Jerusalem Poker (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 2)

by Edward Whittemore

  What happened?

  I did a two-page outline and began to have doubts. Strongbow rightly notes that there are nine sexes, and being only several of them, how could I attempt to be accurate overall? No, I realized I couldn’t be so I abandoned the project. Such grand designs seem to be no longer possible. Now Alexander the Great would have been much better prepared for such an undertaking. We know he loved several women and a number of boys, his horse, a male companion or two and at least one eunuch. And if we know all that, just imagine what we don’t know. Indeed, a person could be more comprehensive in those days.

  Sivi laughed. He raised his nearly empty glass of ouzo and tipped it, gazing at the milky liquid left in the bottom. Munk shook his head.

  You’re not just a shameless romantic, Sivi. You’re a shameless aging romantic and that’s the very worst sort. To be young and romantic is understandable. But at your age? After all the grief and torment you’ve seen in the world?

  Sivi nodded. He stroked the end of his white moustache.

  It’s true. I used to try to fight it, to get up each morning prepared to curse and be gloomy. An ache here and a pain there? Neither mind nor body functioning as well as the day before? Evidence, you would think, that the world is indeed a dreadful place to live. Yes, I had my good intentions of a dark nature, but as it happened they never survived the bedroom where I found myself that morning, no matter how sordid the place might appear at first glance. I’d wake up and look around me and think, Oh my God, what have you done now? What have you gotten yourself into this time? How could you possibly have behaved that way last night? Yesterday at this hour you were a total wreck, but to have sunk even lower? It’s unimaginable. This is the very end.

  And so on. Darkness at dawn, in other words. Terminal despair at dawn. The worst thoughts to be found in the land of the living. But then what did I spy as I lay there beyond hope in that ghastly place? What else, a window. Even the most wretched bedrooms in Smyrna have windows. So over to the window I’d go and raise the shade and stick my head out, what little was left of it, and what do you suppose was waiting for me out there? The Aegean, and the light of the Aegean. And at that moment I knew any attempt at despair that day could only fail. There was too much to see out there, and to feel and hear and smell and taste. So in time I stopped fighting it. I had no choice but to accept my love of life, and of love, as incurable.

  Then too I was lazy, which was the real reason I never got on with a massive scholarly study. It would have meant giving up too many things, added Sivi, wagging his head and staring lasciviously at the thin milky dregs in his glass of ouzo.

  Munk laughed.

  In your hands everything becomes obscene.

  Not so, said Sivi. Merely observed in its true light, which is essentially sensual.

  I’m afraid the sun with its true light has already set, you old rogue. Put down your suggestive glass.

  Almost three years passed before Munk found his dream as Sivi had predicted he would, not by the sea but in the desert. And he did so, curiously, through the unexpected intercession of his old friend from the hectic weeks of the first Balkan war, the diminutive officer who had been the Japanese military attaché in Constantinople.

  Then Major, now Colonel, Kikuchi had returned to Japan before the First World War. Toward the end of the winter of 1921 he wrote an urgent letter to Munk from Tokyo saying he had just learned that his older twin brother, the former Baron Kikuchi, an esthete and collector of French Impressionist paintings, had converted to Judaism while visiting Jerusalem on his way home from Europe. He was now residing in the town of Safad in Palestine.

  The colonel explained that his brother’s health had always been delicate and he was concerned about living conditions in postwar Palestine. Furthermore, in the last months his brother’s letters had taken on a new feverish quality that disturbed the colonel, remembering as he did the virulent diseases that had stricken foreigners exposed to Turkish meat during the days of the Ottoman Empire.

  Is the situation still as dangerous as before the war? wrote the colonel in his precise hand. Or have the Allies cleaned up the meat in the Middle East? When my brother was a Buddhist he never ate meat, of course, but now that he’s a Jew I don’t know what he might be eating. Please, dear Munk, could you possibly go to this town of Safad, which looks pitifully small on the maps, and see if my twin brother is well?

  Munk cabled that he was on his way and left for Safad immediately. With his affectionate memories of Colonel Kikuchi he would have gone in any case, but the circumstances particularly intrigued him.

  In Safad he learned that the former Baron Kikuchi had pursued rabbinical studies there, specializing in medieval Jewish mysticism. He was now known as Rabbi Lotmann, a highly respected but eccentric figure in occult circles. It seemed he had left Safad a few weeks earlier, although no one could quite remember the day. Nor could anyone say when he might return, or where he had gone. As Munk questioned the scholars it became obvious they were being evasive.

  Why? What were they afraid he might discover?

  You know I’m Jewish, said Munk, and of course they did, the Szondi name having been made famous by the Sarahs. Yet still the scholars would tell him nothing. Finally Munk went to the chief rabbi of Safad to try to find an explanation for the way he had been received.

  In the case of Rabbi Lotmann, answered the old man solemnly, the fact that you’re Jewish isn’t enough.

  It’s not?

  No.

  Why?

  Because there’s more these days. But I’ll say nothing more.

  Bewildered, Munk went on to Jerusalem hoping to find another man he had met during the first Balkan war, an Arabic Jew named Stern who ran guns against the British and French in the Middle East, an agent who knew a great deal about clandestine affairs in Palestine and elsewhere.

  Fortunately Stern was in Jerusalem. As usual he asked Munk for money and Munk gave it to him. Munk then explained whom he was seeking and what he had been told in Safad.

  Stern nodded. Slowly he smiled.

  The Japanese rabbi? Yes, I’ve heard of him. He’s an underground Zionist. Newly involved but very active.

  Munk was astounded. Stern’s smile broadened.

  I agree, Munk. Stranger things may have happened lately but none that I’m aware of. There was a possibility the British had begun to watch him so it was decided he should go into hiding for a while.

  Where? Turkey? Europe?

  Stern shook his head.

  Not that man. Hiding, yes. Running away, no. He’s still here, he’s in the Sinai. St Catherine’s monastery. And I’d advise you to approach him in a circumspect manner. They say he’s an expert archer. He can hit a shilling at a hundred yards.

  What?

  Stern laughed.

  Zen and archery, Munk, the way of the Japanese warrior. It seems the former Baron Kikuchi had an old-fashioned upbringing. And take a coat with you if you’re going down to the Sinai. The nights are still very cold down there.

  It was Munk’s first visit to St Catherine’s. He learned that Rabbi Lotmann was using his Japanese name at the monastery, to avoid the possibility of informers identifying him with the Lotmann occultist in Safad whose clandestine Zionist role was under suspicion. Accordingly, he had presented himself to the Greek monks of the place as a Nestorian Christian from China on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, his wish to stay at St Catherine’s motivated by a special interest in praying on Moses’ mountain.

  Being unfamiliar with Oriental names in that remote setting, and oblivious to transitory historical matters, the monks had readily accepted the presence of a pious Chinese Christian called Baron Kikuchi, unaware the name couldn’t be Chinese, unaware as well that the Nestorian community in China had ceased to exist centuries ago.

  During the hours of daylight, Munk was told, the Chinese pilgrim removed himself to the far side of the mountain to pray in solitude at a collapsible altar he carried over there in two parts, setting up collapsible
altars on holy mountains evidently being a Nestorian custom.

  Upon returning at sundown the Chinese pilgrim ate his evening meal and then sat up late in his cell praising God by playing music on an unusual stringed instrument that lay flat on the floor, evidently another Nestorian custom. This peculiar form of nightly Oriental worship, said the Greek monks, went on for at least three or four hours every evening.

  From its description Munk recognized the stringed instrument as a koto, the ancient Japanese harp he had heard Colonel Kikuchi play in Constantinople during their rare moments of leisure. As for the collapsible altar in two parts, Munk understood what that was when he saw Rabbi Lotmann returning to the monastery that first evening with a cylindrical red lacquer case slung over his shoulder and a light thin canvas case over six feet long swinging in his hand.

  A samurai bow and quiver.

  Evidently the former Baron Kikuchi was taking advantage of his stay at the monastery by practicing his archery.

  After the evening meal Munk joined the Greek monks in the dark corridor outside of Kikuchi’s cell, where they regularly gathered each night to sit on the floor and listen to Kikuchi’s exotic music. The selections that evening ranged from sacred Japanese court music to Noh drama. Sitting very erect in a formal kimono with his feet tucked beneath him, Kikuchi announced each piece beforehand to the assembly of totally baffled Greek monks.

  The closing selection was especially beautiful to Munk’s ears, a thirteenth-century kagura used for the most solemn Japanese religious rites. Maintaining his disguise, Kikuchi had referred to it as a weird Chinese composition. In any case the Greek monks found it incomprehensible.

  At the conclusion of the concert the Greek monks crossed themselves and drifted away. Only then did Munk step forward from the shadows into the doorway of Kikuchi’s cell, which was lit by a single candle. He had decided to speak in German so they wouldn’t be understood by any monk who might still be lingering in the corridor.

  Baron Kikuchi, that was lovely.

  Thank you, sir.

  And I suspect it may be the strangest music ever heard at St Catherine’s.

  I suspect you may be right.

  Especially that last piece you played. Your weird Chinese composition, as you called it.

  Weird, murmured Kikuchi. That’s what it is all right.

  Because of its semitones?

  What?

  Yes. In fact there were semitones all evening.

  Now I think that’s definitely weird, said Kikuchi. But why do you think so?

  Because I’ve been told Chinese scales don’t have semitones. Japanese scales do.

  Is that so? You mean that although I’m a Chinese pilgrim, my music is Japanese? This is certainly getting weirder all the time. Do you think there could be some sort of divine influence radiating from the holy mountain above us and splitting my tones? Just halving them on the spot, so to speak?

  Kikuchi laughed gaily.

  Well it’s weird all right. Weird. I picked the right word. By the way, where did you learn about Oriental music?

  From a friend. A hero of the Russo-Japanese War who saved his company on a barren Manchurian plain by piling up the dead horses of the Cossacks as a barricade against their incessant attacks. Later, I might add, when we were both serving as military attachés in Constantinople, the meat served by the Turks was just as bad as any rotting Cossack horse.

  The little Japanese aristocrat jumped to his feet.

  Are you Munk, then? My brother often spoke of you.

  Kikuchi, delighted, shook hands. Their conversation lasted most of the night and the next morning they went out to walk across the hills together, talking all the while, Kikuchi occasionally pausing to take aim at some distant patch of sand and fire off an arrow.

  Gentle in manner and tiny in stature, the present Rabbi Lotmann had been born the hereditary leader of a powerful landowning clan in northern Japan, but both his title and his numerous estates had passed to his younger twin when he embraced a foreign religion. To anyone this would have been a striking testament of faith, but what most impressed Munk was that Kikuchi had then gone on to become a passionate Zionist.

  Munk himself, although recognizing the appeal of Zionism to the oppressed Jews of eastern Europe, had never taken any particular interest in it himself. Somehow it had seemed irrelevant in the Empire of the Habsburgs before the war.

  Yet here was an aristocrat from an utterly alien land halfway around the world, a rich esthete from a unique ancient culture who had devoted the first thirty-five years of his life to archery and painting, now pacing the foothills of Mt Sinai eagerly quoting Der Judenstaat from memory to prove the absolute necessity of a Jewish homeland.

  Munk was astonished. The tiny man’s fervor was undeniable, his arguments were entirely persuasive. Munk found himself being drawn in more and more deeply.

  On his third day at the monastery an incident occurred that he would never forget. It was late in the afternoon and the two of them were walking along a lower slope of the mountain, a broad descending sweep of sand. A sharp wind had risen and was buffeting them from the east.

  By now Munk was more than a little dazed by their hours and hours of conversation. The wind distracted him and he found himself listening to it. Kikuchi, noticing this, had been silent for some time.

  All at once Kikuchi stopped in the middle of the expanse of sand and began tracing Japanese characters with the tip of his bow. He worked quickly, scrambling up and down the slope slashing away at the sand, leaving behind him long columns of intricate curves and crossed lines and softened angles that flowed effortlessly from one complex to the next. When he was finished he came sliding down the slope and stood beside Munk once more, leaning on his bow and smiling up at his handiwork.

  It’s a cursive script, he said. Not much used anymore, I’m afraid. Difficult even for us to understand.

  What does it say? asked Munk dreamily.

  Kikuchi laughed.

  Several things. At the beginning up there to the right is a haiku, written by a poor poet upon the death of his youngest daughter. He had twelve children and they all died before him, but that little girl was his favorite. It translates, The world of dew is a world of dew, and yet. And yet. Beneath it is the name of a famous Shinto shrine in northern Japan where our ancestral lands are. Up at the top again are some technical terms used in esthetics. Below that the name of the seventh Taoist sage, below that my mother’s name, she taught me to play the koto. The next column is breakfast.

  Breakfast? said Munk.

  Yes, the breakfast my brother and I always ate as boys. Rice and pickles and a certain kind of white fish, grilled, served cold. Lastly, lower down and off to the left, are two signatures. Baron Kikuchi and Rabbi Lotmann. The hillside is me, in short. Watch.

  He fitted an arrow to his bow and took aim. The arrow sped up the slope and buried itself deeply in the middle of the swirling characters. Munk stared at the arrow standing there in the sand. After a moment Kikuchi touched him on the sleeve.

  Well?

  I’m sorry, I must have been lost somewhere. What did you say?

  The hillside, Munk. What do you see?

  Munk gazed up at it. The wind was blowing away the characters, filling the lines with sand. Already they were mostly obliterated. Only a few dissolving strokes remained here and there. Kikuchi was laughing loudly, tugging at his sleeve.

  So quickly and nothing but my arrow is left? What happened to my delicate script? All those beautiful suggestive characters with the myriad meanings and memories they hold for me. Where have they fled?

  By the time the former Baron Kikuchi had retrieved his arrow the sandy slope was bare again, swept smooth by the wind. The present Rabbi Lotmann snorted and laughed as they turned back toward the monastery.

  When you told me about your great-grandfather, Munk, the one who was an explorer, you implied that some mysterious force had driven him to do so much in only eight years. But I don’t think it was mysterio
us at all. I think he decided he wanted to drive an arrow into the hillside and he did so. Your family remembers that arrow as the love letters he sent to his wife. But as marvelous as they were, and as important as they became to your family, I don’t imagine it was exactly that way for him. For him, the pride he took in those eight years was his arrow.

  Kikuchi snorted, he laughed.

  Yes. Despite the ultimate mystery of the universe there’s still one small truth we can live by. Choice. Never merely to take what we are given or inherit, but to choose. It may not seem like much but it’s the difference between meanings and memories that disappear in the sand, and something that doesn’t. Choice is the arrow. For then, at least, we play a part in making ourselves.

  The next morning Munk said he was going away for a few days to be with himself. In answer Kikuchi merely nodded, his face expressionless.

  The nightly koto concert was already underway the evening Munk arrived back at St Catherine’s. Quietly he walked down the corridor to Kikuchi’s cell, with a chair and large case, and sat down in the doorway. The Greek monks looked at him in surprise but Kikuchi seemed not to take any notice.

  The first notes from Munk’s cello blended uneasily with the koto, but after a few minutes the two men found their way together and the music from their instruments mixed richly in accord.

  Kikuchi smiled happily up at him.

  A wise decision, Munk, an arrow in the hillside. There is never any better cause than a homeland for people who lack it. And tonight, I think, we are definitely hearing the strangest music ever played at St Catherine’s.