Jerusalem Syndrome

“The Jerusalem Syndrome is a temporary state of sudden and intense religious delusions, brought on while visiting or living in Jerusalem . . . The most interesting feature, considering the extreme behaviors associated with the Jerusalem Syndrome, is that the subjects sometimes have no prior history of psychiatric difficulty and exhibit none afterward. These patients, if they recover, are typically embarrassed by their behavior, which they cannot explain.”

–   Society of Biblical Literature

All things considered, the Old City hasn’t changed much over the years, thought Mike. True, the donkeys had disappeared from the narrow, winding streets, but the streets were the same. Same ancient, pitted walls, same sidewalks that were little more than a half-hearted reminder of what once were cobblestones. Some people grumbled about the two-cylinder motorbikes and half-pint mini-trucks that had replaced the donkeys and that now whizzed through the perpetual jaywalk thunderstorm, armored only with profanity. But, for Mike’s money, they were an improvement. Some of those donkeys had been able to get up to a pretty fair clip, and all of them had stunk of ass.

“This is never going to work,” Gabe said.

“You know that’s my line,” Mike said. He took another swig of beer. That was another thing they had in the Old City these days: ice. Ice cold drinks. Mike would never get tired of that shit. He remembered the days when the coldest thing you could find in a Jerusalem summer was your own sweat.

Gabe walked next to Mike, stepping quietly but confidently ahead when the crowd forced them into single file. Even after a week in the Old City, his face was clean-shaven; Mike had begun to let his scruff grow out. The two wore near-matching t-shirts and canvas shorts; Mike’s backpack--American-bulky, but old and dust-washed--was somewhere between student and tourist. Gabe’s backpack was Swiss, and almost offensively clean. Gabe always did like to play the goody-two-shoes.

“This is how it always goes,” Mike continued. “First, I say it’s never gonna work, and then you say, of course it will, and then I say, it didn’t work the last fifty times, and then you say maybe this time is different, and then we try it, and it doesn’t work, and then two months later the boss has us out here once more, trying it again. And so, I repeat, it’s never gonna work.”

“Yeah, I know. We’ve had this discussion before. And, this time, I agree with you.” Gabe said.

“So . . . does that mean I won the argument?” Mike said.

Gabe didn’t answer. Mike took a bite of his falafel. Best falafel in the city, he always said. But every time he ate it he was playing Russian Roulette with his bowels. Because even though the falafel was fucking delicious, three times out of ten it gave him shil shul, which is to say explosive diarrhea with a side-order of Jewish guilt for having eaten the damn thing in the first place. And yet more guilt for having been away from Jerusalem so long that he’d lost his iron stomach. Usually Mike didn’t dare indulge. But today, he was feeling lucky.

“You didn’t win,” Gabe said, waiting for Mike to finish chewing the last morsels before replying. Gabe didn’t want to encourage Mike’s bad habit of speaking with his mouth full. He was like that.

“But I’m always the one who says it isn’t going to work. And it never works. And now you’re saying it too. Looks like winning to me.” Mike took a victory gulp of his beer.

“No. That’s not it.” Gabe spoke deliberately enough that if Mike hadn’t known him, he definitely would have taken offense.

“You are always coming up with crazy schemes about how to make it work. I’m just saying--it’s not going to happen. We should still do it anyway.”

“Well, why in Hell should we do it if it’s not gonna work?” Mike scrambled to juggle his beer and falafel, freeing up his right hand to hold onto the stone handrail as they went up the narrow city stairs. In front of him, Gabe’s Tevas went up and down, up and down, his legs like a marching centurion’s. Gabe was always in such fucking good shape, Mike thought, trying to control his panting. “We should really go back to the office and tell the boss to come up with something else,” he said.

“Tell the boss to do something else?” Gabe laughed. “Like what?”

Mike polished off the falafel and balled up the aluminum foil it came in. Then he began wiping his lips and fingertips with the napkin Gabe handed to him.

“You ever heard of Twitter? He could get a Twitter, start, uh, tweeting.” Mike gripped his beer in his mouth and mimed the double-thumb texting gesture, as all around him kids were doing a really good job of demonstrating the act by getting so distracted that they ran into walls. Walls that hadn’t moved for longer than their native language had been spoken. To tell the truth, though, Mike was nearly as hopeless with technology as Gabe was; he just got along better with new culture.

“I don’t think the boss is going to like Twitter,” Gabe said, displaying a bit more familiarity with the subject than, frankly, Mike had expected. And, denied the opportunity to lecture Gabe about modernity--the only opportunity he ever got to turn the tables on their dynamic--Mike resorted to sarcasm.

“No, I guess ‘Ancient of Days’ isn’t really their demographic.”

They moved through the city in relative silence. Even the aggressive beggars who inhabited the next corner did not trouble them. Which was good, because if they had, Gabe would have stopped and given them something, and then Mike would have had to drag him out of there by the elbow before the beggar realized exactly what Gabe was handing out. Somehow Gabe’s entire collection of loose change moved with him from garment to garment, and some of it was quite, quite old. Which normally wasn’t a problem, but sometimes there was A Scene, and very occasionally there was An Archeologist, or, Heaven forefend, A Classical Numismatist--

Mike broke off his whizzing counterfactual and downshifted back into the conversation. “At least he could give us something to take with us on these little shepherd-herding expeditions.” He took another mouthful of his beer. Just about one more swallow left, Mike thought, sadly eyeing the bottle.

“What help did you have in mind?” Gabe asked. He stopped at a crosswalk as a Porsche ground through, doing about four kilometers an hour. That always cracked Mike up; spoke to a sort of fundamental populism in his spirit. It didn’t matter how earth-shatteringly rich you were. Once you got to the old city, it was faster to simply walk. Mike raised his beer towards Gabe and wiggled it incrementally; Gabe declined with a headshake just as incremental. Mike knew he would, but politeness was important. He drained the beer himself and began looking around for a place to dump it.

“I’ve come up with a hundred ideas and I’ve told you over a thousand times,” Mike said, as they crossed the street.

Gabe shrugged. “I didn’t listen. I thought the regular plan was going to work.” Mike finally found a garbage can that wasn’t too overflowing, and neatly dropped his tinfoil in, followed directly by his beer bottle. The can was next to an overhang, where a medieval shop had extruded its second story out onto the street. Without speaking, they crossed into the shady area underneath, and leaned against the refreshingly cool wall.

“Well, like I said, it’s not gonna work,” Mike said. He felt bad, pressing the point that Gabe had conceded, but just getting to say that without immediate contradiction brought a thrill of victory.

Gabe nodded. “I agree. Do you have a better idea?”

“He should send us with, I dunno. A trillion-digit prime number. A cancer cure. A proof that P equals NP.”

“First off, if the boss had a cancer cure he’d send it. You know he doesn’t hold onto stuff like that.”

“No really? Remember the last time he was around here, healing lepers right and left? And there wasn’t a full treatment until, what, two thousand years later?”

“Just because the boss can heal leprosy doesn’t mean he’s got a leprosy cure written down on a cheat sheet somewhere. He’s a doer.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“‘Yeah.’ And for all that math stuff, they’d just lock the guy up anyway and then figure he was some sort of psychotic savant.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“I mean, even I don’t know what that last one is, the pee-en-pee thing.”

“Then the big cheese definitely doesn’t. He’s not really a thinker.”

“Hey. Don’t talk about the boss like that.”

“What? I mean, he’s a good guy. The good guy. Best boss I ever had. But you know what I mean. You said it yourself. He’s a doer. Not really a thinker. Doesn’t sit down and puzzle out problems. And why would you, when you’re as powerful as he is?”

Gabe stood up from the wall and began to lead the way over to the hotel, and instinctively Mike fell in behind him.

“Still, we could come up with something! We shouldn’t keep going in empty handed.”

“We are not empty handed. We have the trumpets.”

“The trumpets don’t count.”

“The trumpets always used to work. With the shepherds. And that guy in the winepress.” Gabe had reached the front door of the hotel, but the doorman sitting in a wicker chair with his cap tipped down over his eyes didn’t notice, so Gabe reached out and held the door open for Mike, and followed him inside.

“Because it was more brass than those poor bastards had ever seen in their lives! Now you step into a hotel lobby and it’s all brass doors and brass doorknobs and brass faucets and even brass buttons,” Mike said, with an expansive gesture around the shabby--but yes, brass-furnished--hotel lobby. “It didn’t use to be like that.”

“It’s not just the brass. We play the trumpets. It’s impressive.” Gabe led the way over to the elevator.

“It used to be impressive. Last guy, remember, we’re standing in his room, and he’s snoring on the bed, and he’s got those little headphones in, and his iPod is playing, what, Ride of the Valkyries? Can you do Wagner? Cause I can’t play Wagner.”

“Mike, you know that’s not the point. In any case, he was impressed.”

“Yeah, well, we appeared in his bedroom. And, you know, the robes and such. We tend to be impressive.”

“Exactly. Impressing is not our problem.” The elevator button was, as Mike had promised, brass, though scuffed and scratched with age. Gabe pushed it. The lights above spelled out fifteen, and the elevator always took forever in this place. Still, Mike liked it better than the alternatives.

“No, the problem is we keep being sent off to impress the wrong guys.”

“What do you mean? At this point, the boss is sending us off to pick anyone who meets his criteria. And he’s gotten more lenient about it, too. Remember back in the middle ages?”

“Barely. What was it? Circumcised, of the line of David, born abroad--”

“Born in Israel, raised abroad.”

“Right. Uhm, coming to Jerusalem for the first time, twenty-seven to thirty-three years old, pilgrim, virgin, life spent in religious contemplation, no pre-existing psychosis, what else . . .”

“No tattoos.”

“Right. I’m so glad he gave up on the tattoo and foreskin things. I was sick and tired of strip-searching tourists.”

“Pilgrims. They were pilgrims then.”

“They were damnable tourists and they knew it, too.”

“You get too cynical, Mike.”

“Yeah. I dunno. I just--we shouldn’t be looking for any of that stupid stuff. We should be looking for a leader. Churchill. Remember Churchill?”

“I remember.”

“We should have gotten Churchill.”

“You’re not serious.”

“I kinda am, though. We’ve been doing this for a thousand years, and what have we got to show for it? Nothing much. Churchill got stuff done.”

“Churchill was the antichrist.”

“I know, but--”

“You know what happens if we pick someone who plays for the other team, too.”

“I know, and I have no desire for the end of the world. But, Hell, Gabe! They pick four, five guys each generation and who do they have? Every world leader worth speaking of, ever! What do we get? Tourists in togas.”

“We don’t make these choices. We’re just sent.” The doors to the elevator finally dragged open and a boisterous American family tumbled out--mom, dad, three kids, all talking at once, all in matching cargo shorts and barely-distinct t-shirts. Gabe and Mike ducked to the side, and then swept around them into the elevator. Gabe hit the button--twelfth floor--and the elevator began its slow and occasionally creaking ascent.

“For some poor schmuck who just has to be of the line of David. There are millions of them now, you know, and they don’t know it. Lots are of the line of Genghis Khan, too. But of course he was playing for the other team, wasn’t he. You can tell because he got shit done and then died happy.”

“Mike, you don’t just sound cynical. You sound bitter. What’s wrong?”

“I guess I’m just sorry for this poor bastard. I mean, we walk in, we wake him up, tell him to put on his sheet as a robe, wash his hands, and proclaim the word of God, and he’s so spun around he actually does it. And what does he get for his trouble? A nice long stay in a padded room and a story he has to convince himself he doesn’t actually believe.”

“Mike, it’s always been like this. Prophets never volunteer. They’re just called.”

They rode in silence, the only sound the regular beep of the elevator. Gabe spoke first, gently.

“Do you think Abe and Mo really had it any better?”

“No, I guess not. At least these guys get to go home.”

“And they have air conditioning, too.”

“As I live and breathe, Gabriel, was that a joke?”

Gabe smiled a soft smile. He didn’t share it often. Mike could count the ones he remembered on his hands, but it never failed to cheer him up. With a smile like Gabe’s in the universe, somebody was getting something right. Somewhere, anyway. And why not here, tonight?

“Shall we?” Gabe asked. Mike nodded. Gabe opened the door--it had been locked, not that it mattered to him--and stepped inside. Mike followed, and it closed behind them. He pulled their robes out of his backpack and handed one to Gabe. They glowed in the darkness, pearlescent and gold. Gabe shrugged his on, letting his wings billow out from his back at the same time, like a minor moonrise in the dark hotel room. Mike coughed a little to clear his throat. His wings fluttered out embarrassedly; they blew gum wrappers around the floor in little whirlwinds.

Gabe raised the trumpet to his lips and blew, three clear, perfect notes, which, to be honest, were a lot prettier than even Wagner. The man on the bed shot up, and Mike stepped toward him, robes billowing and wings flashing, his voice a clarion cry, “Hail, oh mighty prophet--”

END

Author’s Biography

Louis Evans had an extremely normal time in the Holy City of Peace. He lives and works in NYC. His prior fiction has appeared in Nature: Futures, Analog SF&F, Interzone, and more. Louis is a recent graduate of the Clarion West writing workshop. He's online at evanslouis.com and on twitter @louisevanswrite.