Yet he had never looked for it there.
Why?
Stern laughed and filled his glass.
You know that’s the only part of Sophia’s story I’ve never believed. It would have been too obvious a hiding place for someone as clever and dedicated as Wallenstein. Look at it. He spent twelve years in a basement hole in the Armenian Quarter before he went to the Sinai to do his forgery. Would he have been likely to come back and bury the original in that same basement hole? Ask questions about him and someone would remember, the spot could be found and all of Wallenstein’s efforts would have been for nothing. Would Sophia have allowed that considering how much she loved him? She knew what the forgery had cost him, what it eventually cost her too, so she lied to protect him, to protect herself, to keep their suffering from being meaningless.
Stern went on talking, pacing and puffing cigarettes. He poured himself another drink. Maud looked out the window in embarrassment.
Why was he saying all this? There was no reason for Sophia to lie to protect Wallenstein after he’d already protected himself. When he went to Egypt to find parchment he’d traveled as a wealthy Armenian dealer in antiquities. Who knew what other disguises there had been?
The basement hole could have had a large house over it where he passed himself off as someone else. Or a shop where he actually dealt in antiquities. Or a church where he’d gotten himself ordained as a priest, or a monastery where he was posing as a monk. Anything at all. Obviously the manuscript would never be found by asking questions about Wallenstein and his basement hole.
Stern, a little drunk now, began to describe all the places he had looked for the manuscript. At first he thought it must have been hidden in a large city so he went to Cairo and Damascus and Baghdad, into the back alleys at night.
Did anyone have a very old book to sell? A precious book? He was willing to pay a great deal.
Knowing smiles. Levantine language. He was led through shadowy rooms where every sort of living creature was offered for sale, the body in question guaranteed to be as satisfying as the oldest book in the world.
O venerable scholar, added his guide.
Stern fled to the open air. Perhaps a small cave near the Dead Sea? Wallenstein having chosen this secure place as he was limping home from Mt Sinai?
Stern cranked up his tractor car and sped down wadis and across the dunes chasing stray camels, on the lookout for caves. When he spied a bedouin on the horizon he raced over to him and whipped open the steel hatch. Up popped Stern’s dusty face, his tanker’s goggles staring blankly down at the frightened man.
A very old book? A cave in the vicinity? Even a small one?
Next he favored the idea of a remote oasis, a dot in the desert so small it supported only one family, surely an ingenious hiding place.
The hydrogen valves hissed and his balloon swelled. On the tip of the Sinai peninsula he hovered over a tiny clump of green. The woman and children ran into the tent and the man raised his knife to defend his family against this floating apparition from the Thousand and One Nights.
Twenty yards above the ground Stern’s head appeared.
Any old books down there?
He changed his mind. It wasn’t a place he should be looking for but a person. Wallenstein had found a wandering holy man and fixed the dervish with his eyes, whispering that here was the true holy of holies. The dervish must carry it until he was ready to die and then pass it on to another holy man in a similar way, for this bundle or ark was the manifestation of God on earth carried by secret bearers since the beginning of time and henceforth to the end of time, letting it fall being no less a matter than letting fall the world itself.
Stern went into the deserts and bazaars asking his question.
What sacred object do you carry?
Rags were unwrapped and treasures appeared, slivers of wood and crumpled flowers and thimbles of muddy water, carved matchsticks and cracked glass and smudged slips of paper, a live mouse and an embalmed toad and many other manifestations of God, in fact just about everything except what he sought.
And you? Stern wearily asked once more.
I have no need for graven images, answered a man disdainfully. God is within me. Wait and tomorrow at dawn you will see the one and true God.
Stern spent the night. The next morning the man rose at an early hour, ate a meager breakfast and moved his bowels. He went through the mess and came up with a small smooth stone which he reverently washed and anointed with oil, then swallowed again with a triumphant smile.
Tomorrow at the same time, he said, God will appear again if you wish to return and worship Him.
And so Stern went on telling more stories and pouring more vodka and lighting more cigarettes, laughing at himself and making Maud laugh until long after midnight.
When he left she went around the room picking up ashtrays and sweeping up the ashes that had fallen everywhere as his hands flew and he talked and talked. In the kitchen she stood holding the empty bottles, gazing down at the sink. All at once she was exhausted.
She understood now why he had never made love to her, why he had probably never made love to anyone, why the sexual encounters in his life could never have been more than that.
Removed, anonymous, quickly over, and Stern alone in the end as in the beginning.
Never with someone who could know him. Never. Too, fearful of that.
He had already been tossing for several hours, his sleep torn by the grinding of his teeth. The only rest he ever knew was when he first lay down and now, two hours before dawn, even the tossing was over. His jaw aching, he reached for the blankets thrown off at his feet and lay shivering in the dark.
At last a gray light came in the window. Stern slid open a drawer by his bed and took out the needle. The warmth rolled over him and he fell back on the bed.
I’m slipping beautifully, he thought. Every night a dozen new chapters for the secret lost book he dreamed of finding, exquisitely beautiful episodes, nothing would ever come of them.
Once more he was a boy floating high in the night sky above the ruins of Marib among the breezes and stirring stars, above a distant drifting world, far above the Temple of the Moon suddenly seen in the sands. For minutes it lasted, all the minutes of his childhood in the Yemen with his father and his grandfather, wise and gentle men waiting for him to grasp their mysteries.
I’m slipping beautifully, he thought as the gray in the window faded to whiteness and he slept again under the morphine, the other hour needed for life.
He awoke feeling numb and drowsy and threw cold water over himself. No dreams now, only an empty day, but at least he had survived the harsh coming of the light.
18 Melchizedek 2200 B.C.–1933
Faith never dies, Prester John.
ON A SPRING EVENING in 1933 Haj Harun and O’Sullivan Beare sat on a hillside east of the Old City watching the sunset, the light shifting slowly over the towers and minarets and changing their colors, softly laying shadows along the invisible alleys. After a time the old man sighed and wiped his eyes.
So beautiful, so very beautiful. But there are going to be riots, I know there are. Do you think we should get guns, Prester John? You and me?
Joe shrugged. You and me, the old man really meant it. He actually believed the two of them could do something.
Ever since Smyrna I’ve been worrying about it, Haj Harun went on. Does it have to be the way it was up there? They had their lovely city too and all kinds of people living in it and look what happened. I just can’t understand why the people of Jerusalem are doing this to each other. And it’s not as if we were facing the Romans or the Crusaders, it’s the people inside the walls who are doing it. I’m frightened. Will we have to get guns? Will we?
Joe shook his head.
No, no guns, they won’t get us anywhere. I tried that when I was young and it’s a useless interim game. Use guns and you’re no better than the Black and Tans and that’s not good enough.
But wha
t do we do then? What can we do?
Joe picked up a rock and scaled it out over the hillside toward the valley separating them from the city.
Jaysus I don’t know. I talked with the baking priest about it and he doesn’t know either. Just nods and goes back to baking his. loaves in the four shapes. Doesn’t dance anymore either, which is a bad sign. But these troubles in the city can’t be all that new to you and Jaysus that’s what makes me wonder. How have you been putting up with it all these years?
Putting up with what?
What the bloody people have been doing to you. Throwing stones at you and knocking the teeth out of your head and clawing you with their fingernails and stealing what little you have, beating you and insulting you and calling you names, all those things. If that had happened to me someplace I’d have left it long ago.
I can’t leave. You don’t seem to understand.
No I don’t and I wonder if I ever will. Look, Smyrna was bad all right but there’s something else that’s been on my mind since then, worries me and worries me and just won’t go away. All this time I’ve been looking for the Sinai Bible and now I’m beginning to wonder. It has to do with that, you see, with a promise I made myself then. Jaysus I’m just plain confused. Can I ask you a question?
Haj Harun reached out and took his hand. The lights were going on in the Old City and in the hills. Joe looked up and saw that the old man’s eyes were shining.
Prester John?
Yes all right, well it’s just this. I loved a woman once and she left me but you see I’ve learned I’ll never love another one. It seems that’s it for me and what’s a soul to do then? What’s a soul to do?
Simply go on loving her.
So I seem to be doing but what’s the sense of it? Where does it lead?
The frail hand tightened on his and then was gone. Haj Harun knelt in front of him and held him by the shoulders, his face serious.
You’re still young, Prester John. Don’t you see it leads nowhere? It’s an end in itself.
But that’s a hopeless way to do things.
No. As yet you have little faith but a time will come.
Faith are you saying? I was born with faith but it’s been going these years not coming, going and going until it’s gone now.
No, that can’t happen.
But it did all right, she took it.
No, she gives it, she never takes it.
Oh Jaysus man, there you go again talking about Jerusalem. This is a woman I’m referring to, a flesh and blood woman.
I see.
Well then?
Faith never dies, Prester John. If you love a woman you’ll find her someday. In my time I’ve seen many temples built on that mountain across the valley and although they’ve all fallen to dust one still remains and will always remain, the temple of the first king the city ever had. Yes I’m frightened when I think of Smyrna and what it may mean for tomorrow, but I also know that Melchizedek’s City of Peace can never die because when that gentle King of Salem reigned on that mountain so long ago, long before Abraham came to seek him out and receive his blessing and father the sons called Ishmael and Isaac in this land, long before then Melchizedek had already dreamed his gentle dream, my dream, and in so doing given it life forever, without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life.
Who’s that you’re talking about now? You or Melchizedek?
Haj Harun smiled shyly.
We’re the same person.
Go on with you, you’re all mixed up.
Haj Harun laughed.
Do you think so? Come let’s go back, she’s waiting for us.
They started down the hillside, Joe stumbling and falling in the darkness, Haj Harun floating lightly along the rough path that he had followed innumerable times.
Bloody eternal city, thought Joe, looking up at the walls rising above them. Bloody marvel how he keeps it running, lurking up there on the Mount of Olives at sundown disguised as a broken-down Arab. Keeping watch he is, guarding the approaches, a former antiquities dealer for sure, old Melchizedek the first and last king spinning his city through the ages with no end in sight. Riots and mayhem to come, fearful of Smyrna but still trying to take the long view, as Stern once said.
Madness all right, that’s what this place is, daft time spinning out of control, not meant for a sober Christian who just wants to make do with three squares a day and no heavy lifting and maybe a fortune on the side. But all the same who’d have thought a poor boy from the Aran Islands would one day be consulting in the shadows of Salem with the very same king who was handing out blessings here long before these bloody Arabs and Jews even existed with their bloody troubles?
19 Athens
Life rich and full in the wine of faraway places.
WHEN MAUD RETURNED TO live in Athens, Stern often came to visit her in the small house by the sea. A cable would arrive from somewhere and a few mornings later she would be standing on the pier in Piraeus waiting to meet his ship, Stern all at once leaning over the rail above her shouting and waving, rushing out to hug her in the clamor of travelers and banging gangways, his arms overflowing with the presents he had brought, masses of brightly colored paper tied with dozens of ribbons for Bernini to unravel.
Back at the little house by the sea Bernini sat on the floor working his way through the pile of parcels, holding up each new wonder as he uncovered it, amulets and charms and picture books, an Arab cloak and Arab headgear, a model of the Great Pyramid made of building blocks complete with secret tunnels and a treasure chamber.
Bernini clapped his hands, Maud laughed, Stern bounded into the kitchen reeling off the dishes he was going to make for dinner that night, lamb in Arab pastes and fish in French sauces, delicate pastries and vegetables touched by heady spices and aspics of the rainbow. She helped him find the pots and pans and sat in a corner while he chopped and sniffed and tasted, dashing a drop here and a pinch there and frowning judiciously, all the while carrying on a headlong account of scenes and anecdotes from Damascus and Egypt and Baghdad, exhilarating to Maud in the routine of her otherwise quiet life.
Toward the middle of the afternoon he opened the champagne and caviar and later they lit candles in the narrow garden to be near the sound of the waves as they savored his marvelous dishes, Stern still flooding the table with his stories from everywhere, extravagant costumes and ridiculous gossip and imagined conversations beguiling and raucous by turns, Stern leaping up to act the parts, standing on a chair and swinging his arms and smiling and sneaking along the wall, pointing and making a ludicrous face, tapping his glass, laughing and raising a flower.
Bernini came to say good-night and there was stillness for a while in the spring night of the garden, tender and softly relaxed as they lingered in the silence over their cognac, then gradually the talk swirled again reaching out to embrace forgotten moments, slipping back and forth through the decades in brilliant recollections, spinning its net in ever longer shadows until the whole world seemed to crowd around their circle of candlelight, brought there by Stern.
Sometime after midnight he took out his notebooks to show her his plans neatly arranged and outlined in detail, lists of meetings and supplies and schedules.
By the end of the summer, he said. Unquestionably by the end of the summer. It has to be, that’s all.
A point here, another on this page. One two three four.
Orderly in black and white, to be ticked off by his finger from one to twelve. From a hundred to infinity. Foolproof plans. Yes by the end of the summer.
More cigarettes and more bottles uncorked, more sparkling reminiscences and splendid sentiments in the flickering light as they went on to read poems to each other and quote words that spoke of suffering and grandeur, life rich and full in the wine of faraway places, in time returning through the candlelight under the stars by the sea where they wept and laughed and talked away most of the darkness, holding each other tightly then at the end of th
e night truly at peace with themselves, the hour so late they couldn’t remember blowing out the candles and going inside, Stern snoring lightly on the couch and Maud just as quickly lost in sleep in the bedroom.
The next morning Stern had already left when she awoke but the note said he would be back by late afternoon with the makings of another feast. And so there would be another superb evening under the stars and then the following day they were walking down the pier in Piraeus once more, the brief hectic visit over.
In the summer he came several times and again in the clear mild evenings of autumn, piling the brightly colored packages in front of Bernini and conjuring up the banquets and scenes and memories from everywhere, spinning through the schemes in his notebooks. In his cabin they had a last glass of vodka before the ship sailed, Stern appearing confident and enthusiastic as always, his face flushed with the excitement of a new beginning, perhaps drinking a little more than he had the last time they parted, waving and smiling as the ship pulled away.
This time it was going to happen, whatever it was, by the end of the year. And when he came at Christmas he would say it was going to happen by Easter, and at Easter he would say by the end of the summer.
Always the same with Stern. It was always going to happen but it never did.
She went home and found Bernini playing with his new toys. She asked him if he liked them and he said Yes, very much. She wandered out into the garden thinking of Stern and the presents he brought, the expensive food and champagne.
She knew he had no money. She knew he had probably gone away with almost nothing in his pocket but he always insisted on doing it, on paying for it all himself and everything the best, imported, it was foolish, and taking taxis which was also foolish, she never used them herself.
But Stern did when he was with her, spending his money quickly, all at once, what little he had, he just couldn’t be bothered with it because he was too busy living for the poetry of his ideas and the grand schemes that never came to anything. So warmly generous, so impractical and foolish, yet it was also sad in a way for she knew the poverty it represented.
Sinai Tapestry (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 1) Page 25
