A Long Way to Shiloh

A Long Way to Shiloh Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: A Long Way to Shiloh Read Online Free PDF
Author: Lionel Davidson
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Thrillers
the Law or the Prophets – anything with light-shedding properties in a religious context.’
    ‘This one needed four men to carry it.’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘Together with its auxiliary equipment.’
    ‘H’m.’
    ‘Any further ideas?’
    ‘Not on one drink. You don’t get performance and economy.’
    Uri got up and poured me another.
    ‘Why has the light got to be metaphorical?’ Agrot said.
    ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘What sheds light physically?’
    ‘A lamp?’
    ‘Bravo.’
    I looked at him. ‘You’re not supposing, I hope,’ I said slowly, ‘ the lamp?’
    ‘Well. It would be quite a turn, wouldn’t it?’
    ‘Quite a turn.’ He seemed perfectly serious about it. I said, ‘Have you got a date for this?’
    ‘A very accurate one. March of 67.’
    ‘Then the lamp couldn’t have remained in darkness very long, could it?’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ Agrot said. ‘Tell me why.’
    He was leaning back, nose a little to the east, smiling gently.
    He didn’t need me to tell him why. He would know why, rather better than I. The lamp, the great seven-branched lamp, the Menorah, has been the symbol of Judaism for some thousands of years; of his own State, Israel, for the past fifteen or so. The Roman conqueror Titus took the lamp when he destroyed the Temple in August of 70. A representation of it is still to be seen on his Triumphal Arch in Rome; a group of Romans carry the massive gold object through the Roman streets in the triumphal procession. The procession was witnessed by the historian Flavius Josephus who recorded it in the finest detail. If Agrot had a date of 67 for the lamp, and Titus took it in 70, then it couldn’t, as I said, have remained in darkness very long.
    ‘Because Titus took it,’ I said.
    ‘We wonder if he did.’
    ‘He took the lamp.’
    ‘He certainly took a lamp,’ Agrot said.
    I said, ‘Ah, h’m,’ and lit a cigarette.
    Apart possibly from the True Cross and the True Shroud, the True Menorah has attracted a larger corpus of fairy tale and legend than any other artifact in history. Its design and dimensions were of course as specified by God to Moses – in history’s earliest As-Told-To, the Pentateuch – and as subsequently installed in the Temple by Solomon. With such sponsors, the devout have always accorded it magical properties, including inviolability. I’d never heard that Agrot was particularly devout and he didn’t strike me as much of a one for fairy tales. I looked at him through the cigarette smoke. He was still smiling gently.
    ‘What’s bothering you?’ he said.
    ‘What you’d expect to be bothering me.’
    ‘All right, look at it this way. Given the idea that a copy might have been made at some time – and after all, it’s a very old idea, much older than Titus – you’d expect somebody to have had a try at making one then. The times were very dangerous .’
    ‘Right.’
    ‘And therefore for someone to bury the original.’
    ‘And therefore for someone else to whip it as soon as they found where it was.’
    ‘Ah,’ Agrot said. ‘I see what’s bothering you. Quite so. The point here is that we don’t think anybody ever did find where it was. We think there is a good possibility it is still where it was put.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Well. There are reasons,’ Agrot said. ‘But to find out, you’ll have to come to Israel.’
    It suddenly occurred to me that if I hadn’t been brought here to listen to this load of fable-type cock I might by now be in bed with Lady Longlegs. Would the chance ever recur?
    ‘You look worried,’ Agrot said.
    ‘He has a number of problems,’ Uri said.
    I said, ‘Yes. You see, Professor Agrot, although of course I’d like to –’
    ‘I hear that you are now a professor yourself.’
    ‘Quite. And I have to get this department going. It’s a new university and I have to get –’
    ‘Dr Silberstein will get the books,’ Uri said.
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘Dr Silberstein. The doyen of all book-getters. Dr Silberstein will get the
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