He slipped into the chair beside her, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder.
. . . I was hoping to get away in time for dinner, but you know how it is these days for a clerk at the office. Nothing but more and more work on the ledgers. Sometimes it seems that contrary to what God says, accountants are going to inherit the earth.
He smiled and drank off the arak the waiter placed before him, still holding her shoulder with his other hand. The waiter seemed reluctant to leave and Stern made a remark in Arabic which made the man laugh, the slang too complicated for Maud to understand. Stern nodded, smiling up at the man.
. . . another? Why not. Now what did I do with my cigarettes?
He let go of her shoulder and felt his pockets.
. . . must have forgotten to pick some up, I'll just step up to the kiosk around the corner. But you're having a sweet, aren't you? Shall I tell him to bring it now? . . . I'll only be a moment.
Stern walked inside and spoke to the waiter, lingering with the man for a moment, neither of them acting out of the ordinary, then turned and left the café and went striding quickly up the square to the street.
Two or three minutes later and he was on his way back, this time resting his hand on hers when he sat down. He always touched her when he was with her, it was a habit he had. His fingers moving ever so slightly, gently. Caressing, feeling. . . . And for some reason, this time, her eyes fell on his disfigured thumb with its cruel scars, made a few years ago when his thumbnail had been ripped away in some foolish accident.
Once he had told her how it had happened . . . trying to fix something and his thumb slipping, catching, the thumbnail tearing away and tearing flesh with it ... she couldn't even remember the details now. In fact she had long since ceased even to notice that thumb with its scars, because it was just another part of Stern now. But all at once she did notice it at that moment, and it almost startled her. The contrast of those brutal scars and the gentle strokes of his thumb on her hand . . . all at once it seemed unbearably poignant.
Stern smiled warmly, happily, his eyes breathing her in.
. . . so good to be with you, he whispered. So right, the way life should be.
While they were talking, he reached up and stroked her hair. There was nothing unusual about the gesture and from a distance no one would have seen anything out of the ordinary, any change in his manner, but Stern was now whispering in an obscure Greek dialect native to the mountains of Crete. He used the dialect only when they were in a public place and he had something private to say. Maud didn't speak it as well as he did, but she understood it easily enough.
. . . I don't want you to worry but I'm not quite alone tonight. I'm being followed.
She felt a twinge inside. How long has it been going on? she asked, and watched him shrug.
. . . a few days.
But who are they, Stern? Is it all right?
. . . oh yes. Just some fellows from the Monastery.
Just that, she thought, aware of his hands ceaselessly moving, stroking her and touching the table and touching his glass, his cigarettes, her ring. Feeling the world around him now more than ever, as if he were afraid of losing it. Not wanting to let it go, touching. . . .
But why, what does it mean, Stern? Do you know?
. . . well I'm due to leave town later tonight and they probably want to make sure I get safely on my way.
He laughed harshly.
. . . you know, in hopes I won't come back.
She frowned at the remark, thinking how his humor had become bitter lately in a way she didn't like, but Stern seemed not to notice her frown. His eyes were moving around the square as he took out the old Morse-code key he always carried and began to turn it over and over, his other hand holding her shoulder.
What is it, Stern?
. . . oh. Well you haven't noticed anyone around, have you?
No.
. . . and the family next door to you, the grandfather, he hasn't mentioned seeing anyone?
No, but are they watching me too? Is that what you mean?
. . I'm afraid they may be, so I'm told . . . but not that closely and there's no danger involved, it's just something to do with me.
She looked at him. None of it made any sense to her, but of course there was no reason why it should.
Stern had always been careful never to talk to her in any detail about the work he did for the Monastery.
Yet lately he had been alluding to his work more openly, which she found disturbing in itself.
. . . so it might be better, he added, if you didn't say anything about this at your office. It doesn't concern the Waterboys and they don't know anything about it, so why upset them? And you've seen nothing yourself so there's nothing to hide. Of course if something should seem out of the ordinary, it might be wise to mention it to the grandfather next door. He's around all the time and he knows everyone, and he would . . . but anyway, it's strictly between the Monks and myself and . . .
Stern didn't finish. He smiled his mysterious smile and changed the subject and they talked of other things, Stern drinking heavily all the while. Then too quickly midnight was near and their moment together was over. Once more it was time for Stern to leave.
I know you have to rush, she said, but there's still one thing you haven't told me tonight. How are you?
The question cut through Stern's restlessness. He slumped forward and looked down at the table, a weariness coining over him, his powerful eyes still for once, even his hands at rest.
. . . tired, Maud . . . exhausted. But it's not so much the physical part as . . . it's strange, you know. I always thought the body was supposed to give way first, especially when you have the kind of habits I do. But no, it seems the other illusions . . . it's not so much the armor of the soul as . . . well anyway, I'm going to be away for about two weeks, so . . .
She reached out for him and he held her tightly, silently trying to say all the things he hadn't been able to say in words, smiling as he stepped back and squeezed her hand a final time, quickly then moving off up the square . . . the restless stride and a nod or a word here and there to the late stragglers of the evening, turning and waving to her, the great dark head against the midnight sky of the city as he reached the corner and looked back, catching a final glimpse of her. . . .
Gone. She took a deep breath, gazing after him. How odd it is, she thought. For years the partings were always so hectic for us, wrenching in some painful way. But now when there's a war and the danger is greater than ever, it's almost quiet between us. Peaceful even.
Why? she wondered. Because so many of the decisions are no longer ours to make? Is that really the only way for life to be less tormenting? To have its choices taken out of your hands, its decisions taken from you?
***
She sat up late that night on her little balcony, the way she always did when Stern was leaving again. Two weeks this time, he had said, but who knew what that meant? Who could ever know with a man like Stern who was forever leaving on some dangerous new mission for the Monastery?
Mission. The Waterboys always used that term and so did the Monks. Everyone else always spoke of going on missions, but Stern never did. Somehow it was too grand a word for him and he spoke, instead, of traveling. . . . A man on his travels . . . I have some traveling to do.
Stern . . . Joe . . . how very different they were in so many ways, yet the two of them had once been very close, years ago in Jerusalem. Joe had often talked to her then about his great friend Stern, and she remembered how surprised she had been when she and Stern had finally met much later, in Istanbul, after all three of them had taken their separate paths.
She didn't know what she had expected, probably some kind of genie after the way Joe had talked about him. Certainly not the Stern she had come to know, so much like other men when she saw him as she had tonight, hunched over a table in a small café and talking of little things, laughing and silent by turns, the two of them so much like everybody else in t
he way they reached out for each other and quietly held on as best they could, enjoying their brief moments together. Stern in the shabby suit of a clerk, pushing back his hair and joking about ledgers and making light of working late at the office. . . . Save for his restless eyes and his hands that were never quite still, the same as anybody else passing an hour in the little square at the end of her alley. Tonight at least for a moment . . . the same as anybody else.
And Joe? Why had she thought of him tonight? Or did she always think of him at this time of the year especially . . . remembering their long-ago trip to the Sinai and their month together in a tiny oasis on the Gulf of Aqaba. Brilliant waters and sands that burned and the stunning sunsets of the desert bursting over them, and the breezes of the all-healing sea, the eternal stillness of dawn in the beginning of love. . . .
Yes, that must have been why she had thought of Joe tonight. It was the time of the year and Stern leaving once more as Joe had left so often when he worked for Stern long ago in Jerusalem . . . some coincidence of little things in her mind. The tricks of memory mixing the years together as she sat up late on her narrow balcony, gazing out over the great restless city and thinking of many things but above all of Stern.
The voice, the eyes, the incessant touching . . . could it really be that he was finally coming apart like the world itself? Stern with his lifelong dream of a great peaceful new nation in the Middle East the vision shaken in the monstrous slaughter of the First World War only to be shattered in the madness of the Second World War. Nothing left for Stern now because no one wanted to hear of his hopeless dreams, not the Arabs and not the Jews . . . no one. And yet Stern had known all of that for years, so why did he go on doing what he did? Why did he struggle endlessly when there was no end for what he sought?
In the darkness Maud suddenly laughed at herself, laughing at her own musings.
Why does he? . . . but why do any of us? Why do we go on trying when what we hope for will always be beyond us? When we can never more than touch the lives of others in passing? When even our own life must forever be tentative and incomplete and out of reach, no more than a shadow of what we long for?
So perhaps it wasn't that hard in the end to understand why people felt so strongly about Stern, even men like the waiters in her little square, chance acquaintances who knew almost nothing about him. Quite simply, they saw in Stern something they wished they had been able to see in themselves. A refusal to accept the pathetic limits of life, a defiance to the pathetic failures of hope. . . .
We have to be more, he used to say. It's no longer enough to be what we were. We're dreaming creatures who have learned to reach beyond ourselves, unlike any other animal, who can therefore decide what we will become. And no matter how it terrifies us, there's no other way for us to be now. . .
.
And the great dark head thrown back as the mysterious smile came over his face.
. . . so it isn't true any longer that we can just create ourselves. Now we must. Our childhood as a race is over and there's no going back, no escape into barbarism, no way to lose ourselves in the mindlessness of our animal past. Now we have to be free in order to be at all. The child within us prefers its instinctual cage, and the wars of this century are the final tantrums of our childhood's end, but the wars can't go on and on and we all sense that. Our killing toys have become too clever and our killing fields have become the entire earth, and now we either have to put aside our childish ways or refuse to, and in refusing, renounce life. I mean destroy ourselves utterly. . . .
Oh yes, she thought. Stern and his invincible dreams and the legions of little people who seize hope from the fires that go on consuming him in the dark places of his soul, Stern with his alcohol and his morphine and the crumbling defiance of his vision. . . . Tired, he had said. Exhausted, he had said.
From her little balcony Maud gazed out at the soft lights of the restless city, thinking of the wilderness not many miles away where great armies were slaughtering each other across the barren sands, as ferocious as blind animals ripping and clawing in the night.
Poor Stern, she thought, poor all of us. And have we really become like him . . . too grand a dream to survive?
-9-
Menelik
Joe awoke in his tiny room in the Hotel Babylon on a Sunday morning, having been lost in fever since Friday night. Liffy was still sitting at the table beside him, keeping watch, as he had been for most of that time. While Joe recounted the strange tale of his trip to the Monastery, Liffy squirmed uncomfortably and his face grew more and more pinched with pain. Finally he opened his mouth and let fly with a thunderous clap of gas, followed by an explosive barrage of gurgles and sighs. He smiled weakly, patting his stomach.
How's that, Joe? The Bletch, you say? Well it's ominous all right but I can't say it surprises me particularly, only because nothing having to do with war surprises me. An all-seeing one-eyed Bletch in charge of the Monastery? It's madness, that's all. It's all madness and I try not to think about it. . . .
Liffy's stomach went on rumbling noisily. Joe asked him if he had ever heard of the two women known as the Sisters, whom Bletchley had mentioned.
Heard of them certainly, said Liffy, but that's no help to you. Anyone who's spent any time in Cairo has heard of those social lionesses of yesteryear, the two of them so old and famous it's rumored they might once have been on intimate terms with the Sphinx back before he was turned to stone, as so often happens with good ideas. But that was yesteryear and now the fabled Sisters live in seclusion in a houseboat on the Nile, watching time go by, a counterpart to the Sphinx in the desert. . . . But what, pray, does it all amount to? Has Bletchley suddenly gone philosophical on us? Just lost his grip and decided that the darkest hour of a dark war is the time to do some serious brooding over the enigma of the Nile and the Sphinx? Somehow it seems unlikely.
Joe nodded.
It does, all right, but Bletchley has a way of not appearing to say much when in fact he's saying a great deal. Now the last thing he mentioned at the Monastery was old Menelik and the Sisters, almost in the same breath, but why? And what's the connection between them, and what's that got to do with Stern today?
Liffy grew thoughtful.
Today, he muttered. The here and the now. . . . That's always a confusing matter, isn't it, because who knows what's here or now in someone else's mind? . . .
Abruptly Liffy smiled, whistled.
Wait, don't move. When you and I saw Stern in the eye of the Sphinx, it was in a lookout old Menelik had fashioned for himself in the last century. But that wasn't the only secret place that was dear to the old sage's heart, was it? There's also his crypt right here in Cairo beside the Nile, that ancient mausoleum beneath a public garden where he lived his last years. Now what about that, Joe?
Joe rubbed his eyes and gazed at the bottle of gin on the table.
It sounds fine to me. What about it?
Ah well. Today, Ahmad uses that crypt as his secret workshop, the place where he keeps his printing press and his engraving tools and so forth. I'll get to that. But first, didn't Bletchley make some comment when he mentioned old Menelik and the Sisters? Some attribute they had in common? You alluded to it .
. . what was it exactly?
Joe frowned.
You mean the fact that old Menelik was also something of a society figure in his day?
Liffy's hand shot out and he pointed at Joe.
Precisely. And who, by chance, just happens to be the expert on all Cairo social matters having to do with yesteryear? . . . Who, you say? Why Ahmad, of course. Ahmad, none other. The society pages of thirty-year-old newspapers are his specialty. . . . So then. What Bletchley seems to be saying is that to find out the truth about Stern, you must first find out the truth about old Menelik and the Sisters. And the key to that must be an excursion into Ahmad's past, because it is Ahmad who holds the key to Menelik's secret crypt today. Of course. Who else? This is Ahmad's clandestine workshop we're talking about, his
underground truth.
Liffy laughed.
Too roundabout for you? Too devious and obscure? Well it wouldn't be for Bletchley and his Monks, I'd wager. Because lastly there's the fact that you're the only person staying in the Hotel Babylon, other than Ahmad himself, and that didn't happen by chance. That had to be arranged that way, by Bletchley of course. So whatever enigma Bletchley's brooding over, it starts right here in the Hotel Babylon with our local hermit-in-residence. And clearly, at this point on your journey east, all paths lead to Ahmad.
Liffy nodded thoughtfully.
Yes. That's exactly what Bletchley seems to be saying in his cryptic Monkish way. . . . Your journey now involves time, my child, not space. Not rivers and mountains and deserts to be crossed, but memories to be explored. For the moment has come to stop look and listen while tarrying in caves and open spaces, those of the past, and while marking well the local aphorisms. Ahmad's, no less. For now you must behold the very notion of this crumbling hermitage where you find yourself, this mythical Babylonian retreat which you share with only one other human being deep in a Cairo slum. . . . In short, what is the Hotel Babylon, my child? And who is Ahmad and what on earth is someone like him doing in these crumbling ruins while a terrible war rages across the world?
Liffy laughed, then turned serious.
In a way I envy you, Joe. I've never gotten to know Ahmad well, but I've always sensed there are whole worlds to be explored there, perhaps even a whole secret universe. And it may be that old Menelik is somehow at the center of this distant hieroglyphic past, a kind of black sun around whom many lives once revolved in some mysterious underground way. And although Ahmad has a strange ability to move from this world to others and back again, perhaps for that very reason you can't expect a coherent narrative for what you seek. Because it's Ahmad's memory that you hope to explore, isn't it, and memory never flows from beginning to middle to end, does it? It's always in transit in the middle of things, all of it is, and it deals exclusively in glimpses and suggestions, or shards, as Menelik might have called them.
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