Jerusalem Poker (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 2)

by Edward Whittemore

  Cairo nodded pensively. Joe scratched his beard.

  Hey Munk, he said, could you take out your special watch for a moment?

  Why?

  Oh you know, in case we have to find out in a hurry whether time is slow or fast or nonexistent tonight. Nothing really, that’s all.

  Munk took out his watch.

  Now then, said Joe, shouldn’t we hear it officially from the top of the safe? The final judgment on this table where three men have striven mightily in their purposes? Hello up there, Haj Harun?

  Yes?

  Fate is upon us and must be spoken, and the best cause wins. That was the last hand the three of us will ever play here. And so after twelve busy years, if you would, the ultimate pronouncement.

  Haj Harun straightened his helmet.

  From the top of the safe, he said, I see that the man holding the watch with three levels is the winner.

  Just like that, murmured Cairo.

  Game of chance, added Joe. Sometimes it comes and sometimes it goes and it seems it’s come for our partner here, our very own Munk. Seems he’s just up and taken it all. Ah well, somebody has to win in the end. Isn’t it so, Cairo?

  Yes.

  Munk pushed back his chair. He began walking around the room.

  What’s this about it being our last hand? The two of you aren’t serious, are you?

  By God we are, of course we are. Was anybody ever more serious than Cairo and me?

  But what’s going on? I don’t think I see it.

  What’s to see? Game of chance and you won it.

  That’s right, Munk. That’s all there is.

  All the same, said Joe, it’s frightening to drop over a million pounds like that. I’ll never see that kind of money again but of course it all started with a fraud, fishes in the shape of what? Perfectly dreadful thing to be doing in the Holy City and I don’t deny it. The baking priest went along with me out of the kindness of his heart, casting a blessing here and another there, saying there was no harm to it, but I wasn’t really representing the early Christians.

  Haj Harun stirred and looked down at Joe.

  What’s this? asked the old man. You’re not doubting yourself, are you? Questioning what you’ve done here?

  To be frank, I am.

  But you’ve helped defend Jerusalem.

  Joe moved uneasily in his chair.

  Don’t know that I have. Can’t say I’ve done that particularly.

  But it’s true, I know you have. You’ve believed in the miracle of Jerusalem. You’ve had faith.

  Well you’re more forgiving than most. But listen, what would you say if I told you I were going on a trip.

  And not coming back?

  Yes.

  The old man shook his head sadly on top of the safe, his spindly legs dangling. His helmet went awry and a shower of rust fell into his eyes. He began to weep quietly.

  I’d miss you, Prester John. But I’ve always known you’d have to leave someday, to return to your lost kingdom in the east.

  Ah yes, my lost kingdom, I almost forgot. But if I were to leave, and Cairo here too, wouldn’t you still have someone to talk to?

  Haj Harun looked down at Munk. He smiled.

  Of course, there’d still be Bar Cocheba. He’d understand.

  Yes, said Joe, I’m sure he would. So will you do that for us, Munk? Will you?

  Munk stopped circling the table. He stood still, gazing at the two men at the table.

  So that’s it, that’s what you meant. You were serious, this was the last hand. You’re both leaving Jerusalem?

  Yes we’re off, Cairo and me. I’ve been here long enough. After all I only came by accident because a freighter in Cork happened to be carrying some nuns to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage, and I just happened to be a nun at the time.

  And you, Cairo?

  After I spend my Sunday afternoon beside the Nile I’m going back to the Sudan. I’ll find a village on the edge of the Nubian desert, like the one where Johann Luigi Szondi met my great-grandmother. After all I’m a good deal older than the two of you. I’m fifty-three and if I’m going to have a family, it’s time to start.

  Joe?

  Oh I’ll just go ambling one way or another looking for Prester John’s lost kingdom. The old country first I think, I’d like to dig up the musketoon I buried long ago in an abandoned churchyard. Then the New World I think, like the Sarahs. Out west maybe, you know how I’ve always wondered about the Indians. Childish isn’t it. Amazing how a man can grow older and still have the child inside him, but there you are. And so too with the Sinai Bible that I wanted to find so much for so long, because of its treasure maps don’t you know.

  Joe smiled.

  Amazing isn’t it. Treasure maps? That was the child inside again. But I’ve got a confession to be making to you now, and it’s just this. I know exactly where that Bible is, I’ve known for some time. And I won’t tell you right now how I found out, but I will ask you to keep that information to yourselves. You see I’ve decided it should stay where it is for a while, until the right moment comes. Then I’ll ask Haj Harun to go and get it for me.

  And when will be the right moment? asked Cairo.

  Ha, said Joe. Can’t say, can I. Don’t know, do I. Not now I don’t but when that moment comes it may well have to do with family. You’re not the only one at this table, Cairo, who’s thinking along those lines.

  And the treasure maps you wanted so much? asked Munk.

  Sure, said Joe, and there are such things, they do exist. But they’re not to be found in books, I’ve learned that. Time it took me, being such a young and innocent one and all, you Munk having ten years on me and you Cairo having twenty, and Haj Harun, well just plain close to three thousand. But I did learn the truth of the matter finally, and it’s that the treasure maps around here are to be found in Haj Harun’s head, right behind those shining eyes, naturally so, it’s the only safe place for articles so precious, so rare. And they’ve been there for a long time, ever since way back then when Melchizedek, the primary priest of antiquity, was the first and last King of Salem, City of Peace, reigning on this mountain long before Abraham journeyed out of the dawn of the east with his flock and came to seek him out and receive his blessing and father the sons called Ishmael and Isaac in this land, long before Arabs, and Jews ever existed with their troubles or even had names like that to divide them, long before then Melchizedek had already dreamed his gentle dream here on the mountain, Haj Harun’s dream, and in so doing given it life forever, without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life.

  On top of the antique Turkish safe, Haj Harun smiled shyly.

  I told you that, he whispered. Those were my words. We were sitting out on a hillside east of the city one evening, watching the sunset.

  That’s what we were doing, said Joe, and it was only this spring, and you pointed at the city as the sun went down and said that. And you said you were Melchizedek, because you both had and have the same dream, and I couldn’t understand any of that at first and I said you were all mixed up, mixing up time again. But you weren’t. You were right. Time works your way and not the other, and it took me a while to get used to the idea, to really know it, but now I have and do. Now I’ve learned the truth of it, the truth of the treasure maps too. Peace is the treasure, peace to seek, Melchizedek’s gentle dream on the mountain. So a time will come for the Sinai Bible, gents, but it’s not here and now. Here and now is for you to pick up your winnings, Munk, and let me tell you we’ve made it perfectly respectable for you, just very tidy and respectable.

  Respectable?

  Yes, your winnings. For my part, I knew you wouldn’t want to be caught handling those dreadful religious articles I peddle on the side, so I’ve arranged to sell the concession to that shifty-eyed Frenchman who used to come to the game sometimes. All proceeds from the sale to go to you, to be paid in full over the next year. And what’s more, he’ll be working out of Beirut
so you won’t even have to look at him around here. I convinced him it was a more reliable business than dealing in stolen ikons, safer too, and he said he didn’t want to live in Jerusalem anyway. Bad memories, he said. Especially that time back in ’29 when Chief Sipping Bear wiped him out at this very table and sentenced him to work at an oven in purgatory, with the baking priest as his parole officer. Didn’t much care for that apparently, did not, said the Frenchman with the shifty eyes.

  As for pharaonic mummy dust, murmured Cairo.

  Munk smiled.

  Yes?

  I knew you wouldn’t want to be involved with that either. For philosophical reasons of course. It does speak of a distant past, after all, and what you’re looking to is a future, the more immediate the better. So you won’t have to deal with the pharaohs, Munk, neither in their powdered nor their mastic form. I’ve found a man who is buying all my mummies, and the mummy operation in its entirety, for a very handsome price. And he’ll be headquartered in Alexandria, so you won’t have to see him around here either.

  Have I also met this man by chance?

  By chance, you have. He was in the game the same evening when the Frenchman fared so poorly against Chief Sipping Bear. An elderly Egyptian landowner, cotton-fat, spastic when excited, said to be impotent if his favorite hunting falcon, hooded, isn’t perched on the mirror that runs the length of his bed.

  I remember him, said Munk. The black English judge found him guilty of having made a fortune by exploiting his workers. As I recall, the judge took away his cotton crop for the next ten years.

  Precisely. Well now he’s suddenly come up with the money to buy the entire mummy dust trade in the Middle East. And although spastic at times, he does have a keen business mind. And although elderly, he does have a large brood of what he calls nephews, who could and should be put to work. The falcon problem, it seems, was merely an eccentricity of his later years.

  I see.

  And there we have it, said Joe. We seem to be right all around, Munk, with no questionable affairs for you to worry about. You just take this money you’ve won at honest poker and use it to build those irrigation ditches you like so much. How Cairo and I come by the money has to do with us and a spastic elderly item in Alexandria and a shifty-eyed item in Beirut. Sure. And now the money will go to dig irrigation ditches in the wastes, so the wastes can be crops, and the truth is that’s a nice way for money to go when it’s going somewhere. So what’s left but our rounds?

  Rounds? asked Munk.

  Right. It’s New Year’s Eve, isn’t it? And one thing I’ve discovered along with everything else here, is that making the rounds on New Year’s Eve is a regular ritual. So tonight we might as well all do it together, all four of us.

  Cairo smiled. Munk looked mystified.

  What rounds?

  Haj Harun’s annual inspection tour. Tell him, Aaron.

  I will, said the wizened old man from the top of the safe. On the last night of the year I always go around the Old City to pay my respects to the elders of Jerusalem and see how the past year has fared for them.

  That’s all?

  Yes, said Joe, but it might be more of a task than you’d suspect at first. Even though there are only two stops.

  Only two? asked Munk.

  Sounds minor, doesn’t it. And so it does sound that way, but it’s not. Far from it.

  The first place we go, said Joe, is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to the top of the steps that lead down to the crypt. There’s a man there on top of the steps who paces back and forth muttering to himself. He’s been doing that for two thousand years, according to Haj Harun, and he’s the first one we want to talk to.

  What about? asked Munk.

  Nothing, as it turns out.

  No, I mean what does he say?

  That’s just it, he doesn’t say anything. Nothing at all. He’s so mysterious he doesn’t even see us when we come up to him. Just goes right on pacing and muttering, in his own world altogether, some kind of holy vocation, don’t you see. Now the other stop is a cubbyhole not far from Damascus Gate. A cobbler works in that cubbyhole, and according to Haj Harun he’s been here much longer than the man on the top of the stairs, ever since the beginning in fact. He was already a man when Haj Harun was still a boy, and that dates him certainly. So he has a great deal to say. But the odd thing is, we can never find him.

  Why? asked Munk.

  Because Haj Harun can never remember where his cubbyhole is. It’s near Damascus Gate, but exactly where he can’t recall. Of course the configurations of the alleys have changed a bit since then. The last time Haj Harun did find the cobbler on a New Year’s Eve, you see, was just before the Captivity. But the cobbler’s here all right. Has to be. It’s his home. So we keep looking.

  Joe smiled. He drummed his fingers on the table.

  That’s right, Munk. A case of the crypt and the cobbler. Now this cobbler, as Haj Harun remembers, is just about the most talkative fellow you’ll ever meet. He talks and talks and brings the events of a year up to date in minutes. And why not, dealing with soles the way he does? Having been around since the beginning the way he has? To him the world’s a shoe just walking and walking and never standing still, what else does he see? No solitary silent crypt for him, not hardly. He’s out there in the turmoil with the shouts and the cries of the hawkers, out there amidst the peddlers of commerce and empires, right out there where the crowds never cease to pass, sitting in his cubbyhole not far from Damascus Gate, a witness to it all.

  While that other fellow, Munk, the one with the mysteries, he just mutters and paces in the gloom on top of the stairs in the church, going no place to outward appearances but guarding his crypt all the same. Pondering the darkness down there, I suppose. So what’s that make them, do you think, opposites in the game? Partners therefore?

  I’ve asked myself that question, Munk, and when I did, quick came the answer. Joe you unsteady bogman, said this voice inside me, listen to your own unsteady conscience. The reason you have the one is because you have the other. No way to do it without both, not if you’re going to have an eternal city. A mysterious crypt, you say, and a man devoted to it? Just dandy, all fine and good. But what about everyday people and their everyday chores and concerns? That’s the world too and the truth of it.

  Granted, I say. Assuredly. And then the voice comes back and says to me, all right then, and what’s the view from the opposite side of the bog? If the world were nothing but turmoil and cries and shouts, nothing but commerce and peddlers and emperors and so forth, just walking and walking around, would that do us? Would it really now?

  Well no, I answer at once. In all truth, it wouldn’t.

  And so? says this voice inside me, this person thinking his and her thoughts. And so?

  And so you’ve got me, I answer. Just walking around won’t do. We have to have this other fellow who minds the crypt. Or mines it or whatever. It’s all the same with a dark silent crypt containing mysterious secrets, mining it or minding it, who can say. And if all this sounds to you like a bloody convoluted description of the situation, Munk, I can only say it is. But no more convoluted than the situation itself, which is those alleys near Damascus Gate where Haj Harun has been on the lookout for his cobbler friend these last two thousand five hundred years. When you’re dealing with an eternal city, in other words, you’ve got to know its basic professions, cobbler and crypt minder-miner.

  Makes you dizzy does it, Munk, the simplicity of these professions? It does me, I can tell you that, it makes me dizzy up here on top of the mountain. Of course it’d be different if I were like Haj Harun up there on his safe and could take the long view the way he does, but I wonder if I’d want to? Seems to me one Babylonian invasion is enough. Seems to me watching the Crusaders clank around with their bloody awful swords, just once, would be more than enough. Me, I don’t want to go back on the run in the hills of southern Ireland. Don’t want to crawl onto that terrible quay in Smyrna again and see Stern pick up a
knife and slit a little girl’s throat out of kindness. I just can’t manage it. I’m a bogman and I’m down there and this mountain is too high for me. I can’t really climb it, can’t ever reach the top. I don’t have the cause that would allow me to do that. You’ve got a cause all right but I’ve just been a visitor here, and the visit’s up and now I’m leaving.

  Munk had been gazing thoughtfully at Joe. All at once Cairo burst out laughing. Joe looked at him and pretended to scowl.

  By God what’s this, laughing at such tender sentiments right to a man’s face? You mummy thief and obvious blackguard, everyone knows you’ve stolen as much time here as I have with your mummy dust traffic through the ages. So what’s so funny about what I just said?

  Cairo laughed even harder. Joe threw his hands in the air.

  Hear that, Munk? No respect at all for a man’s inner feelings, just none. Just hoots and howls like an emperor looking down on the lesser folk. Well out with it, you Nilotic ghoul, what’s so funny? Try to get hold of yourself. We’re waiting.

  Cairo’s laughter finally subsided. He rubbed his chest, smiling broadly.

  Waiting, that’s right, we all are. In another moment poor Munk is going to think you’re the cobbler in question.

  Me? Why would he ever think such a thing?

  Because of the way you’ve been carrying on, just talking and talking. You tell him we have to accompany Haj Harun tonight, but you don’t even tell him why, the whole point of the thing.