A Thousand Paces Along the Via Dolorosa

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Hornkastle said to the dapper young Israeli, “When they eat the mushroom, do they think they see God?”

“Far more than that. The mushroom is their god. When they eat it, they become one with Him: they become Him. It is the pure agapé,” Ben-Horin said, “the true Christian feast.”

Ben-Horin’s voice, light but firm, crisp and clipped, had a dizzying musical quality. A pounding began in Hornkastle’s forehead. Being with the Israeli made Hornkastle—a big man, some years older, nearly forty—feel thick and clumsy and slow. And what Ben-Horin was telling him about these Arab tribal rites stirred in him some mysterious hunger, some incomprehensible longing, that baffled and astounded him. He felt woozy. He suspected he might have had too much to drink. He looked up and across, out the big window of the hotel cocktail lounge. Off there to the west Jerusalem was awesome in the late afternoon sunlight. The domes of the two great mosques, one gold and one silver, glittered like globules of molten metal. Hornkastle closed his eyes and put his drink to his lips and said, “Take me to these people.”

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