Oh.
Stern moved restlessly back and forth. He made a sign to the owner of the bar, who drifted down the counter to fill their glasses. Joe touched Stern’s arm, smiling.
But I can’t let you off too easily, Stern, now can I? I mean this feeling you have that you’ve failed. It’s only to be expected I’d have to worry that one a bit, Marx and the war aside. So tell me something. When you were young, did you ever think of becoming a recluse off in the desert somewhere, the way your father ended up? Something along those lines? It would have been easier, certainly, than dealing with people.
Stern looked surprised. At least I’m getting his attention again, thought Joe.
No, said Stern. Never.
Why not, I wonder.
Stern gazed down at the pool of water on the counter. And he’s beginning to do more than just remember, thought Joe. It’s not all sirens and bombs and flares going off.
Not enough guilt, said Stern. That wasn’t my father’s reason for doing what he did, but it would have had to have been mine. He sought the desert, after all. I was born there.
Right. Stands to feeling. So I guess what we’re talking about here is regret, isn’t it? Things haven’t turned out as well as you’d hoped.
Stern shuddered violently.
As well? What in God’s name do you mean, Joe?
Right. Things have turned out awful, in fact. The worst. And yet what you’ve done in the last few years is a hundred times what most men can do in a lifetime. Of course it’s also true not many people will ever know about it. Bletchley and Belle and Alice and myself, and Maud and Liffy in a partial way, and some others that I’m not aware of. Not many surely, a handful at best, and even so they’re never going to be able to say anything about it except to themselves. Whisper it to themselves maybe, when they’re alone and sad and taking the long view. And doesn’t that bother you a little? It’d be only natural if it did.
Stern moved his finger through a pool of water on the counter, tracing a circle.
Yes, he said. I suppose it does.
Well sure, Stern, why not. Anybody would like it known they’ve left something real behind, something more than just the dust of gold and real estate, something tangible to the heart. Still, another man could be puffing himself up with pride if he’d done what you have, but you don’t even see yourself as having accomplished much.
Joe rested his hand on Stern’s arm.
Tell me, why this talk about Sivi tonight? It’s been a long time, ten years since he died, twenty since he went mad. On the face of it, those events would seem more than a little distant to be taking up so much of your thoughts tonight. Or are we looking back to the real beginnings of your Polish story?… Ahmad used to call it that, you know, and he wasn’t referring just to the actual trip to Poland. For him, your Polish story seemed to suggest a great deal more. Maybe that was because Ahmad always had a long-range way of looking at things, so although the war appeared to start in Poland, he knew its true beginnings had to be much more deeply buried in time…. But anyway, Sivi then. What keeps bringing him to mind? Or is it Smyrna we’re really talking about?
Stern moved his finger through the pool of water, tracing circles, his restless eyes never still.
Somber and feeling useless all right, thought Joe, just as Maudie said. But telling him it isn’t so won’t help. No sense telling a hungry man he isn’t hungry, when did that ever mean anything? The flares and the sirens may have let up a bit in his corner of the desert, but he’s still expecting the next barrage and he’s weary to the soul, that’s certain.
Stern?
Yes. Sivi, you said. I was thinking about it.
And?
I think it’s because I started out with him and learned most of it from him. And then too, that period in Smyrna is all of a piece in my mind. Eleni and Sivi and the wonderful times we used to have before the massacres, before that whole way of life disappeared forever. And the Aegean must have something to do with it, that mysterious light that has always made men want to go farther. And living with the sea in Smyrna and just the sea itself, the closest we ever come to the sound of infinity. And I was young then, so everything was significant, and I was in love….
Yes.
So all of it together made every sensation intense. Everything seemed clearer and surer somehow, but it’s that feeling of intensity I remember the most. Experiencing every moment to the fullest, even the smallest things, the way we always should and so seldom do. Everything alive, Joe.
Yes.
But then the changes began to come and the parts no longer fit and no longer made up a whole…. Eleni and I drawing apart and seeing that terrible pain in each other’s eyes, and knowing full well what was slipping away but powerless to do anything about it because the past of someone else is forever beyond us, untouched by our best intentions. Helpless, the two of us, even though the ruin of the dream was unbearable…. So that ended and then the darkness came to Smyrna, the massacres, and Sivi went mad and everything ended there for me, and there was nothing to do but go on.
Yes, said Joe. And now Smyrna is the world and massacres come every day like the night, and whole ways of life are lost in the darkness. But you’re no stranger to that night, Stern. You’ve known that darkness for a long time now.
Stern was gazing down at the counter, unmoving at last, finally at rest in the half-light of that barren room. Are we there? thought Joe, watching Stern. He waited and a long moment seemed to pass before Stern raised his eyes.
That’s true, whispered Stern. And sometimes I can look back with a measure of calm and justify most of it to myself. Life has always been pretty much the same, after all. Three thousand years ago on those same shores of Smyrna, the Greeks went through every bit of it and raged and wept and then launched their ships anyway, at least some of them did, those who hadn’t blinded themselves or locked themselves away in cages because of the horror…. So this has happened countless times in the past and innumerable others have sat here like this, as you and I are, and I’ve tried to see with Homer’s eyes and you’ve tried to help me see, and I know all that, Joe, I know it. It’s just that sometimes …
Slowly then, Stern turned and looked at Joe and never had Joe seen eyes that were so exhausted.
… it’s just that sometimes I can’t feel the balance anymore, the balance, Joe. It’s all too dark and unyielding and there seems to be no reason for anything and I just can’t pretend to myself that there is. Can’t pretend anymore, Joe, do you understand? And I look back and I can’t see that anything means anything at all….
Too close, thought Joe, we’re getting too close. He’s got to pull back or he’ll shatter right here in front of me.
Well I know it, said Joe, I can feel that in you, and we both know you’ve been out there living with this century too much. It’s not what most people do after all. Most people spend their lives in other ages, muttering back through the past while sitting up straight in yesterday’s furniture, perusing yesterday’s timetable and mulling over yesterday’s thoughts. Animals are conservative, as you say, and we’d always prefer to do things the way we did them the last time, given half a chance. And I know what you mean about how dangerous that’s become and the paradox of violence growing out of innocence, out of these pathetic certainties we cling to, the sand castles of the race.
Joe?
Yes I know it, and I know that sad paradox whereby prophets delve into the childhood of the race and turn memories into visions of the future, imagining the lovely total order of an imagined Garden of Eden. And we do seem to have gotten into the habit of rummaging around in our heads too much, not listening to the echoes from outside and playing with ideas as if they were toys. Try one and try another and if white doesn’t work, try black, and if God won’t do the job, try Hitler and Stalin.
Joe?
Words, Stern. They’re just words, a child’s building blocks, just names for misplaced memories because we want so desperately to believe that someone
somewhere is in charge … or might be … or could be. Words are our shadows in the twentieth century, as if giving something a name gave it a place and put it in that place. As if saying something took care of it. As if repeating incantations could set us free. As if we were no longer dealing with human beings…. Because that’s the real trouble, isn’t it, Stern? Ideas are always easier to deal with than people, because ideas are words and can be numbered and defined and reworked to our liking and assigned colors and playing stripes, and categorized and put safely away in drawers. And so we deal with ideas and pretend we’re dealing with something real, and Lenin’s a mummy like any of the pharaohs, and Hitler will be a mummy for the thousand years of his Third Reich if he can manage it, both of them with their own Great Pyramid of skulls so we can remember them, and meanwhile human beings are massacred along the way…. Massacred, surprise of surprises, on the way to the sand castle.
But Joe?
Right. I need another drink myself and here comes your man with the lamp fuel, time-honored. And human beings are dark and unyielding and that’s the truth of it, and that’s also the real code and the only one that matters. And because human beings are what they are, we take the easier way and play with these niceties we call ideas, building blocks after all, the dead weight of our pyramids and also good for raising our very own Tower of Babel. Clean and simple lines progressing logically upward in an orderly fashion, we say, according to the laws of reason….
Reason, Stern? Logic? Touch a human soul in any spot that counts and you know how reasonable an answer you get. A scream is what you get, a cry of despair and hope. But we pretend otherwise and pretend we can build ideas one on top of another until we have a magnificent cathedral to kneel in or an imposing people’s emporium to cheer in. Sand castles, as you say. Or maybe, like today, just these huge grinding machines of death, outright. And all the while human beings are being slaughtered for the sake of … For the sake of what, Stern? What, my God? Ever?
Joe, I …
No wait, Stern. I’ve come a long way to sit in this bare room tonight and savor the smells of this slum and knock back some lamp fuel with the friend I’ve known longest in this world. A long way in time and in space, so you can’t expect me to let you off easily, now can you? Or to put it another way, I’m here now and I’m real and you’ve got to deal with me. With me, Stern.
Joe nodded, he smiled. He held Stern’s arm and slowly, Stern smiled too.
Got him, thought Joe. There’s no way he can deny himself in the end. Not him. He knows too much for that.
Right, said Joe, leaning back. And here we are and what a place to come to when in need of bucking up the soul. I mean it’s not exactly bracing, is it, to be where we are in the dark hour of a dark war? The two of us sitting not far from the Nile lamenting the eternal state of affairs? Everything changing and nothing the way it used to be? The ancient Egyptians had what, thirty dynasties more or less? And every one of them an end of an age, the end of an era, with its share of gents like us sitting up with the lamp fuel and lamenting the death and the dying and pondering the permanent revolutions of the heavens, round and round? Makes you wonder if times change at all really, and if you and I haven’t been in the custom of dropping in here over the ages to reflect upon the ends of all those dynasties. Makes you wonder, in fact, if this room or one like it hasn’t been here for four or five thousand years, so a couple of gents like us could drop in and take stock of the latest end game not far from the river
Joe glanced around the room. He made a face.
And there’s not much of it in the end, is there? Stock, I mean. This place is just plain bare. Except, that is, for what’s going on in this mirror in front of us. A shadowy screen, that one, with its cracked edges and its grainy textures, surely a worn cinema of the mind with its reels of fleeting shapes and its projection lamp in need of more lamp fuel to make more light, now as always. So yes, I think I may just have one more glass even though you’re not yet ready yourself. But why are you smiling, Stern? Because you know we’ve been sitting here for four or five thousand years? And why is that smile even giving way to a little laughter? Because that seems like a long time to you?
Joe turned sideways on his stool, facing Stern. He pointed at the mirror.
And just what have we seen on this worn reel of the mind’s eye?… Well first of all we started with a bare floor, bare like this room where we’ve been rambling over things for millennia, preparing a land and seascape for Homer. And that led you to a rug that was somebody else’s, in a home that was never yours, and with that we saw a pair of open French doors and a small balcony overlooking a harbor that could have been anywhere, but wasn’t. Smyrna, we’ll call the place. And Eleni going off and killing herself over time, and the massacres coming and Sivi going mad in that place, and you acquiring a morphine habit and everything slowly dying like that second cat in the story, the one that didn’t die straight off…. I mean my God, Stern, what is this tale of the century you’re telling me tonight? Morphine and suicide and alcohol and madness, and despair and murder and death…. What is this? What kind of a tale, for God’s sake?
Stern was very calm now. He was smiling his peculiar smile and listening to Joe, watching him, his face intent.
I’m not sure, said Stern quietly. Perhaps you can see it more clearly than I do, Joe. The tale of a man who wanted to believe? Who tried to believe?
Did believe, Stern. Does believe. And there should be no more of this talk of trying anymore, that’s all behind you. Who sent that prayer to Eleni, have you forgotten that? And who took a frightened Irish kid on the run in Palestine and gave him his first lessons in life? And what about Belle and Alice, and David and Anna and their father? And Liffy and Ahmad and Maud and Bernini, and all the others I don’t know anything about? Where would they have been without you? Don’t you know you’re the stuff of dreams to Bernini, don’t you know that? You are dreams to him, you’re what can be done in this world. Forget the secret codes and what you’ve done in the desert, the apparent Enigma. That aside, do you have any notion what you’ve given to people just by being who you are? Do you remember Sivi’s first words that horrible night in Smyrna? When he was raving? Do you remember?
No.
Find Stern, he said. Call Stern. That’s what Sivi was saying when he was going mad that night and not coming back. That’s what he was reaching for on his way down. For you, Stern, and don’t you know it, man? Don’t you know it by now? Don’t you know it’s always been like that for so many people?
Stern was staring at the counter. He frowned and moved his finger through the water, tracing circles and fighting his weariness, struggling with himself. Joe could see it….
And somewhere outside a commotion was slowly beginning to gather in the darkness…. Shouts and curses and drunken laughter, the victorious yells of men out celebrating an escape from death, some kind of triumphant drunken brawl working its way through the night.
Men turned nervously to glance at the shabby curtain hanging in the doorway of the bar, all that separated the half-lit room from the alley outside. The owner of the bar stopped what he was doing and turned uneasily to look at the curtain. Even Joe swung around to see what was happening, but Stern didn’t both to look. Stern went on staring down at the counter, tracing circles of water with his finger.
What is that out there anyway? asked Joe, irritated by the interruption.
Nothing, whispered Stern. Probably some soldiers back from the front, happy because they’re alive….
Well? said Joe. You do know how much you’ve done, don’t you? You don’t really feel it all comes down to trying to no end, do you?
Sometimes it does seem that way, whispered Stern, despite what you say. Other people and how they feel … well you know other people can never justify our lives for us. We have to do that for ourselves.
I do know, said Joe. You taught me that a long time ago. And as for the blackness sometimes, this dark and unyielding part of us that’s always ins
ide just waiting for us to give it a name and a dominion out there, well I’d certainly agree with you now with this war around us. And I’d also agree if we were talking about great peaceful new nations that should exist and don’t, in this part of the world or anywhere else. But that’s politics, Stern, and the temporal kind at that, and politics have never been more than a cover name, words, a code for systems which aren’t systems at all and can never be that, because the stuff in them, of them, is us. Not an abstraction but us, and we can’t be reduced to systems through words, codes, covers, any of it…. In fact if there’s one part of your thinking I’ll never understand, it’s how you could ever have mistaken that cover for reality. You, who’ve spent your life with these things and know about codes and covers and disguises, and what’s real and what isn’t….
The shouts and the screams and the shuffling outside were louder now and moving closer. More of the men in the bar were watching the curtain that separated the room from the night. Joe swung around to look again, saw nothing, turned back to Stern. His voice was urgent, intent.
A place on the map, Stern, a country in that sense? Is that what you really wanted? Border guards and visas and customs officials in uniforms? Is that really what your dream comes down to? You, who’ve spent your whole life crisscrossing every conceivable kind of border and proving they’re fictitious, arbitrary, meaningless? Other people may be confused by reality, Stern, but you know. How have you gotten yourself into thinking that real estate has anything to do with anything? Is that what those ancient Greeks went in search of? Place names? Is that why they launched their ships? The soul was their sea, you said that, and your whole life testifies that it’s what’s inside people that’s important. Not the code names or the cover jobs or the uniforms, not the colors on a map or the words in passports listing conflicting names of God…. Just look at yourself in those rags, Stern. Don’t they show you haven’t failed? Don’t they prove the land you sought is in men’s hearts? And isn’t that what your beloved Jerusalem is and always has been, a dream of peace for all people? Touch a human soul and you hear despair and hope, and although this real estate may be the world to us, it’s still just a speck of dust lost somewhere in an unknown corner of an unfathomable universe. So arrogance aside, there can be no certainties, and hope is what you’ve always given people. Always, Stern….
Nile Shadows (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 3) Page 42
