Jerusalem Poker (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 2)

by Edward Whittemore

Yes, trailing his great long bloody sword up there in the garden, weeping and wandering around and around lost in the flowers, lost in the smoke and the flames, just lost, that old blessed sack of bones. Tears my heart it does, him and his tattered yellow cloak and his rusty Crusader’s helmet, standing there in the garden holding up his sword, preparing to charge the Turkish soldier who found us hiding there. Been dead before he took a step of course, the rifle aimed straight at his middle, but there he was ready to defend the innocent, defending his Holy City of life in terrible Smyrna with an old sword, awful it was, that moment, I died for him a dozen times before I got the pistol up and shot that soldier in the head. And you know what he’s been asking me recently? If we shouldn’t arm ourselves because of the way the Arabs and the Jews are going at each other here. The two of us I mean, imagine that. The two of us standing up together to defend Jerusalem. What do you say to something like that? It’s daft and all too real.

  And the other thing, Joe. The other thing up there.

  Joe rubbed his eyes. He emptied his glass.

  Yes that too. All right, we’ve got to do that too. The little Armenian girl on the quay that night dressed in her Sunday best, her Sunday black, because it was a Sunday. Maybe eight years old and raped and bloodied within a breath of her life, lying out there all alone in that hell of screams and smoke and dying. Dying, that’s all, the fires on one side and the harbor on the other and no place to go, no place to take her, just dying in unbearable pain. And what you did, Stern, was what I should have done, and I wish I had done it so it wouldn’t be tormenting you now. Please, she said in Armenian, and you told me what it meant but I didn’t do anything so you did, and I should have done it but I was too angry at you and Maudie and the whole fucking bloody world. Mad at myself I mean, let’s keep it honest. So after all, Stern, what did you do but end a dying child’s pain? Ended the torture. There was no way she could have lived through that night.

  Joe?

  I tell you Haj Harun did the same thing and that’s why he was weeping in the garden. It happened outside the garden. There was an old Armenian man who’d had his eyes torn out and he was walking into the flames, finished. Strands of bloody tissue hanging from his empty eye sockets. Tears of blood, Stern. Immovable tears. For the love of God, he was screaming, kill me before I burn. And Haj Harun did. Gentle harmless old soul that he is, he raised his sword and swung it and after that I had to take him by the hand and lead him back to the garden or he never would have found it, he was crying so hard. And Stern, he’s been on the losing side for three thousand years defending the Holy City, everybody’s Holy City. You’re always on the losing side in such a game but he goes on. Always. Losing is all. So what did you do that was so bad?

  Stern’s hands were shaking. He reached out and gripped Joe’s arm.

  I’ll tell you what I did. I took a knife. I slit her throat.

  Oh Christ man, screamed Joe, it wasn’t your fault.

  Stern’s chair went crashing backward onto the floor. He lurched to his feet and stared at Joe with wild eyes, backing away from the table. Backing away and stumbling clumsily across the room.

  Wait, called Joe, you can’t just go on running. We’ll talk. Don’t go on running.

  Stern stared, a trapped animal backing away, big and hunched and shapeless. He knocked over a chair and kept on backing away, hit a table and backed into the door, frantically groping for the door handle behind him, trapped, trying to escape.

  Stern, for Christ’s sake. Wait.

  The door banged open. An empty frame of darkness, snow swirling across it. Joe felt the blast of cold air all the way at the back of the room. He sat there looking at the night and the snow in the empty doorway.

  Don’t go on running. Once, in this very room, Stern had said the same thing to him. A dozen years ago that was, before Smyrna. Strange, thought Joe, how the words that were meant to help were always the same. Someone said them to you when you were sinking, trying to help, and then a dozen years later you were saying the same words to them. Saying and saying, going around, it never ended. But you just couldn’t help running sometimes, just couldn’t, you ran away from yourself, just had to, trying to survive in the cold and the darkness. Everyone a victim now or then, everyone, trying to survive.

  How long could Stern manage with his morphine? Taking morphine and living with his hopeless dream of a homeland that could never be, Arabs and Christians and Jews together, trying to believe. How long? Running.

  The door banged closed. Wind gusting in the alleys and sucking it closed, sealing the light from the darkness, the warmth from the cold, swirling snow in the land of milk and honey.

  He was vulnerable, Stern, and that’s why people loved him. Bulky and shapeless and going down yet trying to believe, and that’s why people loved him. Everybody longed to believe and wanted to reach out to the man who tried to. But everybody didn’t make it. Everybody couldn’t. How long for Stern?

  Running.

  The Arab at the front of the shop was snoring again under his newspaper. Joe pushed back his chair and dragged himself wearily to his feet. He’d tried, but it hadn’t worked out. A small step at first, then nothing. But maybe someday Stern would recall that small step, maybe sometime it would help him just a little as he sank and sank with morphine in his hopeless dream.

  Yes, Stern. That too was one of God’s secret names.

  The proprietor of the shop looked dazed as he staggered over to the table. He managed an oily smile.

  Why not? thought Joe. Time for him to collect a tip if he can. More important to him now than the snow and the silence, the darkness, has his troubles like everybody else making a living, making a life. Best he can do. Eyes out of focus and teeth rotting in his head, on the limp and looking to ingratiate himself, best he can do.

  Want a woman, sir?

  No thanks.

  A boy?

  No thanks either.

  Someone else? It’s cold tonight.

  I know it.

  Snowing, cold. Not a night to be alone out there.

  I know it.

  Hashish?

  No.

  So what do you want?

  Nothing, nothing at all. Here. Keep it.

  The Arab looked down at the handful of bills. His smile spread.

  You Jewish?

  No.

  Christian?

  Born that way, yes.

  Merry Christmas then.

  Right. Thanks.

  15. Sheik Ibrahim ibn Harun

  What is this game we’ve been playing, Cairo?

  And where did it really start?

  CHRISTMAS DAY AND CAIRO had brought buckets of lobsters and champagne to the little roof in the Armenian Quarter where Joe lived with his pigeons. The weather was cold and raw, the sky overcast, but they set up a table outside so they could have the city spread out in front of them while they celebrated, their time in Jerusalem almost over now.

  Here we are in overcoats again, mused Joe, just like that first day of the game twelve years ago when we sat down on the floor in the back of Haj Harun’s shop. Funny how things come around and come together. Speaking of which, Cairo, I’m glad you came. I wouldn’t have thought of anything so fine as lobster.

  I know you wouldn’t have. You’d have been inside crouched over your turf fire nursing some dreadful stew.

  True enough, and that would have been all right too, but this is much better. The kind of occasion a man can look back to when he’s finishing up and getting ready to go the other way, no doubt off in some bloody unknown corner of the world by then, tottering around on useless legs and creaking in every joint and cursing the day he was born, certainly cursing another Christmas to be faced, for what’s the sense of celebrating something and trying to be happy when it’s all over and behind you and there’s no more to come? And probably in his cups as usual on Christmas because that’s a black day in Ireland, which is to say the pubs are closed, and alone at home in a dark mood shaking his head and mutterin
g cross thoughts like the malcontent he is at the end of life, having seen what he thinks he’s seen although most of it was a blur, when all at once he stays that glass on its way to his lips and peers down into it, right down into that muddy well of his soul, and takes a good look and says to himself, Hold on there you villainous trickster, what do you mean forgetting that beautiful Christmas years and decades ago when you were sitting on a rooftop in Jerusalem with your feet up, you and a friend feasting like lords with the Holy City itself spread out at your feet? Right there in front of you, you grumbling ingrate. And your man will have to admit it then. He’ll have to stop cursing everything in sight and throw a smile back into his glass. Drink I may, he’ll say then, but I’ve known those moments, I have, those beautiful rare moments and it’s all been worth it because of them, all worth it and more because of those sweet rare moments, ah just the sweetest. Sure, that’s what he’s going to have to say in the end, coming around to the truth at last after a wicked and dissolute life. So will you raise a glass to that, Cairo lad? To this very moment and none other?

  Cairo laughed. He uncorked another bottle of champagne and the pigeons took flight. The two of them watched the pigeons fly away and slowly return, swooping in ever narrower circles.

  By God they’re getting little enough rest today with all these champagne shots going off. But it’s nice to see them circling overhead all the same, knowing their home and coming back to it.

  Who’s going to feed them after you leave?

  Don’t know, but I’ll find some unemployed beggar or pious fanatic to do the trick, no shortage of hands like that in Jerusalem. Say Cairo, I was just thinking. Why’d you really suggest we let Munk win all our money?

  Why not? Isn’t it appropriate? The three of us began the game and we’re dropping out, so he should be the winner.

  That’s fine with me as I said, but I still have this feeling.

  What feeling?

  That there’s something more. Another reason. Let’s admit it, Cairo lad, you’re shamelessly sentimental. So what’s the other reason?

  Cairo tipped his head. He smiled.

  Family. That’s the other reason.

  Joe nodded. He cracked a lobster tail. Juice squirted over his face and he dabbed at it, licking his finger.

  Do you tell me that?

  Yes. Munk and I are cousins.

  Joe waved the lobster tail toward the city.

  Hear that, Jerusalem? You just see how it goes around here?

  He turned to Cairo and grinned.

  Now hold on there, go slow with me today. I’m feasting on a Christmas banquet and not thinking too clearly. Not making a little joke are you?

  No.

  Cousins, you say? You and the Munk are cousins?

  Yes.

  Well you wouldn’t look to be cousins, that much I’m sure of. But if you say you are, you are. Some years ago I learned it’s best not to disbelieve anything you hear around here. So all right then. How do you and Munk come to be cousins?

  We had the same great-grandfather.

  Joe whistled softly.

  And why not, I say. I’ve always wondered why you had blue eyes. Well he must have been a wandering man. A fair-skinned Sudanese then? Or a dark-skinned Hungarian?

  Cairo laughed.

  Neither. He was Swiss.

  Ah, of course he was, I should have guessed. Traditional neutrality and so forth, not wanting either of you to think he was favored over the other. Clever man he must have been too, keeping his options open in the manner he did, not about to limit his familial future by way of race or continent either. But who was this wandering ancestor with tendencies to father sons in lands as disparate as Hungary and the Sudan?

  Albania was another.

  Also a son in Albania, you say? I don’t think I like that. The only Albanians I’ve ever heard of are the Wallensteins. Now you’re not going to be telling me that nasty little Nubar Wallenstein is also kin to the two of you. Not so much, are you? Tell me it’s not the case.

  Cairo smiled.

  I’m afraid it is.

  It is? Then I’m afraid I just went overboard at sea in rough weather with nothing to hold on to. Or maybe what’s worse, lost my bearings in a vast bog with the evening light sinking and me having no idea which way is out. Take pity, Cairo, which way is out? Who was this wandering Swiss?

  His name was Johann Luigi Szondi. Born in Basle in 1784.

  Why do you mention Basle?

  Because that’s where Strongbow’s study was published and burned nearly a century later.

  Stop it, Cairo, well just leave Strongbow out of this. Go back to this Luigi fellow. Who was he?

  A highly gifted linguist with a passion for details.

  Details? I believe it. He left enough of them scattered around. So he’s born highly gifted, what next?

  In 1802, as a student, Johann Luigi made a walking tour to the Levant and asked for lodging one night in an Albanian castle. The master of the castle was away at war, the master’s young wife was alone and friendly. Check an Albanian cousin. Later Johann Luigi became a doctor in Budapest and married Munk’s great-grandmother, Sarah the First. Check a Hungarian cousin. Later still he traveled through the Middle East and Africa in disguise, and met my great-grandmother in a village on the fringe of the Nubian desert. Check a Sudanese cousin.

  Check, said Joe, I’m suddenly tired. All this moving around and fathering sons at the beginning of the last century is exhausting. Before you tell me any more, can’t we just sit still for a moment and contemplate the view?

  Of course we can. In fact that’s exactly what I was going to suggest.

  You were?

  Yes. Now let’s allow about a hundred years to go by and position ourselves in front of a villa beside the Bosporus.

  Why would we want to do that?

  To contemplate the view, and also to consider a remarkable event. Tell me, how do you imagine it’s known that young Johann Luigi made a walking tour to the Levant in 1802?

  I think Luigi might have told his wife about it later when he married her, Sarah the First. She could have passed the information on down and thus Munk would have the fact tucked away today.

  Correct. And the night on that walking tour when Johann Luigi stayed in an Albanian castle? Entertained by a young and friendly wife whose husband was away at war?

  I think maybe Luigi didn’t bother to mention that one to Sarah the First. No reason to alarm her after the fact, marriage being sacred and all. Merely an indiscretion in his youth, and only one night of it at that.

  Cairo gazed out over the city.

  Hey wait, said Joe, sitting up. Only one night in the Wallenstein castle and then on his way? How did Luigi know he’d made the wife in the castle pregnant?

  Cairo flashed his smile.

  That’s right. How indeed?

  Well he couldn’t have known. So there’s no way he could have passed on that information to anyone. That information could only have come from the young and friendly wife in the Wallenstein castle.

  Correct.

  So where are we?

  As I said, we’re standing in front of a villa beside the Bosporus about a century later, contemplating the view. The year is 1911, to be exact. As we gaze at the last of the sunset over Europe we notice that a carriage is approaching the villa, its curtains drawn.

  Which curtains? Carriage or villa?

  Both.

  Ah.

  Now. The gate to the villa is situated in such a way that visitors can draw up to the entrance without being seen by observers such as us, who are seemingly standing beside the Bosporus gazing at sunsets. Naturally, considering the nature of the business often conducted by the person or persons unknown who reside in this villa.

  Nefarious business, said Joe, that’s what. I can see it coming. All manner of pranks, did you say, going on in this villa?

  Perhaps. Now the two of us aren’t everyday observers, we both know that, and with our superior vision we’re able
to see this particular visitor who has just alighted from the curtained carriage to enter the curtained villa. And we do so even though the sun has set and the villa is cloaked in impenetrable shadows.

  Shadows, muttered Joe, pouring more champagne. I sense a rendezvous in the works that can’t bear the light of day. Definitely a clandestine affair. Of course I already suspected that when I took careful note of the curtains over all and sundry.

  Correct, said Cairo. Now can you make out the visitor who is emerging from the carriage in the shadows?

  I’m peering. I honestly am. My eyes are sharply narrowed and I’m using my best night vision.

  And?

  And all I see is an indistinct figure.

  A very small figure? asked Cairo.

  Yes. Most unusually small.

  A woman?

  How did you know my suspicions were running in that direction? Well just wait a minute, let me check the gait and the movements. Yes, a woman all right. No question about it.

  Dressed entirely in black?

  Black as the hour of night. But she’s not about to fool me even in those impenetrable shadows.

  Is she wearing a black veil?

  That she is, said Joe. Hiding her face of course. A clever and cautious woman from beginning to end.

  What’s that you see sticking through a hole in her veil?

  How about that. A cigarette maybe? Must be a heavy smoker if she can’t even wait until she gets inside to light up.

  You’re sure it’s a cigarette?

  To be frank, I’m not. It’s hard to make it out from this distance, 1911 being some time ago and all. I was only eleven then and not thinking much about cigarettes.

  I think it looks too long for a cigarette, said Cairo.

  Precisely my thoughts.

  But it could be, a long thin cigar. A cheroot maybe.

  Has to be a cheroot, said Joe. I was just going to say so.

  Some sort of special Turkish cheroot she has made to order?

  Makes sense, murmured Joe. After all we are in Turkey.

  Exactly. Careful now, is that the door of the villa opening?

  It is, and not making a sound in doing so. Wouldn’t you just know it? Well-oiled hinges in the curtained villa in keeping with nefarious practices.