In a way, I do. But in a way, not.
What do your questions have to do with, then?
Joe looked from one sister to the other. Straight out and straight ahead, he thought. They drink their gin straight here and they serve their whiskey straight and they call a Dimitri a Dimitri, at the dinner table or anywhere else, so it’s not a time for niceties now.
Joe looked from one sister to the other.
Stern, he said. My questions have to do with Stern.
Belle’s knitting needles stopped clicking. Immediately the two sisters were on guard and a silence settled over the room.
Stern is a very dear friend, Alice said quietly after a moment.
I’m aware of that, replied Joe. That’s why I’m here.
Do you know him well? asked Belle.
I did. I haven’t seen him in a few years.
Where did you know him?
In Jerusalem, it was.
In what connection?
I worked for him for a time. Later we became just friends.
Worked for him? Doing what?
Smuggling arms into Palestine. For the Haganah.
Big Belle stirred. She seemed to be recalling something.
Do you know anything about scarabs?
One only, answered Joe. A giant stone scarab with a mysterious smile carved into its face. A great huge and hollow giant stone scarab. That’s what I smuggled the arms in. Stern had set me up to pass myself off as a dealer in antiquities.
When exactly?
After the last war.
Belle studied Joe more closely.
What does the Home for Crimean War Heroes mean to you?
It means a charity in Jerusalem, said Joe, where I lived when I first arrived in the city. I was on the run from the British and in disguise, and I lived there until I met Stern. They gave me a used khaki blanket which I still have. Their standard award of merit, it was.
Little Alice was becoming so excited she could hardly sit still. A smile was growing on Belle’s face.
Do you play cards? asked Belle.
I don’t now but I did once. Poker. Twelve years of it in Jerusalem.
Big Belle suddenly beamed. She whooped as a crescendo of chirping noises erupted in Little Alice’s corner.
That Joe, thundered Belle, the Irishman who lived on a roof in the Old City. Free the serfs. Annex the Crimea and the hell with the Turks. Why didn’t you say you were that Joe and not just some odd rowing companion of young Ahmad? We’ve heard a good deal from Stern in the past about that Joe.
Happily Belle grabbed the gin bottle at her elbow and upended it, taking a drink straight from the bottle. Little Alice’s mouth fell open.
Belle. What on earth?
Big Belle smacked her lips. She sighed noisily and licked her lips with an enormous smile.
I know, dear. Forgive me.
But Belle, realll-ly. I haven’t seen you do that in sixty-five years.
Belle laughed.
Sixty-seven, dear.
Not since that very first time when you were going to spend a night with Menelik, said Alice. Not since that afternoon when we were somewhere together and Menelik sent a note around just begging you to spend a quiet candlelit evening with him in his sarcophagus, to celebrate his retirement from his digs in the field.
I know, dear, and what a grand invitation it was to a young woman not much more than twenty. Hieroglyphs engraved on a heavy slab of stone, no less, in Menelik’s very own hand, with accompanying translations engraved beneath it in demotic Egyptian and ancient Greek. Menelik’s very own Rosetta Stone of love. Just think of all the time and thought it must have taken him to turn that heavy basalt slab into an invitation. No young woman in her right mind could ever have responded to that with anything less than a resounding, Yes I said Yes I will Yes.
I remember, mused Alice dreamily.
Indeed you do, said Belle, and so do I. It isn’t often that a suitor presents his case to a woman with words actually written in stone.
To the woman of my dreams,
the incomparable Belle.
Dearest:
Today I retire from a lifetime of active archeology and go underground for good and forever. Won’t you please help me inaugurate my future life in the crypt by the Nile that is to be my new home? Among its many delights is a most spacious sarcophagus, cork-lined, which is to serve as both my bed and bedroom, and which will simply take your breath away. Large, my dear, as well as timeless, and need I add that they don’t make them like that anymore?
Until an hour after sunset then, my most beautiful Belle, for a time we will both cherish as the night of a lifetime.
Easily. Clearly. And until that moment when I hear your sweet knock on the door of my anonymous crypt, I remain,
Your most ardent and devoted of admirers above or beneath the sands of Egypt, both ancient and modern,
All my love,
(s) Menelik Ziwar.
P.S. Don’t bother to dress. After a life of determined Egyptology, all of history is at my disposal and we can wander wherever we choose, adopting such costumes and manners and methods as may suit our purposes, our moods, our tastes, and above all our grand designs for lovemaking throughout eternity.
Belle sighed. She smacked her lips.
No, she said, you don’t see invitations like that anymore, no more than you meet a man like Menelik. Menelik was different, and his unusual invitation was just the beginning of the unusual delights we were to know together that evening. One might have thought a sarcophagus would be a trifle cramped for the tour through history Menelik had in mind, but that was beforehand. Before Menelik got his hands moving and the champagne flowing and started peeling grapes and dipping them here and there.
Belle. I just don’t know what to say. I mean, realll-ly. What can Joe possibly be thinking?
I know, dear, but Menelik was an out-and-out contortionist and there’s no use denying it. I’ve never known anything like it, he was just everywhere at once. It must have been all those years he spent excavating ancient tombs, bending himself around in tight quarters. Not to mention doing so in the dark much of the time, when he had to depend on his fingertips to do his seeing for him. Oh, Menelik’s fingertips. It makes me shiver to think of them even now.
Belle? Are you sure you’re all right?
I am, dear, perfectly, I haven’t felt so good in sixty-seven years. It’s also that first rush the gin gives you when you gulp it straight from the bottle, there’s nothing like it. I never could abide sipping from glasses in order to appear ladylike. Menelik used to say there was only one way to deal with a bottle of gin. The same way you deal with me, he used to say. Just grab the fellow firmly and upend the rascal and swallow for the life of you.
Belle.
Big Belle smacked her lips. She laughed.
Now he was a man, Menelik was. Who could ever imagine such a thrilling night in a sarcophagus? And a sarcophagus that had originally belonged to Cheops’ mother, of all things? Oh yes, there was never a moment’s rest when you were with Menelik and he was mulling over five thousand years of Egyptian history. Just when you thought all that coming and going through the ages might have tired him a little, he’d twist himself around somehow and all at once he’d be whispering in your ear again. Do you know what they used to do, he’d whisper, back during the XII Dynasty? No? Well it’s rather clever. All you do is move this leg a little like that, and your left hand here, and your other hand … oh yes. Oh yes. Oooooo….
Belle. Please.
Big Belle sighed. She licked her lips and beamed.
And then there was that specialty Menelik used to claim had been invented during an even earlier dynasty, but which was really nothing more than a very elaborate hum-job with a few sacred props thrown in…. Oh, Menelik. It’s exhausting just to think of him. Perhaps I ought to have one more, all at once I’m feeling thirsty. These memories….
Abruptly Belle hoisted the bottle of gin and drank again. She sighed and p
laced the bottle back on the table.
But why didn’t you tell us you were that Joe? That Joe, just imagine…. Well all right then, all right. On to business.
Belle’s knitting needles began to click in the stillness. Alice glanced at her sister and straightened her shawl, going through a final flurry of flutters before subsiding quietly into an alert position. Belle cleared her throat.
Are you ready, Alice?
Ready, Belle.
Belle gazed at Joe.
Stern’s in trouble?
Yes.
You think it’s serious?
Yes.
How serious?
Joe looked at her and then at Alice.
I’m afraid it’s the end.
Belle’s fingers stopped moving. She stared through the open French doors at the river, her jaw set.
I refuse to believe that, she said. Please begin with your questions.
I’m on unsure ground here, said Joe. I’ve got some bits and pieces but I don’t have an overall shape to what I’m looking for. You might say it’s the same as it used to be for Menelik back when he was digging up the past and everything he found was partial and broken and dusted by time, and he had to try to put it together so that it would make some sense. To see who the people of that particular dynasty were, and what they had been up to. A little bit like that maybe. I suppose we all have to delve into the Egyptologist’s craft now and then, and there even seem to be some hieroglyphs involved. A code, so to speak. Things I can’t decipher because there’s no Rosetta Stone for this one.
This one? asked Belle. What’s that, this one? What is the code? What does it cover?
Stern’s life, I guess you’d have to say, I suppose that’s what it really is. And since you know Stern as well as you do, you can understand it’s not a simple matter to sift the sands through your fingers and come up with something with a shape to it, a coherency that translates into words. The end result has to be simple enough because Stern’s just a man. But that’s only once you know how to read the hieroglyphs.
A Greek word meaning sacred writing, murmured Belle.
Joe nodded.
Yes, Greek. Like a good many things in this part of the world.
But the writings the word denotes are much older, mused Belle.
Much older, said Joe. So my task is a little bit the same as Menelik’s used to be. Of course the best thing would be to talk to people who aren’t here, but you can never do that. And it’s also true that what Menelik dealt with happened four or five thousand years ago, while what I’m looking for happened yesterday or a month or a year or two ago, but it’s the same thing really. Ancient history always begins yesterday, doesn’t it?
Or even with your afternoon nap, murmured Alice. Sometimes everything that happened before then is like a dream, little shards of this and that. And Menelik, bless his soul, would have been the first to say so.
True, said Joe. The evidence never is in, not by half. So, like Menelik, I have to blow the dust off the shards and nudge the bits and pieces around and see if I can make a picture out of them.
Belle’s patient, said Alice. She’s always been clever at jigsaw puzzles. I have no patience at all but I can sense patterns sometimes. They just come to me.
Well? said Belle
Joe nodded.
Yes. There’s this, for example. Rommel knows things he shouldn’t know and it has something to do with codes. British codes. It’s as if Rommel could read them. The important one may be called the Black Code, and somehow a Colonel Fellers may be involved, he’s the American military attaché here in Cairo. Because Stern said recently to someone, first thing in the morning, that Rommel was probably enjoying his little fellers at that very moment, over breakfast.
Arab boys? asked Alice.
Too simple, declared Belle.
Oh.
The little things over breakfast, said Belle, have to refer to the American colonel.
Oh of course.
Belle closed her eyes to concentrate. A few moments later she opened them.
Nothing. Alice?
Alice was staring dreamily across the room toward the door. They followed her gaze. Belle sniffed thoughtfully, quietly.
Is it the door, Alice?
No, the doorstop.
Belle and Joe studied the doorstop. It was made of wood and hand-painted, a small upright tableau depicting two vivacious young girls from the nineteenth century, smiling in long curls and flowery hats and voluminous dresses, carrying parasols. The clothes and the sky had been done in delicate pastels, faded now by three-quarters of a century of Egyptian sunlight. The painted earth at the bottom of the block of wood, the weight of the doorstop, was richly dark and blackened by the passage of time.
We must have worn a dozen petticoats in those days, said Alice. How old were we when I painted that?
Fourteen, replied Belle. We were in Rome.
That’s right, and I painted a lot of them one summer, trying to make a little money. I used to go around to the tables in the pensione at teatime and sell them, remember? But that’s the only one left now, the only one we brought to Egypt. Just look at those hats, Belle, and those ridiculous dresses. How did we ever move around dressed like that?
It was clumsy. We were very restricted.
Oh we were, we were. I used to hate wearing all those petticoats. And just look how rich and black the earth is, not red and sandy the way it is here. Oh how strange this is.
It is strange, Alice. I wonder what brought all of that to mind just at this moment?
I have no idea, I can’t imagine. But didn’t we think we were very grown-up when we could dress like that?
Yes, petticoats and everything.
That’s right. And we were only fourteen years old, and the Italian men were always … and now Joe has mentioned a Black Code and the black in that painting seems to remind me of something, Belle. Something having to do with sex in Rome.
Sex way back then, dear? That’s a rather extensive subject, I’m afraid. Or are you thinking of something we might have heard about more recently?
Yes, more recently. Within the last year, perhaps. Oh that’s maddening, it’s right on the tip of my tongue. Why do we have to be so old and have so many things to remember? But you must know what I’m thinking about, Belle. Sex. Rome. Can’t you remember?
There are hundreds of incidents to remember, dear, but which one of them is on your mind now? Maybe it might help if you narrowed things down. What kind of sex was it, exactly?
Italian sex. Seduction. Age leering at youth and innocence corrupted. A poor young cleaning woman just in from the country and a suave older man spending money on her and giving her an evening beyond her wildest dreams, and then taking her back to his candlelit flat overlooking the Piazza Navonna and whispering bella bella and making fantastic promises while pulling off her petticoats and exacting a few concrete promises in return. Oh just think, Belle, think. I know you can recall it.
Suddenly Belle’s knitting needles clicked once.
Of course. That’s it, Alice, you’ve found it.
Little Alice smiled shyly. Big Belle turned to Joe with a triumphant expression.
Isn’t she a marvel? The Black Code is some kind of American cipher which the Italians managed to get their hands on in Rome. They stole it from the American Embassy with the help of a cleaning woman who was on the night shift. That was five or six months ago, around the beginning of the year, and the Americans still don’t know about it, apparently. Now one would assume the Italians passed along their discovery to their allies, the Germans. What’s the job of a military attaché, exactly?
He reports on the military situation in the country where he’s stationed, answered Joe.
Ha, peeped Alice. Do Belle and I look like military secrets?
Indeed, said Belle, the attachés we’ve known always seemed to be up to something quite different. But let’s assume this Colonel Fellers is more conscientious than most and actually does his job.
What if he’s been sending reports back to Washington on a daily basis? His reports would naturally include a synopsis of British intentions, the locations of British units and their strength and morale, and British plans for offense and defense. He would send his reports by commercial wire, which means that practically any clerk in the Egyptian Telegraph Company would have access to them. Or anyone else along the commercial telegraph route to Washington. Furthermore, it’s likely that he would file his reports at the end of the working day, which is to say early every evening.
In the Black Code, chirped Alice. Seduction made me think of it.
And so, concluded Belle, allowing for some deciphering and translating in the dark hours, the timing would be just right for Rommel to have his little fellers sitting beside his herring at breakfast the following morning. Everything that would be useful for Rommel to know, carefully compiled by Colonel Fellers.
Belle smiled, Alice smiled. Joe was utterly astonished. He looked from one sister to the other and whistled softly.
And there, said Belle, is the secret behind the Desert Fox’s uncanny foresight. He can read. And thus it seems it may not always be wise to praise famous men.
Or to put it another way, chirped Alice gaily, you know a man by what he puts his nose into first thing in the morning. Little fellers? Herring?…
What do you think? Belle asked Joe.
In answer Joe whistled again, very softly.
I think the two of you are astounding, he said. And I also think the Black Code is about to join Hammurabi’s code as one more chunk of ancient history in the sandy Middle East. From now on it’s herring only for Rommel’s breakfast, and a once dashing hero is back to looking like a surly thug when not in uniform.
Well there, twittered Alice brightly.
Belle clicked her knitting needles with conviction.
Next? she said.
Joe nodded. He frowned.
I’m sorry, but a few things are still a little unclear to me. Bletchley has told me almost nothing and I haven’t been able to talk to Stern yet, so the hieroglyphs are still a mite mysterious. The truth is, I still can’t make out Stern’s role exactly.
Nile Shadows (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 3) Page 33
