The Ascent of Eli Israel Read Free Page B

Rosa, protect him in all of his two-hundred and forty-eight organs against danger and the two-edged sword. Help him, deliver him, save him . . .” He felt the man’s soft hand sliding against him and electricity buzzing down all the knuckles of his spine and out into his rib cage. “Vanquish and bring low those who rise against him. May all who seek his harm be destroyed, humbled, smashed so that not a limb remains whole . . .” He felt a fire in his legs and arms now, burning through his veins and arteries, a white fire cleansing his very soul. “Save him, deliver him from all sorcery, from wicked men, from sudden death. Grant him grace, and love and mercy before the throne of God and before all beings who behold him.” The old man let go of Pirkl’s arm, and his eyes snapped open. He continued to chant, his stinking pink mouth an open wound, “Yah Yah Yah Yau Yau Yau Yah Zebaot. Amen Amen Amen.” And all at once the electricity was gone and Pirkl felt his body shiver as if he had exploded. The man again broke into a sepulchral laugh and Pirkl noticed the man had wet his pants. He felt damp in his own pants. He had been tricked by a madman.
    â€œPirkl, Pirkl, beautiful boy,” the man cackled, taking the amulet back into his long bony hands. “Pirkl, Pirkl.”
    He walked away laughing, and Pirkl grabbed him by the shoulder not concerned anymore that the old man might crumble into dust.
    â€œWhy did you touch me?”
    â€œFor luck,” the old man said. “For luck.”
    â€œI don’t need luck,” Pirkl said, sickened and angry.
    â€œYou want to die as a lamb?”
    â€œI’m not going to die.”
    â€œChild, you exaggerate your own importance. Death is in the air.” And with that, he raised his nose to the sky, sniffing, his nose hairs waving like tiny spider’s legs.
    â€œCome with me,” he said, sliding a finger into his toothless mouth.
    Then Pirkl said a word so foul that he had never said it aloud before. The old man’s face dropped and he began to shuffle away.
    â€œIf you must go,” he said, color rising to his pallid face, “enter through the small door, my little dung beetle.”
    When Pirkl reached the barricade, he removed the bayonets from his heavy satchel, throwing them on the ground in disgust. He was sticky and felt something dripping down his leg and wiped it up with the gauze his mother had given him to ward off sniper fire. Through a peephole, he could see a park where he once played, strewn with barbed wire and rough cement blocks. He didn’t smell death in the air, only burned gunpowder and dust. His father, the best person in the whole world, was only a few hundred meters away, inside that stony prison. Pirkl felt tears surge up from his belly and he wanted to run to him as fast as his legs could carry him.
    Though it was still early morning, a white sun made the whole world look like an overexposed photograph. Pirkl removed his wool cap, and standing on top of his own small shadow, peered through the peephole again. The Old City. “I can dribble a football that far,” he thought. “Kick it right through Jaffa Gate.”
    Pirkl made a bet with himself as he walked along the barricade that he would not be spotted moving across noman’s-land. He was simply too small to be of any consideration, too much a part of the landscape to be noticed. With the satchel humped up on his back, covered with dust, he might be mistaken for a camel.
    He found a breach in the barrier and slipped through, scraping his arm on a bracelet of barbed wire, and began walking toward the flames and pounding shells. “This is easy,” he thought, heading toward the well-fortified Jaffa Gate. He had just begun whistling “Song of the Barricades” when he heard a bullet ricochet past him, then another. Pirkl could not see where the marksman was shooting from, but dove facefirst onto the