Chapter 1 (continued)

iii.

Joshua pushed the door and reached his arm up to his right absent-mindedly. He walked through the door, as if for the first time. His new clothing and his new status making him feel as a new person.

He would take it slower here. He was beginning to feel desparate. It was that desparation which had caused him to come on too strong before. He wouldn't make that mistake this time. He couldn't afford to make that mistake with the Jews. They may be his last hope.

A part of his mind still gnawed at his soul. What if? What if they had had it after all? What if he hadn't found it simply because of his approach?

He had to take a minute and push these doubts to the shelves where he stored the memories of each of his previous lives. Each time, the questions came back. And each time the questions were louder. It was like the person searching for the one lost key who, after returning the cushions to the couch, becomes consumed with the possibility that maybe he didn't search hard enough in all of the couche's crevices. But the more he gives in to this consumption, the more he allows his doubts to rule his destiny, the less likely he is to actually find what he seeks.

Joshua pledged to move forward and look in this spot until all possibility was exhausted. And then what? What if they didn't have it? What if the Jews had no more clue than the Jesuits? What did Columbus do when he realized that all of his life's work had never brought him to the place he sought?

Each dead end, each wrong turn had its cost. Joshua vowed never to accept a turn from which there were no further choices. He had given up too much, lost too much to end his search. Even if, in the end, it took his life too. He had to justify all of the other sacrifices.

But he had to pull his mind together. It was this sort of questioning that had lead him to ask too much of the Jesuits--to ask the questions before he had established the basis and the support. Now he had to form his network. He had to be a Jew first. Finding out what they knew could wait.

And Joshua sat on the right side of the temporary wall and waited for the voice of the man in black to begin the chanting. The chanting with that familiar but evasive melody and haunting tune, evocative of the generations of struggle, which Joshua thought a fitting symbol of the years of his own struggle.

And after the chanting, the wine and the dinner. That was the key. To find out what they knew, he merely needed to sit with the Jews and eat on a late Friday night or perhaps a Passover. After the wine, and a little more wine, and the meal seemingly without end, and yet just a little more wine, who knows? But not tonight. For tonight, focus on being, for the first time, Jewish.