry, was often abroad on business trips , and when the classmate contacted him by cell phone he happened to be in New York. He asked him to be sure to visit the hospital when he was back in Israel. Moshe said he would be back in a week and would do so. But he did not turn up.

Daniel’s condition worsened. and his classmate begged Moshe to come.   Moshe said he would, yet there was something uncertain in his voice. According to Daniel’s ex-wife, even after he had cut himself off from everyone, he had often gone out to meet Moshe. But  since his hospitalization Moshe had slipped out of his life completely. 

After three days in this deteriorated condition, Daniel Bar-Sela breathed his last. He left no will or note for anyone.

Mid-summer in Jerusalem. Daniel was to be laid to rest in a cemetery on the slopes of the Mount of Olives which looked out over the Temple Mount or Haram esh-Arif that was home to the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque. A Jewish cemetery from ancient times, it was desolate, with fallen gravestones piled up in the corners. The grave site had been bought by Daniel’s great-grandfather during the British Mandate but later, for the nineteen years after the War of Independence when Jerusalem was divided, Jews had not been allowed to go there and during that time it had fallen to ruin.

The car which brought the body from the hospital slowly climbed the steep slope from the foot of the Mount of Olives and stopped at the side entrance to the cemetery. Two male undertakers who were waiting raised the white bag which held the body on their shoulders. Daniel’s ex-wife and his two children, the classmate who had cared for him, and a rabbi followed behind. Just as the burial prayers were about to begin, Moshe unexpectedly turned up. Panting heavily, as though he had run up the steep slope, he said “Shalom,” in a faint voice and with downcast eyes joined the ring of mourners.

When each had placed a small stone on the earth,  heaping them on the grave, the funeral was over. The rabbi immediately turned to go and as if in pursuit of him, the ex-wife followed hastily rushing her children. It seemed as if she wanted to depart.  Only the classmate and Moshe were left. For some time they stood looking down at the grave in a daze, then slowly descended the slope side by side. To the classmate, Moshe seemed to be lacking in vitality, due perhaps to exhaustion. His bloodshot eyes told of sleepless nights. 

As though searching words, Moshe at last managed to wring out, “I…I wasn’t able to…come…”    Then his face contorted and he broke down in tears.  “Hearing that he was tied up to a lot of tubes in the ICU…how could I…no, no!” 

The classmate waited in silent sympathy for the other man’s sobs to subside. Then Moshe as if spitting out the words of a curse, spoke.

“In that war, we waited a long time between exchanges of gunfire…It was our first real battle, and we were incredibly tense and afraid as we waited. To get through the fear…we talked and talked…we talked about everything.”

In the piercing sunlight their white shirts were stuck to their bodies with sweat.

“It was a fierce battle…I thought it was all over with me…”  Moshe’s voice, growing fainter, almost disappeared, and then he recovered and went on.

    “…Fighting in a war like that would change anyone…what else can you expect! Look at me, turning into a workaholic who spends his whole life flying around the world…If I’m not at work, I’m so anxious I can’t stand it.”

Without realizing it, they had reached the foot of the Mount of Olives and were almost at the entrance of the Garden of Gethsemane, now full of tourists. 

“In the middle of battle, we made a promise…to each other. “Moshe hesitated to go on, as though he had placed his hand on a box of secrets which was not meant to be opened.

The classmate glanced at his face and prompted him, asking,  “A promise? What kind?”

Their snippets of conversation were lost amid the loud voices and laughter of the American tourists who stood around in front of the church, oblivious to their surroundings. The place where Jesus, suffering the agony of his crucifixion, said, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” and where his disciples betrayed him, was full of an inappropriate bustle.

As if to resist that atmosphere, Moshe slowly opened his mouth.   “..if one of us was…fatally wounded…then the other would finish him off…help him to die without suffering…”

The classmate unconsciously stood still in his tracks. Staring intently at Moshe, he asked, as if to be sure, “…Did you mean to keep that promise even when you were back in the everyday world?…”

In a faint voice that seemed to well up from the bowels of the earth, Moshe managed to reply.   “…Of course I did! If I had taken out the tubes…I would have kept my promise.”

Slipping past the two as they stood there, a new group of tourists noisily entered the Garden of Gethsemane.

**********************

From a collection of short stories, Erusalemu no Hiai, published in Japanese by Mokuseisha Publishing House in Matsumoto, Japan. Translated by the author from Japanese with the help of Na’ava Ades.

 

Yasuko Murata was born in Tokyo in 1945.  After spending one year in Israel just following the Six Day War as a volunteer in Kibbutz Gal Ed, she worked as a free-lance translator (English to Japanese) in Japan.  Ms. Murata holds a bachelor’s degree in Western Philosophy and did her postgraduate studies in English Literature at Tokyo Metropolitan University. She taught English literature at two universities in Japan and was a fellow at The Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (2001-2002).  Translated publications of Hebrew literature include: mikhael sheli, kfusah shkhorah and How to Cure a Fanatic by Amos Oz; Yehuda Amichai’s poems (shirei yerushalaim) and Amos Elon’s Jerusalem.