23

Eli Beckman is one of those coffee people. Coffee with him is a religious experience. He orders his beans from a wholesaler in California and stores them in the sort of expensive, tiny refrigerator with the glass door most people use for wine. He grinds his own beans, of course, in a Rube Goldberg contraption on his spotless granite countertop in his massive commercial kitchen, then lovingly concocts his brew in another machine that cost, I’m positive, at least twice as much as my pickup.

Since he is such a coffee snob, he won’t drink the coffee at commercial coffee houses. He insists it’s not oily enough. As though oiliness in a beverage is somehow a desirable feature. In fact, there is only one place in the entire city of Dallas where Eli Beckman will drink the coffee. So I parked my truck in front of the good rabbi’s house in North Dallas, knowing there was no tea in my future. I’d been invited for coffee. Coffee was what I would get.

Rwanda A, Gikongoro Bufcafe was on the menu that day.

Eli handed me the empty bag and pointed at the label as I settled in on a barstool.

“This is one of the finest coffees in the world,” he said reverently. “It’s grown by Rwandan farmers at an elevation of between fifty-five hundred and sixty-two hundred feet, give or take. Small farms, small harvest. Gikongoro is the name of the wet mill where the coffee fruit is removed from the bean. It has a low-acid taste, compared with, say, a Kenyan AA, which is a high-acid bean. High acid is a compliment in coffee, but I think this Rwandan is lovely. Just lovely.”

“And Bufcafe?” I asked, studying the label. “What does that mean? It’s, like, buff? Does it work out? Lift weights? What?”

“The exporter, Dylan. That’s the name of the exporter.” He tsked. “What you know about coffee—”

“I drink tea.”

“—could pass through the eye of a needle.”

He poured me a cup and placed it in front of me as though he were offering me his firstborn.

“Cream and sugar?” I asked.

He glared at me. I smiled sweetly at him until he scooted the sugar bowl in my general direction and then opened up his Sub-Zero and handed me a carton of 2 percent.

I doctored my coffee, sniffed it and tasted it, rolling it around in my mouth like I’d learned in a wine-tasting class once. I waited a moment before I pronounced my verdict.

“It tastes like coffee.”

Eli shook his head again and began to gesture wildly with his hands.

“What’s the matter with you? Can’t you taste the fruit tones?”

He closed his eyes as if in worship and took a delicate sip of his nonsugared, noncreamed coffee. “I’m getting banana, chocolate, honey, flowers…a hint of raisin. The mouthfeel is supple, smooth. The finish, resonant but gentle.”

“You’re mentally diseased,” I said. “It tastes like coffee.”

“And you have the palate of a chimpanzee.”

“Rwandan or Kenyan?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “And what can I do for you, my friend? Since your palate cannot be salvaged? You have some sort of Hebrew emergency, you said?”

“That’s exactly it. A Hebrew emergency.”

“Who knew such a thing was possible?” he said, clearly delighted. “All my years in Hebrew school, for just such an occasion!”

I spread out my notes from Drew’s room.

“What do you want to know about Lot and his daughters?” he asked, glancing at my papers.

“Is that what it says?” I peered at the figures I’d copied from Drew’s headboard.

“Your Hebrew—” he began.

“Is like my palate. I know. Don’t make fun of me.”

“Two years of Hebrew and she doesn’t know the word for daughter.”

“Tell me what it says, Eli.”

He ran his finger along the words.

“It says ‘daughter of Lot, lost and little.’” He looked up at me. “A pun. In English, not in Hebrew.”

“I don’t get it.”

“A little versus a lot.”

“Clever. What else does it say?”

“‘The Nephilim return.’”

“What’s that? Nephilim?”

“Genesis 6. Half-breed humans.”

“Come again?”

“I thought you went to seminary.”

“Shut up and tell me what it means.”

He held up a finger, signaling me to be patient—not my best thing—and left the room, returning a moment later with a small stack of books. He set them down and flipped one open, running his finger right to left, lovingly following the lines of Hebrew characters, searching.

“Ah!” he said. He read it first in Hebrew, which of course did me absolutely no good. And then quoted, “‘The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men of old, men of renown.’”

He looked up.

“You’re looking at me as though you’ve answered my question,” I said.

“Weren’t you listening?”

“I-don’t-know-what-it-means.” I drew it out slowly, punching each word.

“I thought you went to seminary,” he said again.

I glared at him and picked up my spoon to put more sugar into my coffee.

He waved his hands at me. “Okay, okay. Stop that.”

I put the spoon down.

“The Nephilim,” he began, “were a mysterious race of beings, pre-flood. The passage, as you can see, seems to indicate that they were some sort of half-blood race.”

“Half what and half what?”

“Sons of God—the Hebrew word there is ben eloheem—which in the Greek Septuagint—I hope you at least remember that—is translated angelos.”

“Angels.”

“Yes. Angels. But fallen ones, judging from the passage.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The phrase ‘went in to the daughters of men,’ this is a phrase of some…force, you might say. The indication in Hebrew is that this was not a consensual act. In fact,” he pointed to the page and I leaned in to look at the word, “the very word Nephilim is from the verb naphal, meaning to fall—often associated with violence, or translated ‘to overthrow or fall upon.’”

“You mean rape?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Demons, then? That’s what it means? That demons raped human women and the resulting race was this…Nephilim bunch?”

“That’s the scuttlebutt.”

“That’s so bizarre. How come I don’t remember this? I mean, this is the sort of event that makes an impression—something a person should point out if you were studying Genesis 6.”

“Either you weren’t paying attention or your professor skipped right over it. That’s the traditional method for teaching this passage.”

“What? Skipping it?”

He nodded. “This is one we like to keep in our pockets.”

“Why?”

“Because nobody really knows what it means. It’s one verse. An obscure reference. And the implications…shall we say, my friend Dylan, they’re rather far-reaching, don’t you think? If it’s true?”

“Are these people still walking around?” I asked, thinking of course of Peter Terry.

“Don’t you remember what happens in Genesis 7?”

“What?”

He threw up his hands again. “Dylan Foster, you’re breaking my Jewish heart.”

“The flood!” I pointed at him.

“Precisely.”

“So they were wiped out with everyone else.”

“Sort of.”

“You’re making me crazy, Eli.”

He flipped pages until he found what he wanted. “Numbers, chapter 13.” He looked up at me. “Post-flood, of course. Moses has sent out a reconnaissance team to scout Canaan. ‘So they gave the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying ‘The land through which we have gone…’ blah blah blah…hm… Ah, okay…‘and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size. There also we saw the Nephilim (for the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim) and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.’”

“What? What does that mean? They were giants?”

“Precisely.”

“Like Goliath.”

“Goliath was Anakim.”

“What’s that?”

“Sons of Anak. The phrase ‘part of the Nephilim’—this is translated in a number of ways. It’s not very clear.”

“No kidding.” I took a sip of coffee. “What happened to the Anakim?”

“Apparently wiped out by Caleb and his crew.” He shrugged.

“And the Nephilim?”

“No other mention of them exists in the Hebrew Bible.”

“What about in the Christian Bible?”

“That,” he said, closing his Hebrew scripture, “would be your department.”

I nodded.

“What about the Lot reference? What do you think that means?”

“Lot’s daughters—their story is a very sad one.”

“Do you have the Old Testament in English anywhere?”

He shoved a book across the countertop at me. I flipped through the pages of Genesis, scanning as I read. I found what I wanted in chapter 19 and looked up at Eli.

“I’d forgotten about the angels.”

“Keep reading.”

I read to the end of the chapter.

“Oh. I forgot about that part too. They were lost, weren’t they?”

“Most definitely. And little, one could argue, in the sense that they were overmatched by the evil around them.”

“‘Daughter of Lot, lost and little.’” I said.

“Makes sense, no? Now tell me. What is all this about?”

I told him about Drew Sturdivant. About her sad life and her even sadder demise.

“And what is her fascination with Anael?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to start calling jewelry stores after this.”

“Jewelry stores? What ever for?”

“Anael watches. I thought it was a brand of…” And then, of course, I realized. “‘Watches’ is a verb. Anael watches. Who is Anael?”

“That, my dear friend, is a very good question.”

“What about the ankh?” I pointed again at the page. “Do you know anything about ankhs?”

“That would be a question for an Egyptian scholar, not a Hebrew scholar.”

“The Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt for centuries,” I argued.

“Yes,” he said, pouring me more coffee. “But unfortunately for you, we didn’t take notes.”