The Book of Stone. Jonathan Papernick
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lawyer, the courtroom buzzed. “Is it not true Mr. Al-Bassam, a fervent Muslim, has three times made the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca—”
“The question is not relevant,” the prosecutor interjected.
Judge Stone flatly said, “Answer the question.”
Later, Brilliant’s lawyer said, “Mr. Al-Bassam left the Samarian town of Tulkarm in June of 1971. Local records show he had his daughter killed two years earlier in what is known as an honor killing—”
“Objection. The question is inflammatory and improper,” the prosecutor said.
“The question is allowed,” Judge Stone answered.
When Brilliant took the stand, he was unable to fully explain how the bloodstains on his shirt had come by self-defense, but when grilled by the prosecution he claimed he was attacked by a vicious Nasser Al-Bassam, whom he identified in a photograph as the man he had tried to stop from throwing a garbage can through a plate-glass window. Brilliant maintained that Al-Bassam had turned his fury on him.
“Considering the victim’s chronic epilepsy,” the prosecuting attorney replied, directing his comment toward the jury, “where convulsing seizures strike in moments of exertion and stress, it is unlikely, almost impossible to believe, that Mr. Al-Bassam, a very careful man who was in fact so impaired by his condition that he did not drive, was capable of posing a threat toward Mr. Brilliant. In addition, witnesses at the scene testified Mr. Al-Bassam was turned away from Mr. Brilliant when he received the deadly blow to the back of his head.”
Judge Stone commenced his charge to the jury after lunch. Quoting Gibbon, the Judge said, “‘In every deed of mischief he had a heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.’ Here we are absent the heart and the head, so I ask you, is there an act of mischief, a crime?” He spoke at length into the early evening, explaining the nuances and minutia of the law until the jury retired to deliberate. The jury reached a decision shortly before midnight. The press was confident Brilliant would be found guilty of murder. But instead he was found guilty of the lesser charge of aggravated assault and not guilty of murder. The headlines screamed the next morning: NOT SO BRILLIANT VERDICT.
Now, Stone puzzled over the words his father had underlined in Beecher’s book: “There is more moral power in one of these than in one hundred Bibles.” Stone was captivated by the quotation, the violence of it, the self-assurance of it, and he flipped through the pages to see if his father had marked anything else; he had not. The book was an old hardcover with crisp yellowed pages, bound in soft leather. He pressed his nose to the cover and breathed in deeply, the smell rich and luxurious and soothing. Something told him to open the book again, and he spread the pages wide before him on the floor, cracking the spine. It was a terrible sound, like a tiny bone breaking. He had destroyed something beautiful and it sickened him. Henry Ward Beecher smiled an inscrutable half smile from a black-and-white photograph on the book’s frontispiece. How could a simple photograph terrify? There was something haunting about those old daguerreotypes—the eyes especially—as if the subjects had already crossed over to the other side, even as their pictures were being taken. A surge of panic rose in Stone as he regarded the naked spine of the book. The cover lay limp on the floor like wings, grounded forever. The glue had dried out and cracked, and he brushed aside the amber bits of residue with his finger when he noticed something had fallen out of the binding and onto the floor. It looked like a small blank business card, but when Stone picked it up he realized it was a little envelope—something was inside. He pinched the envelope open and held it upside down, and a bank card embossed with Chase Manhattan Bank’s symbol clattered to the floor. The account number was printed across the laminate front of the card, above the name Walter Stone and the raised words THE ERETZ FUND. Underneath was the expiration date. The card would not expire for another four years. The card was practically brand-new, showing no damage or wear.
That magnetic force was close enough now to touch him, but when Stone turned around there was nothing, just a sort of abstract whisper guiding him, directing him toward a book about one of the former prime ministers of Israel. The book opened to a page on which a quotation was underlined in his father’s hand: “A man who goes forth to take the life of another man whom he does not know must believe one thing only—that by his act he will change the course of history.” Then, as if by instinct, he sifted through the pile, discarding the heavy biography of Moses Montefiore and Émile Zola’s J’accuse, his hand reaching for a book by his father’s friend Rabbi Avraham Grunhut. Stone flipped from page to page until he found this single sentence circled again and again and again, the ink on the page whirling like the eye of a tornado around the frightening words: “Nothing is more righteous than revenge administered at the right time and place.”
The card burned in Stone’s hand, heavy as a piece of iron. He knew this bank card was the vehicle for that revenge.
Was he crazy? He closed his eyes against the words his father had highlighted in these books. The room closed in on him, the walls pressing in. His father had brought all his intellectual power to bear to ensure Isaac Brilliant would get away with murder. Why would he risk his entire career, his reputation, so a Jewish man would not be found guilty of murdering an Arab man? And Demjanjuk, the accused prison guard from the Treblinka death camp—his father had been instrumental in sentencing him to death, only to have the judgment overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court. And who else had there been over the years? There had to be others, there had to be.
Stone had always assumed his father was a man of law and order, operating in good faith from the bench, acting as a moral and honest broker. But now, tearing off his father’s robe, Stone was beset by doubts. The card had been planted in the book for Stone to find, for him to complete his father’s work. But it was not right. He knew whatever it was he was tasked to do with that card involved terrible violence. Stone’s stomach lurched, but he had nothing inside himself to throw up. He began shouting at the books, railing at them, tossing them about the room. Why did he ever take those books, when he might have left them at his father’s apartment and been free of him forever? He had not slept in three days, had not left his room in six, and his head was a storm of confusion. Was he losing his mind? Was his exhausted brain making connections that did not exist, or had he reached some higher level of understanding? He knew he couldn’t stay in this room forever, and, casting around for an excuse to leave the fetid bedroom and his father’s books behind, Stone remembered he had an appointment the next day (or was it today, or yesterday?) with his father’s lawyer to discuss the Judge’s will. He stretched a trembling hand for the nearest book, something by Horace, and opened it to the middle pages, hoping to find something benign, meaningless. He read: “Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.”
“Who are you to say when wisdom is wisdom and when wisdom is not wisdom? You’ve been dead over two thousand years.” Stone laughed and laughed until his sides ached and he tumbled onto his mattress and into a dead sleep.
He slept for sixteen dreamless hours and awoke the following morning, cleansed of whatever madness had overtaken him the night before, with the bank card still clutched in his grip. He had found a bank card, that was all; nothing about that discovery constituted an obligation or marching orders of any kind. Dozens of books still lay tossed about the room; he gathered up the scattered books and stacked them back on top of the piles. The sun shone in through his windows, and Stone desired to be out in the fresh air. He found the lawyer’s card in his wallet and discovered his appointment was for that day—in two and a half hours. The homeboys from the Whitman Houses laughed on the pavement outside his window. The fact that joyous laughter still bloomed made him feel unaccountably hopeful. Stone decided he would walk the mile or so to Brooklyn Heights. He slipped the card into his pocket, ate some dry cereal while standing over the sink, and drank three glasses of water. He was prepared to handle whatever came his way. His mother had left a long handwritten note for him taped to the back of the front door, but he disregarded it and locked the door behind him.
ZOHAR WAS WAITING in the street for Stone. His suit was rumpled, tie knotted loosely at his neck, face unshaven—he looked as bad as Stone imagined he himself looked after his marathon tangle with the Judge’s books. “Good morning, Matthew,” Zohar said, approaching, a crushed Styrofoam