“We left the house and …” I recalled the feeling I had had as I locked the front door, and I swallowed another lump of erupting anxiety. “We were heading out to the ruins.”
“What ruins?” Jean asked.
“In my time, this place is just a ruin, a pile of stones,” I said.
“Your time … do you believe you came from another time?” Jean asked haltingly.
“I know I did,” I said. I heard the stubborn petulance in my voice and almost burst into tears again. Brunette rested her snout on my thigh. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” I added in the steadiest tone I could muster. Jean nodded his head, but his gaze was directed toward the sunset.
“Never mind,” I said and continued—more for myself than for Jean. “We walked out of the neighborhood, over there”—I waved toward the south—“and we watched a flock of flamingos landing by the salt pools, and then we crossed the Narrow Passage and, after a while, sat down under one of those trees.” And now I pointed north. “Trees that one day will be there,” I added, after a moment of reflection. Jean said nothing, just looked out, eyes trained on the direction in which I pointed. “My husband lay down, which was unusual; he even closed his eyes, which was even more unusual, but I decided to keep walking. I heard strange music, like a distant guitar, and voices singing …”
I stopped speaking and contemplated it all over again. Was it Thibaut I’d heard playing the lute in my own time? I ran my fingers through my hair and continued. “I began thinking something was up, and then I smelled your hashish. I drew closer and saw you both, but neither of you noticed me. I went to drink from the spring—I’d never seen it before—and then there was a kind of explosion in my brain, and I felt as if I were drowning, and I fell backward. And when I opened my eyes, you were leaning over me.”
Jean was speechless. I scratched my forehead and rubbed my nose.
“It’s as if I’m describing a dream to a character in that very dream,” I said. He chuckled and looked at me appreciatively, as if I’d just said something truly clever. I felt an enormous sense of weakness. If I’d been alone, I would have curled up on the ground and closed my eyes.Perhaps if I fall asleep, I might wake up in my own time, I thought. I fantasized about taking a shower, changing my tampon and my sweaty clothes,removing my contacts. I fingered the coin dreamily between my fingers. It was getting chilly, but the coin around my neck remained warm. Almost hot.
“Did you really throw a coin like this into the spring a few minutes before I appeared?” I asked Jean.
He glanced at the coin, then took hold of it, and the necklace pulled tight against my neck; I felt a strange vibration. “Precisement,” he replied. “This is a coin from Beirut, minted by my noble father, may his soul rest in peace. I suggest you remove it from your person if you do not want to attract unnecessary attention. Not everyone here is a devoted follower of the house of Ibelin, and a copper dinar is an extraordinary ornament in these parts.”
“Are you from Beirut?” I asked in disbelief, removing the necklace and burying it deep in my backpack. “How’s that even possible? I thought all the Crusaders were French. Or English. German at most.”
I presumed Jean didn’t hear what I was saying or didn’t understand. He rubbed his face with the back of his hand. “This is all very peculiar.” He lifted his head and gazed up at the horizon. “Perchance I smoked too much hashish.”
I couldn’t resist laughing at this. “I ate too many mushrooms, and you smoked too much hashish, and here we are together, and there are eight hundred years between us.”
Jean lifted his head sharply. He was visibly flustered. “Eight hundred years?” he asked, lingering over each word. His eyes were like saucers, and for a moment I thought he believed me.
“I know it’s hard to wrap your brain around it, but I’ve got to prove to you I’m not insane.” I opened my purse, regretting that it closed with a button and not a zipper. “I know!” I called out in Hebrew and pulled out a ten-agorot coin that had fallen to the bottom of the purse, along with the dead phone and a handful of receipts and Post-it notes. It was the coin that Lily had asked me to look after.
A coin was something Jean could understand—indisputable proof I was from a different time. The date stamped on it was the Hebrew one, in Hebrew letters. It didn’t really help me. Nevertheless, I held the coin out to Jean, who examined it, turning it over and over, shaking his head in disbelief.
“What is the language of this inscription?” he asked, pointing at the golden coin. “Hebrew,” I answered, wondering how he would react. But he was clearly an educated man. “The language in which the Jews pray?” he asked, with a smirk. “This really is peculiar. Perhaps you erred and meant that you came from an earlier time?”
“This is a coin of the State of Israel,” I said in a loud, clear voice, hoping my serious tone might convince him. “The state established by the Jews in 1948.” I sighed. “That will be established,” I corrected myself.
“If I were you, my lady, I would not repeat those words in the company of others,” Jean said with a restrained smile. “If your purpose is to convince them of your sanity, I imagine you will achieve exactly the opposite effect.” He handed the coin back, and I stared at it with the same attention.
“Here, look at this,” I said and pointed to the inscription in Latin letters,ISRAEL. He took the coin back and examined it again and then looked at me, horrified.
“I beg you, my lady,” he said, and for the first time that day, I heard something other than confidence in his voice. “I do not want to believe you are a demon sent to drive me insane. You are too beautiful and refined to have been sent by the devil. Take this cursed object from me and allow me to gather my thoughts.” I retrieved the coin and slipped it into my pocket.He thinks I’m beautiful and refined, I hummed to myself with a sense of pleasure inappropriate for the occasion.
Despite what he had said earlier, Jean began busying himself with his satchel. He took out the clay hookah, a small pouch from which heremoved a lump of hash, and the strange utensil with which he produced a flame. He also took out a leather canteen and drank from it in large gulps.
I waited patiently while Jean lit the hookah and took a few hits. I was taken aback by the intimacy I felt when he held out the hookah and offered me the rest of the hash. We sat there without talking for a few more minutes, and I suppressed the urge to rest my head on his shoulder. We enjoyed the final rays of light before the sun disappeared over the horizon, and then we stood up.
“And so, Lady Édith, your husband is nowhere to be found, and there is no sign of him having been here in the vicinity for the past few hours,” Jean said. “Would you ride with me to the château and allow me to assist you further?”
“Yes, please,” I said in a whisper. The thought of visiting the mighty fortress aroused my curiosity and even a modicum of excitement; I hoped that if I could rest my head on a pillow, I might wake up where I belonged.
“Okay, just let me freshen up,” I said, walking over to the spring to wash my face again. I collected cold water in the palm of my hand and splashed it over my face. I certainly didn’t want people from the past to think I was a filthy junkie. I took out the ten-agorot coin again and looked at it. This was the coin Lily had claimed as her own and asked me to keep for her.My world still exists. I’m not crazy, I told myself. I hoped Jean wasn’t secretly planning on dragging me off to a medieval mental asylum. I took a peek at him. He was leaning over the saddle, murmuring something in the horse’s ear. Brunette shifted restlessly.
I took a deep breath and submerged my entire head in the spring. I felt a hard tug, as if someone was yanking me by the hair and dragging me into the spring. My hands shot forward instinctively, to counteract the tremendous pull. My right hand was clenching something that, I realized later, was the ten-agorot coin. I managed to raise my head out of the water for a moment, one hand resting on the muddy floor of the pool, and Icaught the expression on Jean’s face as it morphed from composure to astonishment. And then I was sucked into the little pool, which was just the right size for my body, as if a magnet were pulling me with unbelievable strength. I heard Brunette barking, and then everything disappeared.
A sense of drowning and then a sharp twist, like I’d dived into an exceptionally narrow pipe, and then my lungs miraculously drew in air.
I was spread-eagled on the ground among low star thistle bushes. I was flailing, kicking at the air, and flinging clods of earth all over the place. My fist was closed tightly over the ten-agorot coin. The spring had vanished. There was a tree close by, but its canopy was sparser and its trunk more slender. Beyond, the Carmel Mountains towered above me, and below, the eastern side of Atlit, the coastal road packed with cars speeding by.
