And the strange muddled story about his former secretary that obsessed him, that he repeated over and over, how Theresa had gone to a place called Ein Karem in Palestine, there to suffer some kind of terrible self-inflicted penance in an Arab leper colony.
It was inexplicable. How could people change so much?
Stern shook his head. It wasn't time to speak, her memory of standing beside the water was too recent.
Sivi? Yes he had known him once, anyone who had ever spent any time in Smyrna had known Sivi. Yes and Theresa too. He nodded for her to go on.
Kind and gentle Sivi, totally broken when she found him, grave and sad and bewildered, living in a small squalid room near the Bosporus, so confused he often forgot to feed himself.
She had decided to devote herself to caring for him, it was the best thing she could do. She cleaned for him and washed and cooked, and for a while she felt stronger. Helping Sivi gave life some meaning again.
But then that awful rainy afternoon came when she went to pick him up at the hospital after work as she did every day and found him strapped to a bed, beyond the impenetrable barrier of madness, the same afternoon Stern had found her by the water.
And now after forty-three years what did she have?
The memory of one exquisite month long ago on the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba. That and the son she had conceived there.
Would you like to meet him? asked Maud.
Yes very much.
She looked at him shyly.
Please don't laugh. I named him Bernini. The dreams were crumbling but not quite gone. I suppose I hoped someday he would also carve his own beautiful fountains and stairways to somewhere.
Stern smiled.
And why not? It's a good name.
But Maud looked suddenly troubled. She took his hand and said nothing.
In the small apartment above the Bosporus, Stern tried to amuse the boy with stories from his childhood.
He described the first clumsy balloon he had built when he was about Bernini's age.
Did you fly?
For a yard or two, depending on how hard I pushed. After that I just went bumping down the hillside.
Why didn't you put wheels on the basket? Then you could have used it as a sailboat and crossed the desert that way.
I could have I suppose, but I didn't. I kept trying to build better balloons and after a while I made one that would fly.
I wouldn't have done that, said the boy distantly. Sailing would have been good enough for me.
They were sitting on the narrow terrace. Maud came out with tea and the boy lay down on his stomach and gazed at the ships plowing up and down the straits. When Stern left, Maud walked to the corner with him.
He's often like that, I don't know how to explain it. He talks for a minute or two about something and then drops it as if he were afraid to say too much, as if by touching certain thoughts he was afraid they would go away. He wouldn't ask you why you wanted to fly for example, nor would he tell you why he would have preferred to sail. Instead he just lay down and watched the boats. I knew his imagination was working and he was thinking about those things, but he wouldn't talk about it with us.
He's young.
But not that young and sometimes it frightens me. His thoughts don't always follow each other, somehow the sequence is wrong. Again it's as if he were leaving things out on purpose. In school he can't get along at all except for drawing.
Stern smiled.
With his name that's fine.
But Maud didn't smile.
No. He used to draw at home and now he doesn't even do that anymore. He just lies on his elbows and gazes at things, especially the boats. And there's something worse, he can't read. Doctors say there's nothing wrong but he can't seem to learn. I mean he's already twelve years old.
She stopped. Stern put his arm around her. He didn't know how to help.
Listen. He's healthy and good-natured and even though he may be a little too much inside himself right now, that's not necessarily bad or wrong. After all he seems happy enough and isn't that the most important thing?
There were tears in her eyes.
I don't know. I just don't know what to do.
Well at least you could share the burden. Why not get in touch with the boy's father? He's still in Jerusalem, near enough.
She moved her feet uneasily.
I couldn't do that. I'm too ashamed of the way I treated him.
But that was twelve years ago, Maud.
I know but I still couldn't bring myself to do it. I was too cruel to him and none of it was his fault. That would take a kind of strength I don't have yet.
Stern looked at the ground. She took his hands and tried to smile.
Well don't worry about it. It'll be all right
Good, he said in a soft voice. I know it will be.
And now you're going to be away for a while?
He grinned.
It shows that desperately?
A man on his travels, yes.
About a month probably. I'll cable.
Bless you, she whispered, for being who you are.
She went up on her tiptoes and kissed him.
Stern used to tell her how his father had somehow managed to mark his memory as a child with every name and event from his long years of wandering, in the course of time narrating his entire journey much as a blind man might have done in the days when there was no other way for the stages of the past to be passed from generation to generation, in effect rewriting the haj of his life in indelible ink upon his young son's mind, swirling stroke around stroke in the complex etching of a spiritual stylus.
Yet strangely in those myriad experiences, those majestic flowing volumes that together comprised Strongbow's legendary voyage through the desert, never once had the old explorer talked about the gentle Persian girl he had loved so dearly in his youth for a few weeks, no more, before she was carried off in an epidemic. Why?
Why should he have? answered Maud. He had loved her, that's all, what more was there to say?
Besides, when we look back on it there are always mysteries in someone's life and perhaps the gentle Persian girl is his.
You may be right, said Stern vaguely, standing and then sitting down again. But Maud didn't think he was really talking about the Persian girl and Strongbow. There had to be something else on his mind the way he was acting, something much more personal. She waited but he didn't go on.
What else did he never mention? she said after a moment
It's very curious, but the Sinai Bible of all things. Surely he knew about it Why that one secret held back?
Why do you think?
Stern shrugged. He said he couldn't imagine why. He got up again and began roaming around the room.
When did he die? I don't think you've ever told me that.
August 1914, the very month the nineteenth century came to an end. You know I remember that prophecy you said O'Sullivan Beare's father made two months before that, that seventeen of his sons were going to be killed in the Great War. Well Strongbow must have had the gift too. He was ninety-five years old and he'd gone blind by then but his health was good and his mind was certainly as clear as ever.
The main thing seemed to be simply that he felt he'd lived long enough. I was there with him in Ya'qub's old tent during those last days and that's exactly what he said. It's enough.
Ya'qub had already died?
Yes, but only a few months before, the two of them inseparable to the end, always talking and talking over their endless cups of coffee. Anyway, after he said it was enough he did something that couldn't have been a coincidence.
Stern frowned and lapsed into silence. He seemed to drift away.
Well?
I'm sorry, what?
The thing he did, what was it?
Oh. He predicted the hour of his death and went to sleep to await it.
And never woke up.
That's right.
And what wasn't a coinciden
ce?
Dying like that. It was a story he'd heard long ago from some bedouin called the Jebeliyeh. Around 1840
a blind mole did the same thing at the foot of Mt Sinai after talking to a hermit on the mountain. And of course you know who the hermit was.
Wallenstein.
Yes, Wallenstein. A hermit in 1840 and a blind mole in 1914. Strongbow was obviously dreaming Wallenstein's dream when he died. Dreaming of the Sinai Bible.
Once more Stern's voice trailed off and his attention drifted away. Maud waited as he restlessly crossed the room to the window and returned and went back to the window again.
And if it was so important to him, you still can't imagine why he never told you about it?
No, said Stern quickly.
A thunderstorm had broken overhead and lightning suddenly lit the room in a violent burst but Stern seemed unaware of it.
No, he repeated. No.
Maud gazed at the floor. She wanted to believe him but she didn't. She knew it wasn't true, there was no way it could be true. And even though she knew the two old men only through Stern, she could picture exactly what had happened. It was as clear to her as if she had been there and seen Ya'qub and Strongbow marching back and forth between their almond trees in one of their interminable rambling discussions.
Ya'qub saying merrily that this was fine, all the things the boy was learning, but then suddenly serious and tugging Strongbow's sleeve and whispering earnestly that one mystery must be excluded from their teachings, at least that, for the boy's sake, one for him to discover alone by himself.
The former hakim pondering the words and nodding solemnly over this piece of wisdom, the two of them sitting up late that night in their tent trying to decide which mystery it should be among the thousands they shared after all their years of tramping from Timbuktu to Persia, of tracing a hillside in the Yemen and going nowhere.
So Stern was lying to himself. He pretended all his days and nights were taken up with his clandestine cause but it just wasn't so. There was something else more important to him.
Dizzily then she recalled things he had said and all at once it became obvious. For years he too had been secretly in search of the Sinai Bible.
Wallenstein. Strongbow. O'Sullivan Beare and now Stern.
Where would it ever end?
She didn't want to talk about it but she knew she couldn't just ignore it, so finally she asked the question.
Stern, what made you begin looking for the Sinai Bible?
It was late afternoon and he was pouring himself a glass of vodka. His shoulders seemed to twitch and he poured more than he usually did.
Well, when I realized what it meant I had to. What was in it I mean. What's still in it wherever it is.
And what's that, Stern? For you?
Well everything. All my ideas and hopes, what I was really looking for years ago in Paris when I thought of a new nation here, a homeland for Arabs and Christians and Jews alike, you see what I mean don't you? That homeland could have been here in the beginning before people were divided into those names, the Sinai original might show that. And if it does I would have proof, or at least I could prove it to myself even if to no one else.
Prove what? What you've done? What you work for? Your life? What?
Well yes, all those things, everything.
Maud shook her head.
That damned book.
Why say that? Think what it could mean if it were found.
Maybe, I don't know anymore. It just makes me angry.
But why does it make you angry? Because of O'Sullivan Beare? Because he wanted to find it so much?
Yes and no. Perhaps it was just that then, now it's something more.
What?
She shrugged wearily.
I'm not sure. The way it obsesses people. The way it sends lives careening off in all directions.
Wallenstein in his cave for seven years going mad while the ants eat his eyeballs, Strongbow marching through the desert for forty years never able to sleep in the same place twice, Joe and his wild search for treasures that don't exist, you and your impossible nation. Why are there these mirages that pull men and pull them on and on and on? Why does it have to be the same with all of you? You hear about that damn book and you go crazy. You all do.
She stopped. He took her hand.
But it's not the Sinai Bible that does it, is it?
More vodka?
Maud?
No I know it isn't, of course it's not. But all the same I wish that damn fanatic Wallenstein had never had his insane dream. Why couldn't he have left us alone?
But he hasn't got anything to do with it either. It was there and all he did was find it and live it, or relive it and bring it back to us, all the things we've always wanted. Canaan, just imagine it. The happy land of Canaan three thousand years ago.
It wasn't happy.
It might have been. No one can say until the original is found.
Yes they can. You know it wasn't
He didn't answer.
Damn it, say you do. Admit it. Say you know.
All right then, I know.
She sighed and began stroking his hand absent-mindedly. The anger in her face had drained away.
And yet, she whispered.
Yes that's right, that's always it And yet And yet.
She picked up the vodka bottle and looked at it.
Christ, she muttered. Oh Christ.
Yes, said Stern with a thin smile. Among others.
Dizzying and more, for although O'Sullivan Beare had the account of the Bible all mixed up, confusing it with the vague stories Haj Harun told him, Stern actually knew where the Sinai original was. He knew it had been buried in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem.
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.
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