Sinai Tapestry jq-1

by Edward Whittemore

  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 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 what 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 long 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 when at the end of the 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.

  She could never have done that even if she hadn't had the responsibility of Bernini. It just wasn't in her to squander enough for a month in two days and then go without the rest of the time as he did.

  She also thought of his notebooks, the pages filled with neat handwriting, always new illusions deep at night when hope burned in the flame of a candle against the darkness. But the candlelight vanished at dawn and for him Easter would never come.

  He knew that, yet the beautiful dreams, the unreal promises, were always there. Why? Why did he do it?

  Suddenly she laughed. She had stopped in front of a mirror and was absentmindedly straightening her hair. The face in the mirror was wrinkled, the hair was gray. Where had it come from? Who was it?

  Not her. She was beautiful and young, she had just been chosen for the Olympic skating team and was going to Europe. Imagine it Europe.

  She laughed again. Bernini looked up from the floor where he was playing.

  What's so funny in the mirror?

  We are.

  Who's we?

  Grown-ups, dear.

  Bernini smiled.

  I know that. I've always known that. That's why I think I'm not going to be one, he said, and went back to building the Great Pyramid.

  When the Second World War broke out in Europe, Stern found her a job in Cairo. He was involved in various clandestine work and frequently away from Cairo, but when he returned they were always together. Now the long nights of talk and wine they had known in Athens before the war seemed far in the past when they drove out to the desert and sat silently beside each other under the stars, accepting the solitude, wondering what each new month might bring.

  Stern had aged severely in the time she had known him, or perhaps it was just that she always remembered him the way he had appeared that first afternoon by the Bosporus in the rain, hunched and tall and massive beside the railing, his very bulkiness reassuring. Now the bulky shape had gone and his body was terribly wasted. He moved unsteadily with his mouth set in a thin painful line, his speech hesitant, his face ravaged and deeply marked, his hands often trembling.

  In fact when Maud first saw him in Cairo, after a separation of nearly a year, she was so alarmed she went to see his doctor. The younger man listened to her and shrugged.

  What can I say. At fifty he has the insides of an eighty-year-old man. And there's his habit, do you know about that?

  Of course.

  Well then.
<
br />   Maud looked down at the backs of her hands. She turned them over.

  But isn't there something that can be done?

  What, go back? No. Change? He could, but it would probably be too late anyway.

  Change what, doctor? His name? His face? Where he was born?

  Oh I know, said the man wearily. I know.

  Maud shook her head. She was angry.

  No I don't think you do know. I think you're too young to know about a man like him.

  Maybe so. I was young once, I was only fifteen at Smyrna.

  She bit her lip and lowered her eyes.

  Please forgive me. I didn't know.

  No, there's no reason why you should.

  Two years passed before their last evening together. They had driven out to the desert near the pyramids.

  Stern had his bottles with him and Maud took a sip or two from the metal cup. Often she talked to keep him from depression but not that night She sensed something and waited.

  What do you hear from Bernini? he said at last.

  He rubbed his forehead.

  I mean about him.

  He's fine. They say he liked to play baseball.

  That's very American.

  Yes and the school's just right for him, he'll learn a trade and be able to get along on his own someday.

  It's best for him to be over there now doing that and you know I appreciate it. But it still bothers me that you had to send him, when you have next to nothing yourself.

  No that's unimportant, don't think about it. You would have done the same for someone, it just happened to be easier for me to get the money together.

  He drank again.

  Do you think you'll be going home, Maud, after the war?

  Yes, to be near Bernini, but it will be strange after all this time. My God, thirty-five years. I can't call it home anymore, I don't have a home. And you?

  He said nothing.

  Stern?

  He fumbled for the bottle, spilling what was left in the cup.

  Oh I'll keep on here. It'll be very different after the war. The British and French are finished in the Middle East. There'll be big changes. Anything's possible.

  Stern?