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		Malachi spent the year after his pediatric residency in an East African village. Such One-ness, he said to Michal during their courtship—such a sense of community in that meagre settlement. There was also a lot of dope and dancing. “And awful diseases,” he said. “Bilharzia, it comes from the fluke, a parasitic worm…” “Tell me.” “You don’t want to know.” “I do! Everything you know, everything you’ve seen.” So he gave her what she wanted, told her the particulars caused by the fluke—yellowing sclera, blood gushing from mouth, nose, anus; the victim’s exhaustion after the parasite’s carnival. She almost retched. His arm slid around her shoulders. “Usually we saved the patients.” She kissed him. She seized any opportunity to kiss him, any excuse, not that she needed an excuse, but still. Malachi published three papers on his return from Africa—one on Bilharzia and another on Kwarshkior and a third on the hallucinogenic properties of a certain bark; and in the ten years since that time he had kept current with maladies of tropical countries, though their incidence in his Boston clinic was zero. And now the law of unintended consequences picked him up in its careless chops. The International Congress on Third World Pediatric Diseases, three weeks before its quadrennial conference, lost one of its Parasite Discussants to disabling sciatica. The chairman gave Malachi a call on a Sunday evening. After a few minutes Malachi thrust his thumb into his other ear: listen in on the bedroom extension, the gesture said. The conference was to be in Israel, Michal heard: in Jerusalem. The child in her womb uncurled with eagerness. Don’t you put on airs, she warned—a three-month fetus doesn’t stir; this is me! As a teenager she had spent the requisite semester on a kibbutz, picking mangoes. Her pale arms and legs broke out in magenta splotches. But Jerusalem: golden stone; tiny pink cyclamens; and, on Shabbat, Moroccan families, bursting out of their finery like sweet figs…. “And my wife’s fare and expenses?” Malachi was asking. “If you would be kind enough to substitute at this last moment…yes,” said the voice. “Thank you so much. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Michal danced into the living room. Malachi met her merry gaze with one of caution. “You can’t say no!” she cried. “I said I’d consider.” “Last chance till the baby’s in high school! And you’re due so much time at work. And I’m in the safe trimester.” Malachi regarded her steadily. “My father,” she said, as if in echo, as if he had said “Your father,” or even “Our father”; and then he did say, “The dear man. But we can’t prevent another stroke by staying home.” When at last she smiled again he said, “Okay. Let’s do it. First real vacation since Paris.” They had honeymooned in a rented apartment in Montmartre. Michal’s thighs shuddered whenever she thought of the four flights of stairs and that glimpse of Sacre Coeur and the glances that many women and some men too sent Malachi’s way. Il est à moi, she’d say silently, chin raised: all six feet two of him, every square inch of eggplant skin. No one however beautiful however chic would entice him away. Hers. Now she sat down on the arm of his chair. “I hope you don’t get hooked by an Orthodox cult,” envisioning his towering blackness topped by a hat with a wide fur brim. “I’d be quite a catch, an atheist brother.” “The oddest people get revelations. My second-cousin Josh, his brain has never even been located; then one day he’s a follower of some Rebbe in Brooklyn. Now he reads the holy books day and night.” “I will be in mortal danger,” said Malachi gravely. “Don’t take your eyes off me.” When did she ever take her eyes off him? Sometimes, when the hospital phoned, he was already asleep, his snore like lapping water. The telephone was set to its lowest ring; but at its almost soundless spasm his sure hand reached for the instrument. “Dr. Wethers,” he’d say, and swing out of bed, already fully awake. He’d listen, and talk, the receiver clamped between jaw and shoulder; meanwhile he’d dress himself in the clean clothing always left on a nearby chair. He’d switch the receiver when necessary to the other jaw and shoulder. He’d put right foot and then left against the night table, and tie his shoes. “Ten minutes,” he’d promise, and hang up, and stride into the bathroom and urinate without closing the door, and wash his hands. Then a second’s pause next to her side of the bed, and a low “Michal” by way of good-bye—very low, she might be sleeping. Sleeping? Not on your life. “Malachi,” she’d say immediately, so as not to delay him. His fingers touched her cheek; he was gone; diving into a river of little sick folks to make one of them well, or to hold the hand of a terrified parent. They gave themselves a farewell party and invited their numerous and disparate friends, all glad to see each other because they saw each other only here. “Maybe we’re the center of a wheel,” Michal suggested afterwards, something to say. “Wheel, nothing. A few spokes, no rim.” She hid her distress in the clatter of cleaning up. Wasn’t running a hospital clinic enough for him? How much connection did he want? Il est à moi! Both mothers called to say good-bye. Malachi’s mother sounded solemn as always. “I’ll pray for your safe return,” as if the airlines required her intercession as a boarding pass. Michal’s mother said, “Dad’s stabilized,” lightly. “And communicating very well, at least with me.” The second stroke had left him without speech. Then they were off, Malachi and Michal, lapsed Baptist and indifferent Jew, flying to the Holy Land. In Jerusalem they stayed in a guest house with a view of the Old City. Malachi was busy during the days; but in the late afternoons, hand in hand, they went forth. They walked along the pungent Jaffa Road. They stood at the Wall. They followed Franciscan monks re-enacting the Stations of the Cross. “You’d look terrific in one of those robes,” Michal told Malachi; but he was reading a tablet and didn’t answer. Then: “This is where he fell,” he murmured; and she asked Who, thinking of the kids with injuries from backflips; trampolines should be outlawed; he wrote letters to that effect. “Christ,” he said. One evening at dusk they fetched up at an Orthodox neighborhood. Malachi was wearing knee-length shorts and Michal a loose sleeveless dress. They knew their garb was disrespectful, so they stood at the gates, watching some little girls manage to play despite elaborate clothing. And the women—so many of them expecting this year’s baby, pushing last year’s in a worn-out stroller. How stupefying, Michal said to herself; and then, what a shock: How satisfying, Herself retorted. The annual birth, the yearly round of holidays, the days steadied by prayer and feeding, feeding and prayer. Ten years ago on a fall evening she and two New York girls from the kibbutz had wandered through this same neighborhood during the festival of Succoth. Families, singing and eating, crowded onto little balconies draped with garlands of squash and grapes. Michal’s friends stopped wisecracking; they were familiar with this melodious passion. Michal found herself regretting the bland practices of her parents’ prairie synagogue. Sometime during that fragrant night Michal had lost an earring that had been her great-grandmother’s—a bit of Russian gold. Now a woman in a snood walked through the gates, trailed by half a dozen children. “Jack Kack Lack Mack Nack Pack,” said Malachi. Michal smiled, to please him, to acknowledge his innocence: he had never walked under those balconies on a holiday night; and he had never seen the brownish photograph of Great Grandma Bessie, shirtwaist puffed over bosom, at each earlobe a soft glow. At a cocktail party on the last night of the conference Michal met the group of pediatricians and scientists who had been thrown together and now must fly apart. One was a stunner, from Belgium…but she was preoccupied with her next grant. The following day Malachi and Michal drove in a rented car to Tiberias. “God’s country,” one of their Boston friends had exulted. “No, no, a figure of speech, I’m not talking about religion. But the Galilee—Lake Winnipesaukee doesn’t hold a candle to it.” The inn he recommended turned out to be a fortress of basalt bricks. They walked through a deep arched entrance; and the place revealed its treasures: flowers in a tub, a dry carved fountain, a tangled garden sloping down to the Lake. Malachi dropped Michal’s hand and moved forward until he was outlined against the sapphire of the water. He looked at home anywhere, she quickly reminded herself: in the clinic’s waiting room, on a Fifth Avenue bus, even in the Cineplex: taller than everybody, blacker than everybody, handsomer than everybody, citizen of the world, but il est à moi… “Where are you going?” He turned. “I’m not going anywhere.” Their unadorned room had two narrow beds. Malachi would have to push them together as soon as the young woman handing them keys had gone back to the reception desk. No telephone? “Oh, we take the call and come up.” “In the middle of the night? My father, back in the States…” “It rings in the manager’s bedroom. He’ll find you.” Michal turned to Malachi. But he had wandered from their cell into a large common room, one wall entirely windows, all flung outwards towards the Lake. People on wicker chairs were chatting softly. Michal joined her husband. His inky gaze met hers for a moment, then returned to the water. “These people are pilgrims,” she said urgently. “Yep. So?” “We don’t belong with them.” “Honey,” he said absently; then slid his arm around her. “They won’t eat us up.” And he was right; over the next few days Michal and Malachi were gently welcomed by the other guests—Swedes, Germans, three elderly British secretaries. All together they explored the Christian shrines. They dined on St. Peter’s fish at lakeside restaurants. They saw the Jordan thundering at its dam. “But there’s a place not far from here where they do baptisms,” said an Englishwoman. “There the river is as mild as milk.” They visited scrubbed Greek basilicas and rough Byzantine ones and an Italian church with the Beatitudes in stained glass surrounding the cupola. Blessed are the poor in spirit… Blessed are the meek… Each window had a bird or two. “Jack Kack Lack…” Michal began. But Malachi didn’t smile. Saint Francis at Capernaum raised stone arms, sinking an invisible ball in an invisible basket. This time she kept her mouth shut. At Tabgha the mosaics were charming, she supposed, two birds fighting over a worm, whimsy always made her sick. She saw Malachi enter a meditation room. His lowered lids reminded her of his mother at Sunday service, swaying with closed eyes between her tolerant son and her curious daughter-in-law. One afternoon they all went out on a cruise of the Galilee. A few fishing boats plied the waters. “Sardines, that’s the crop today,” said one of the Germans with a shrug. “There’s a factory near the dam.” “The apostles caught big fish,” intoned a Swede, sounding like the parson he was. “Very big fish: men.” At the next to last breakfast their plain-faced companions proposed a trip to the place of the Gadarene swine. “No,” said Michal. “Thank you,” she thought to add. “Tired?” said Malachi. “I’ll go, okay?” looking at his plate. “Okay,” looking at hers. She sat in the garden. Birds sang. A warm breeze delivered the tonic aroma of eucalyptus. She would be glad to go home, she confided to the book on her lap, to the baby under her heart. This country sweated holiness, nothing to do with Malachi and Michal Wethers, but still… A maid rushed through a side gate. “Missus Wethers! The telephone…” Oh her father, her dear father. She ran from the garden. But it was not her father, and not a stroke; it was Malachi’s mother: a heart attack. She was alive, said Malachi’s brother. “But will you come home as soon as you can?” Michal called the airline. Its policy of compassion allowed them to switch tickets from tomorrow to tonight. She packed. Malachi returned, heard the news, became stone. But he ate his lunch and carried their suitcases down to the car. Michal paid the bill and then stood in the deep archway, watching. He was wearing those knee-length shorts. He looked like a bewildered boy as he tried to stuff the suitcases small ones first into the trunk; he had to take them all out and do it right. He got into the driver’s seat. She got in beside him. The two-lane highway followed the river. Past Malachi’s profile, past the cars on the other side of the road, Michal spotted a crosshatch of reeds. A glimpse of water. A yellow…bus? He swerved leftwards across the road. “Mal!” He nuzzled the car into the little space next to the bus. “Let’s just see what’s happening here.” “The airport…” “Plenty of time,” as if speaking to a child. At this place the Jordan bulged slightly; the cove it made had an apron of sand. A party of barefoot black people stood on the sand, each one overweight; they might have been a dieters’ convention. They were not briefcased suburbans or streetmen in dreadlocks or city moms followed by Jack Kack Lack Mack Nack Pack. They were not Malachi’s people and they were not Michal’s. The men wore pants and shirts, the women dresses; and some were wet and some dry; and among them was a woman in a white robe. She held another white robe over her arm like an attendant at a spa. A man taller than the rest stood hip-deep in the water. He too wore a white robe. Malachi lowered himself easily onto the moist earth at the edge of the sand. Michal kneeled, then sat, then folded her legs sideways, then planted one palm on the earth, arm rigid, chin on shoulder—the picture of discomfort, she figured. But Malachi wasn’t noticing. The garbed woman helped one of the dry participants into the spare robe and led him into the water. “… baptize you in the name of the Lord,” called the big man in a soupy baritone for which he was no doubt esteemed. The people on the shore sang: I am bound for the promised land. I am bound for the promised land. O who will come and go with me? I am bound for the promised land! They’d had voice training, Michal judged; or at least practice. They knew how to sing together. The preacher and his assistant immersed the parishioner. The people on the shore sang again, full-voiced, strong in their exclusiveness. The assistant and the parishioner waded out of the water. The parishioner was triumphantly embraced. One after another the members were baptized. The rest kept singing. They sang the same verse again and again, and when each newly wetted person returned to the group, the song rang fuller, as if the river were a restorative bath, though it was probably sour with bacteria, perhaps even home to the fluke… Dark skin shone, white teeth flashed. Michal’s great-aunt had once reminisced about the minstrel shows she’d enjoyed during her privileged Kentucky girlhood. Where were those banjos now? Michal would have welcomed theatricality, humility, the exuberance of African dancers high on tree-bark…anything but this confident faith, this One-ness. She wished herself back under the balconies on the eve of Succoth, where the songs were in another language and shadows made the participants look secretive, even furtive… The last congregant emerged from the Jordan. The assistant wrung out the garment and then twisted it some more. The preacher strode out of the water. He raised a hand in greeting, and stood still. Malachi raised a hand and sat still. Stillness, stillness; and yet it was as if the first man had flung a rope and the second caught it. “Brother,” the preacher rumbled at last. Malachi stood up. “Michal,” he said in that low voice she knew, the voice of the summoned. He slipped out of his sandals, he was walking, he was walking fast, he was running towards the preacher, he was running away from her. I am bound for the promised land. The preacher’s assistant wrapped Malachi in the robe. I am bound for the promised land. The three entered the water. Her strong man! hunched under the lapping waves. O who will come and go with me? I am bound for the promised land! Dripping, he waded towards the shore. Michal noted dully that she too was now on her feet. She stepped forwards, once, twice. Then she stopped and gazed at Malachi across the narrow beach. His brown legs looked like tree trunks below his white robe. He might have been coming out of the shower on a Sunday morning, glistening. Some Sundays, from the bed, she gasped with such ardor that he took off the robe and they started all over again. The congregation embraced him, one by one by one. She watched, pregnant and abandoned, the old story. Il est à moi, she thought, but without conviction. He was landed. Oh, sure, Dr. and Mrs. Wethers would return home outwardly unchanged. But these drenched folks by the river would always stand waiting to claim him; just as, she supposed, that crowd in skullcaps, patient as centuries, would sing to her forever from the courtyard under whose dust her great-grandmother’s earring continued to glow.
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