Sinai Tapestry jq-1

by Edward Whittemore

  What I'm trying to say is people around here seem to have all the time in the world for that, for waving incense and rocking and muttering and carrying on until twelve hundred years ago or two thousand years ago or whatever it is they're waiting for comes along again and the cymbals clang and the horns sound and everybody climbs on the horse to heaven at last and again, sparks flying and thunder shaking. Weird, that's what it is.

  He emptied his glass and choked. Stern ordered two more.

  Miserable stuff, said Joe, but it does clean your teeth. You know, Stern, this old article I was just telling you about, the Arab who thinks he was there watching when Mohammed made his move once upon a time, he's something like you in a way. I mean not because he was born both an Arab and a Jew, physical fact, but because he's gotten it into his head he's been living in Jerusalem since before people had such names, since before they were divided into this and that, know what I mean? So thinking the way he does he can play all kinds of tricks with reality the same as you do, pretend it doesn't exist or whatever, only his tastes don't run to politics and that kind of shit.

  Joe drank and made a face.

  I'm rambling too much, it's this poison seeping into my brain. Anyway there's also this Franciscan I know, the baking priest I call him because he's been spending the last sixty years here baking the same four loaves of bread. I ask him if he thinks he's following in the footsteps of our Savior with all this multiplication and if so shouldn't he be working with five loaves instead of four, and what does he do but put a twinkle in his eye and say No, nothing so grand for me, I wouldn't presume as much as that, I just bake four in order to have the parameters of life. Jaysus, know what I mean? Everybody's daft around here what with holy horses and muttering to themselves and too much incense cutting off the oxygen supply and too much rocking back and forth for sixty years baking heavenly bread. Daft, that's all.

  Dreaming up crazy impossible things like you. It's in the air or lack of it. No bog gas up here to keep a man in touch with the good slippery muck under his feet.

  Stern smiled in a kindly way.

  You seem depressed this evening.

  Me? Go on you say. Jaysus why would I be down just because I'm in a crazy city twelve hundred years or two thousand miles or four loaves of bread away from home on Christmas Eve? Why?

  He gulped the cognac and coughed.

  You got one of those awful cigarettes you carry?

  Stern gave him one. The first wisps of snow were blowing across the windows, the darkness outside was deeper. Stern watched him fidget nervously with the Victoria Cross, then with his beard.

  You know Joe, you've changed a lot in the last year.

  Sure I suppose I have, why not, I'm at the changing age. Not so long ago I was a true believer like one of those items you see around here on street corners mumbling over a pile of stones. Sixteen I was at the Dublin post office and then I went into training with an old U.S. cavalry musketoon for three years waiting for the day to come and come it did, calling itself the Black and Tans, so I went on the run in the mountains and it went all right for a while, but do you know what that means being on the run up there?

  Joe's voice was rising in anger. Stern watched him.

  Being cold and wet every minute of the day and night, that's what, and being alone and alone. Those mountains aren't meant for running, there's nothing but rain and sinking in up to your knee every step you take but I kept running because I had to, ran all night to surprise the bloody Blacks and Tans. You can't run up there but I did, just did is all, there was no other way to be doing what I was doing and do you know where it bloody well got me?

  Joe slammed his fist on the table. He was shaking. He grabbed Stern's sleeve and twisted it.

  To a vacant lot in Cork that's where, barefoot in rags because the people were starving and some of them were willing to turn a pound by turning informer to keep their children from starving to death. So they informed and the mountains shrank until I had no place to hide and ended up in Cork on the banks of the River Lee listening to shrieking sea gulls, an Easter Monday it was and me exhausted leaning against a ruined tannery wall with nothing to eat in three days, knowing it was all over, the three spires of St Finnbar's up there against the sky and me not smart enough then to ask myself what that Trinity in front of me really meant.

  But I'll tell you something else now. While those mountains were shrinking I was growing, I was taking those soggy heaps and putting them inside me and getting bigger, and that abandoned churchyard where I buried the old musketoon in the rain, that mud was consecrated by me and nobody else.

  You talk about your kingdom come to be, Stern. Well I fought for mine, I've done that and it threw me out, just kept pushing on me until hope was gone and everything was gone in that vacant lot across from St Finnbar's beside the River Lee and I had to escape my Ireland as a Poor Clare, Jaysus, me on the run as a nun do you see it. One frightened nun quiet as a mouse on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, that's what was left of me at the age of twenty.

  Joe let go of his sleeve and banged the table. Bloody motherlands and bloody causes, the hell with them all I say. I never want to see one again.

  Stern sat back and waited. There's more, he said after a moment.

  What's more? What are you talking about? This resentment and anger, the way you've changed. It's not really Ireland, you know that. That was over before you got here. It's something that's happened since then.

  Joe's eyes softened and all at once his lips began to tremble. He quickly covered his face with his hands but not before Stern saw the tears welling up. Stern reached out and held his arm.

  Joe, you don't always have to hide things in front of people, nobody's going to respect you more for that.

  Sometimes it's better to let the feelings out. Why don't you tell me about it?

  He kept his hands up. The quiet sobbing lasted a minute or two and then he spoke in an unsteady voice.

  What's to tell? There was a woman that's all and she left me. You see I just never imagined such a thing could happen, not when you loved someone and they loved you. I thought once you were together like that you just went on loving each other and being together, that's the way it is where I come from. Sure it was dumb of me, sure it was simpleminded not to think it could be another way but I just didn't know. If I wasn't a man in the Dublin post office I damn well became one during those next four years in the mountains, but women, I didn't know anything about women. Nothing. I loved her and I thought she loved me but she just fooled me, just tricked me and did me in like the fool I was.

  Stern shook his head sadly.

  Don't keep telling yourself that, it only makes you bitter and it might not have been that way at all. It could have been something else altogether. Was she older than you?

  Ten years, your age. How'd you know that?

  Just a guess. But look Joe, ten years is a long time. Perhaps something happened to her during those ten years that separated you, something she was afraid of, still afraid of, something that had hurt her so much she didn't dare face it again. People cut off love for all kinds of reasons but generally it has to do with them, not with somebody else. So it might have had nothing to do with you at all. Some experience from the past, who knows.

  Joe looked up. The anger had returned.

  But I trusted her don't you see, I loved her and it never even crossed my mind not to trust her, not once, never, I was too simpleminded for that. I just trusted her and loved her and thought it would go on forever and ever because I loved her, as if that were enough reason for anything to last. Well from now on there's no bloody room in me anymore for believing in things and fooling myself about them lasting forever. The baking priest has been baking the four boundaries of his life for sixty years, laying out his map, and sure you've got to do that, sure you've got to find the four walls of your own chances and I've done that now, they include me and no one else, just me.

  But Joe, where will that lead you?

  To what I
want, being in charge of myself. What do you mean?

  Stern spread his hands on the table.

  I mean being in charge, what's that?

  Nothing going wrong. Nobody throwing me out of my country, because I won't have a country. Nobody leaving me, because I won't be there where they can leave me. Not giving anybody a chance to hurt me ever again.

  That can still happen, Joe.

  Not if I have the power it can't.

  And the glory?

  Never mind the sarcasm. As a matter of fact though I don't give a damn about glory, being out of sight is fine with me as long as I have power. Tell me, who's going to be the richest oil merchant in the Middle East when he comes of age?

  Nubar Wallenstein, said Stern wearily.

  That's him. So what are you doing about it?

  Waiting for him to come of age.

  The hell with the bloody sarcasm, can't you see I mean what I'm telling you? I'm serious about this. I'm making plans now and before long I'm going to be playing a winning hand in this game they call Jerusalem.

  Stern shook his head. He sighed.

  You haven't got it right, Joe. You just haven't.

  Joe smiled and signaled for two more cognacs. He took one of Stern's cheap cigarettes and rolled it from one side of his mouth to the other.

  Haven't I now, Father? Is that the judgment today from the confessional? Well all I know is I've got it the way it is around here, pretty much the way it is. Maybe not the way the good book says it's supposed to be but still the way it is. So why don't we stop being sentimental on Christmas Eve and get down to talking about guns and money?

  He raised his tumbler.

  Doesn't bother you does it, Stern? It shouldn't, don't worry about it. Until I find something better to do I'll run guns to your Arab and Jewish and Christian country that doesn't exist and be happy doing it, what do I care that it's never going to exist. And you'll get good value from me, you know that. Just no more shit about somewhere being someplace because it isn't, I don't have a homeland anymore. My last home was in Jericho with a woman who left me.

  He grinned.

  Cold in Jerusalem wouldn't you say? It seems to be snowing in the land of milk and honey, do you see it now. So here's to your kind of power and mine. Here's to you, Father Stern.

  Stern slowly raised his glass.

  To you, Joe.

  In the spring of 1922 Stern was in Smyrna to meet with his principle contact in Turkey, a wealthy secret Greek activist. The man's chief interest was in seeing Constantinople returned to the Greeks, for which a Greek army was then fighting Kemal and the Turks in the interior. But he had been working with Stern for ten years helping him smuggle arms to nationalist movements in Syria and Iraq, ever since his and Stern's aims had come to coincide during the Balkan wars.

  In fact it was Sivi who frequently provided Stern with the money he was always so desperately lacking, the same Sivi who had once befriended Maud and helped her with money after the death of her husband Yanni, his much younger half-brother.

  In addition the notorious old man, now seventy, was the undisputed queen of sexual excess in Smyrna, where he always appeared at the opera dressed in flowing red gowns and a large red hat spilling with roses to be plucked off and tossed to his friends when he made his entrance into his box, his ruby rings flashing and a long unlit cigar firmly fixed between his teeth. Because of the reputation of his father as one of the founding statesmen of the modern Greek nation, because of his own eccentric manner and wealth and because of Smyrna's importance as, the most international city in the Middle East, he was an extremely effective agent with influential connections in many places, particularly in the numerous Greek communities found everywhere.

  He lived alone with his secretary, a young Frenchwoman once educated in a convent but long since seduced by the sensual air of Smyrna society and the salon Sivi ran there. Stern's meeting with him, as usual, was at three o'clock in the morning since Sivi's entertainments ran late. Stern left his hotel ten minutes before that and strolled along the harbor to see that he wasn't being followed. At three he slipped into an alley and walked quickly around to the back door of the villa. He knocked quietly, saw the peephole open and heard the bolt slide. The secretary closed the door gently behind him.

  Hello, Theresa.

  Hello again. You look tired.

  He smiled. Why not, the old sinner will never meet me at a decent hour. How's he been lately?

  In bed. His gums.

  What about them?

  He says they hurt, he won't eat

  Oh that, don't worry about it, it happens every three or four years. He gets it into his head his teeth are falling out and becomes afraid he might have to make a public appearance without his cigar in place. It only lasts a week or two. Have the cook send in soft-boiled eggs.

  She laughed. Thank you, doctor. She rapped on the bedroom door and there was a soft thump on the other side. Stern raised his eyebrows.

  A rubber ball, she whispered, it means come in. No unnecessary words. It seems opening his mouth to fresh air might hasten the ravaging of his gums. I'll see you before you leave.

  Sivi was sitting in bed propped up by an immense pile of red satin pillows. He wore a thick red dressing gown and a swath of red flannel that entirely covered his head and was tied under his chin. The large olive wood logs crackling in the fireplace gave the only light in the room. Stern pulled aside a drape and found all the windows locked and shuttered against the mild spring night. He stripped off his jacket in the oppressive heat and sat down on the edge of the bed. He felt the old man's pulse while Sivi snifled at a pan of steaming water on the night table.

  Terminal?

  Surprisingly, no. In fact the flesh isn't even cold yet

  Don't joke about it. I may well go within the hour.

  How can you breathe in here?

  I can't, it's one of my difficulties. The oxygen to my head has been cut off. Who did you say you were?

  A laborer. I load tobacco on the pier in front of your villa.

  The one to the left or the right?

  Left.

  Excellent. Keep up the good work but watch out for your back. Heavy lifting can damage the back. Is it day or night out?

  Day.

  I thought so. I can feel that unhealthy sunshine creeping along the shutters trying to ooze inside. Winter or summer, did you say?

  Winter. It's snowing.

  Preposterous, I was sure of it, I've been feverish for hours.

  You know when your jaw falls off that flannel sling won't be any help.

  Nonsense, all illusions are helpful.

  You know something else? In your declining years you're beginning to look more and more like that portrait downstairs of your paternal grandmother.

  The old man wagged his head.

  I wouldn't mind that particularly, it's an admirable proposition. She was a pious and honorable and hardworking woman as well as the mother of one of the heroes of Greek independence, who was a good friend of Byron by the way, you probably know that. But what you don't know is that the last time I was in Malta, I hired as my valet none other than the grandson of Byron's Venetian gondolier, his favorite pimp and catamite. The grandfather, Tito, led an Albanian regiment in our war and then later was stranded in Malta, destitute, through a series of scandalous misadventures involving his former occupations. What, this intriguing news from a Maltese grandson doesn't interest you? Well tell me what's new in the outside world then. I've been bedridden since the Mahdi took Khartoum.

  That phallus you're using as a knocker on the back door is new. It's awful.

  Sivi laughed happily and sniffed his pan of steaming water.

  It does add a touch, doesn't it Well naturally there's no reason to hide the general state of affairs around here and anyway, I have a certain reputation to maintain. My father had a son at the age of eighty-four and although that's not my line, virility is in our blood.

  Stern handed him a piece of paper and he fix
ed his pincenez to study the figures.

  Ah, my eyesight is deteriorating.

  Degenerating.

  Damascus this time.

  Yes.

  When?

  By the middle of June if you can do it.

  Easily.

  And I'd like to set up a meeting here in September.

  I don't blame you at all, it's a lovely place to be in September. Who is going to have the pleasure of visiting here and meeting me?

  A man who works for me in Palestine.

  Fine, guests from the Holy Land are always especially welcome. Is he on your Arab side or your Jewish side?

  Neither.

  Ah, from a more obscure region of your multiple personality. Druse perhaps?

  No.

  Armenian?

  No.

  He can't be Greek, I'd already know him.

  He isn't.

  Arab Christian?

  No.

  Not a Turk?

  No.

  Well we've accounted for the main non-European elements of Smyrna society so he must be some kind of European.

  Some kind. Irish.

  Sivi reached down beside the bed and brought up a bottle of raid and two glasses.

  Doctor, I thought you might prescribe something like this so I had it ready just in case. You are aware how well the Greek army is doing in the interior?

  I am.

  And precisely when things are going well, along you come introducing a volatile Irish possibility? Do you have any immediate plans for China? Not that it matters, I wouldn't visit either of those outlandish places.