Jerusalem Poker

Munk laughed.

That's enough from the two of you. What's the one word? Why are we going out with Haj Harun tonight?

Joe sighed.

I guess it's the same with you both, nothing but facts and down to business, straight and dry facts and nothing else. Won't allow a man to properly savor his stew. Well anyway, Munk, you know the one word already but just to make it official, just to sum it all up at the end of twelve years of poker, we'll have it formally proclaimed by the source. An official announcement that the game at this table is officially over. Haj Harun, guardian of the past and the future?

Yes?

You're sitting up there on top of the safe with a better view than the rest of us. What's the one word that sums up Jerusalem?

Haj Harun straightened his faded yellow cloak, his spindly legs dangling. He adjusted his rusty Crusader's helmet and gazed at the nonexistent mirror in the crumbling plaster of the wall.

Dreams, he said happily.

Yes, sighed Joe, and so it is. And the reason we're going out with Haj Harun tonight, to look up these two senior citizens, is because it just so happens they secretly keep this city on the mountaintop going.

The pacing muttering man at the top of the stairs to the crypt and his partner in time, the garrulous cobbler? The one unspoken and the other unfound? Well you see, Munk, tonight they have a dream, a special dream, and we have to wish them well with it. Tonight they dream there is a Jerusalem. And because they do, it will be here when we wake up tomorrow, dreamed into existence for another year.

So there you have our task on New Year's Eve, if you want it in a word.

Munk nodded. Haj Harun stirred on top of the safe.

Prester John? You mentioned earlier that I haven't been able to locate the cobbler's cubbyhole for some time, but tonight I have a curious feeling I just may find it. In fact I think there's a very good chance I'll remember where it is tonight.

Well of course there is. I never believed anything else.

You'll like him, the cobbler, you'll all like him. He has amusing stories to tell and he's much better on dates than I am, and also he goes back much further, having already been a man when I was still a boy.

I know we will. Certainly we will.

Haj Harun smiled distantly.

Well I think I'll come down now. I think it's time we began our rounds.

Truly, yes do that. According to the once portable sundial in the front room, it's almost o'clock.

-18-

Bernini

They'll all tell you that, straight off and no question about it. We go right on in the lives of others and there's no end to it for sure.

On a late winter morning so brilliant it could only be found in Attica, the flat white sunlight hard on the glittering sea, a small dark man made his way slowly down a beach near Piraeus to the spot where a small dark boy stood scaling stones out over the water. About five yards away the man sat down on the sand and shaded his eyes.

Hello there.

Hello yourself.

Good day for that. The sea's just right

That's what it is.

What's your record then?

Nine so far but I'll get up to eleven or twelve, I always do. Say, what's that funny old uniform you're wearing?

Officer of light cavalry, acquired in the wars.

Must have been a long time ago to look that old and ragged and have so many patches on it.

It was. I was just thinking so myself as I was walking down the beach.

And the uniform doesn't even fit you. It's too big in the chest and you've had to roll up the sleeves.

I know it. Maybe I was bigger once.

You mean you've shrunk.

Well as a matter of fact it wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that I've shrunk or grown, one or the other perhaps, but both is far more likely. After all, genies do that so why shouldn't we? They go from being great huge giants striding across the earth from Timbuktu to the Hindu Kush, talking to everyone along the way more or less, to being so small and quiet they can spend seven full years in a tiny Sinai cave, speaking only once in all that time and then only to a mole. Sure, that's what they do.

The boy laughed. He scaled another stone out over the water and held his breath. He clapped his hands.

See that? Eleven, what'd I tell you.

A good one all right. You're getting there.

That's a funny accent you have. Is that from the wars too?

Sometimes I think it is, one war or another. Seems likely don't you know.

Do you always talk like that?

How?

Kind of around and around.

Don't know that I do, can't say that I don't. Must be that I circle things sometimes, because it's hard to get your hands on them. Tell me now, would you happen to be knowing the woman who lives in that small house up there on the edge of the beach? Maud's her name.

Of course I know her, she's my mum. You work in town with her or something?

No, I knew her a long time ago. In Jerusalem it was. Yes that's right, lad. I'm your father.

Bernini's hand held a scaling stone in the air. He smiled and there was nothing but joy in his face.

Are you really Father?

I am, lad. The very one.

Bernini shouted and laughed. He lunged toward Joe who swept him up in his arms and swung him around. They fell together on the sand, laughing and breathless.

I knew you'd be coming soon. I didn't say anything about it but I knew.

Of course you knew it, lad. What else would I be doing?

Were you famous in the wars? Is that where you've been?

Nothing of the sort. When I was fighting, back before I met your mother, nobody knew my name or even knew I had one. I wore a flat red hat then, and a green jacket, and shoes that had buckles on them, and I stayed up in the hills of southern Ireland with my old musketoon, talking to no man, hiding during the day and on the run through all the hours of darkness. And because of that, you see, they thought I was one of the little people when they chanced to catch the barest glimpse of me far far away in the distance at dusk or dawn, and because I was at least getting on toward being the size of a man, as I still am, they came to call me the biggest of the little people. The little people have no names, you see, and the farmers didn't know who it was up there in those hills who was helping them out by arching bullets into the air from a great distance, in the manner of a howitzer, so that the bullets came down to strike the enemy from above, thereby putting the very fear of heaven in the hearts of the enemy, maybe even the fear of God if they believed in one. No, the farmers didn't know who it was, but they certainly liked what that unseen presence was doing, so they paid me a great compliment and called me that.

But who are the little people really, Father? Are they elves?

Well they wouldn't take kindly to being called merely that, because they're so much finer and grander and cleverer than any elf could ever be. Who are they then? They're wondrous beings and spirits with the most mysterious of manners. And besides that, behind and beneath it all, they really run the land and the country.

Any country?

Joe looked thoughtful.

I'm not so sure about that. I wouldn't say all that much, I don't believe. But they do run the land and the country where your forebears on my side came from. Secretly of course. I don't have to tell you that.

Why secretly?

Because that's the way of the world, lad. Isn't it always so?

I don't know. I thought kings and parliaments and presidents ran countries.

So it seems from afar, but that's only for the sake of appearances, only on the surface of things. In actual fact the little people are in charge, always have been and always will be. But you don't ever see them, so much as experience them. When you're out in the woods you hear them whispering and dancing and playing their games, but you daren't go investigate the event right then, because they wouldn't like it. They don't take kindly to people peeking in on their revels and games, that just won't do. So you tiptoe away and come back the next day to have a look around in that glen or dell, and one glance is enough, one glance tells all, you know immediately they've been there. You can see that all right, but of course you haven't seen them. And so it goes, and that's the way it always goes. Never in your whole life do you actually see them, but that doesn't mean they're not always out there, just out of sight, whispering and humming and singing and carrying on in general, playing away and mischievously passing the ages the way their kind does, feasting and dancing and holding their hurling matches brazenly on the strand, at night of course, in the soft moonlight, when you're at home in bed falling asleep and can't catch them at it. And they're not alone out there. There are pookas and banshees and the whole lot of them, all of them passing the ages in the ways that amuse them. But tell me something frankly, lad. Before I ever mentioned them, didn't you already know about them?

Bernini smiled.

Why do you say that?

Just wondering, just guessing. Well?

I've never told anyone, whispered Bernini seriously.

Of course you haven't

It was a secret.

And it's a good one. Well?

Bernini nodded. He smiled.

You're right, I did know they were there. I didn't know that's what they were called, and I didn't know what they wore, but I knew about them.

Well it's a pretty outfit, isn't it. Just right for ones so fine and grand and clever, so mysteriously watching over us in their pursuits. Although it's also true the ones you know may wear quite a different costume.

There's no limit, of course, to how they can carry on.

Bernini was smiling rapturously now.

Will you tell me all about them, Father? About the games they play and the dancing and the singing and all of it?

I will, lad. From beginning to end we'll discuss their sly mischievous ways, always off where they can't be seen having their fun and winking at the sky as they tip their heads so gaily and set their feet to flying in a whirling whirligig so fine, so grand, the very sunshine itself flutters and laughs.

Bernini clapped his hands.

Oh yes, just whirling and whirling in their flying shoes with buckles. But what's this uniform then? This queer old one you're wearing?

Ah, lad, another whole place and time. We'll get to that too. The man who owned this one before me is known as the baking priest, as fine an item as ever walked in the streets of the Holy City. Saved my life, he did, when I was on the run and arrived in Jerusalem starving and penniless, a fugitive from injustice and the youngest by far of the Poor Clares who were making that dreadfully shocking pilgrimage that year.

What's a Poor Clare?

A nun, lad, a nun from the strictest of orders. That's why the pilgrimage was so shocking. Because normally Poor Clares can't even leave their convents, not ever, let alone travel to a place like Jerusalem with its unlimited sights and sounds and smells. Anyway, I went to the Holy Land as a nun.

But a man can't be a nun, can he?

That's right, he can't. He simply cannot. But apparently Himself decided to make an exception that year so I could escape from the city of Cork and be transported to the Holy Land in order to fulfill a prophecy made by my father.

Who's himself?

God. Chose to intervene, He did, the baking priest told me all about it when he made me a hero of the Crimean War and awarded me the first Victoria Cross ever given, which until then had been his own.

Here you see it. A Victoria Cross for defending Ireland against the English.

So you're a great rich man now?

Not at all, none of it. I'm just a poor fisherman's son from the Aran Islands who's been adrift and afloat in our Holy City for fourteen long years. Just one O'Sullivan Beare who found himself in Jerusalem by chance, although it's also true we're known as the O'Sullivan Foxes on occasion, for what reason I can't imagine. But with a name like Bernini now, with a fine name like that, you'll be going on someday to build fountains and stairways to heaven and beautiful colonnades for the pope. Good lad. If it had been up to me I might have called you Donal Cam, and that's not half so ringing.

Who was Donal Cam?

The famous bear and fox among your ancestors on my side, known in his time as the O'Sullivan Beare.

Some centuries ago he walked a thousand of his people out of the south of Ireland to the north, in the dead of winter and fighting all the way, escaping, the English and starving too, just as I was doing three hundred years later as a nun. Well he limped and he fought and he led his people, and after two weeks they arrived where they were going. And they were safe now, the thirty-five who had survived out of the thousand. So he was a hero because of what he did. But for all that, I still like Bernini better as a name.

Your name's Joe.

That's what it is, that's mine, as simple as can be. And after that the names of half a dozen other saints, same as my father who had the gift.

What gift?

Prophecy. To see the world as it was and shall be. He was the seventh son of a seventh son, you see, and when you are you have the gift. While me, I was just the thirty-third son and last.

Bernini's eyes shined when he heard the numbers. Joe gazed into them and saw something. A shadow flickered across Joe's face.

Good with figures are you, lad? Quick, what's five plus eight?

Eleven or twelve, said Bernini.

Is it now. And how's that? How can it be both?

Because some days I scale a stone eleven times and some days twelve. I know Mother says that's not the way you're supposed to do arithmetic, but that's the way I do it. At different times, to me, different numbers answer better. When I have a feeling about one, I use it. But then if I don't have a special feeling, a number turns up anyway. Do you know what I mean?

Joe gazed at his son and his frown slowly changed to a smile.

Do you tell me so. Is it always that way with you? In other things besides arithmetic?

Yes, I'm afraid it is. Does it make you angry?

Nothing of the sort, lad. I'm here to love you and accept you as you are. And it strikes me you just might be a poet, did you ever think of that? In poetry all things slip and slide, just as they do when you're hearing the whispers of the little people, and knowing they're there behind the wall all right, but not seeing them.

Well I don't think I'm a poet, most of the time I don't seem to be anything. Do you know? Most of the time I'm just here by the sea. And even when I'm not, I still am really, down here looking at the sea and listening. Do you know where it goes?

Sometimes. And sometimes I'm also just like you. I just sit and look at it and listen. I used to do that a lot down on the coast of the Sinai, in a little oasis on the Gulf of Aqaba. I used to fly my Camel down there and sit for days listening and watching, just keeping watch through the hours of light and dark.

Bernini laughed.

You flew a camel? The same way they have flying carpets in the stories?

Does sound strange, doesn't it. But that's also the name of an airplane, you see, a Sopwith Camel it's properly called. Now tell me, do you like that looking and listening more than anything else?

Yes.

Joe knelt on the sand and put his arms around Bernini's waist.

Well lad, then I'm surely glad I found you here. Right here on this very spot by the sea.

Bernini put his fingers in his father's beard.

I'm glad too, for a special reason. I knew you'd be coming soon but not just today, and that's a wonderful surprise. Today I mean. It's my birthday.

I know it is, lad, that's why I'm here. Thirteen years ago you were born on this very day in Jericho, a place of sunshine and flowers near the River Jordan, another kind of oasis it is. And our little house was near the Jordan, on a path to it, we weren't far away from it at all. So close it was then, that river of miracles, so close it seemed, nearly at our feet it seemed. Ah it's true what the old man says. The years slip away and slide together.

Why are you crying, Father?

Not crying really. Just happy to have found you, here by the sea. Just happy. That's all.

Who were you talking about who says that?

The old man? Someone like no other. A friend I had in Jerusalem. He showed me the world and showed me what it's all about. Haj Harun is his name. So gentle and frail, you wonder how he's ever done it.

Done what?

Lived three thousand years in Jerusalem. He has done that, you see. It may be hard to imagine over here, away from that holy mountain, but it's true. Do you believe me when I tell you so?

Yes. Haj Harun. The man who's lived for three thousand years in Jerusalem.

Joe smiled. Bernini smiled.

Maybe when you grow up, lad, you'll be like him. What do you think?

I don't know. Maybe I will.

Joe sighed.

A wonder, that's what.

Father?

Yes.

Are you going to stay here with us now?

Well as it happens, lad, I'm not. When a time comes it comes, you see, and that's what it's done for me.

So I'm off to look at new places, the New World probably, which is to say America. I'm going to find out about it and then when I do, you and I will discuss it. In the meantime you've got your mum and she's a wonderful woman. God never made better.

I love her.

I know you do, and in my way, so do I.

Then why are you leaving?

Ah you are a clever little piece of goods, on the foxy side of the O'Sullivans, I'd say. But the answer is straightforward. It's that I must. Haying been born a fisherman's son, I'm bound for the desert. You may not understand that now, but someday you will.

Oh no, I understand it now.

You do? How's that?

A man named Stern told me. He's a new friend of Mother's.

Did he now? What'd he say?

Well he was leaving here once and I asked him the same thing, and he said that sometimes a man has travels to make.

Well well, it's true I guess. Not that your mother doesn't have her own to make, she does. But aren't you a smart one to be knowing all that at your age.

Bernini hung his head.

I'm not smart, he whispered.

Why do you say that?

Because I'm not.

Bernini hesitated, staring at the sand.

What is it? said Joe quickly. You mean your not being able to read? I already know about that.

Bernini nodded.

That and the other things, he whispered. Not being able to do arithmetic the way you're supposed to.

Here here, said Joe in a soft voice, stop hanging your head like that and take a look out to sea. There are all kinds of ways of being smart, we both know that. Take Haj Harun. Most of the time he doesn't even know what century he's in. You go for a walk with him through the streets of Jerusalem and he may be back somewhere a couple of thousand years ago, rambling through alleys no one else is smart enough to recognize. All lost it would appear, but he's not, not really. It's just that he sees things we don't. The rest of us, we see what's around us, he sees more. So you can't say what's smart and what isn't, there are all kinds of different ways. A lot of people would say Haj Harun isn't smart, and he wouldn't be if it came to selling vegetables by the pound or cloth by the yard. Hopeless, he'd be, there'd be no profit ever. But if you want to know who the holy men were and what they thought, or better than that, what they felt in their hearts, or even the unholy Assyrians or anybody else, then you take a wander with him through the streets of Jerusalem and you'll find out, you'll know. Our gentle knight he is, watching over the eternal city.

Bernini looked up. He smiled.

You talk as if Jerusalem wasn't a place.

Oh it is all right, it's just that it's more as well. Something you carry with you, inside of you, whenever you go. And as for those travels we mentioned, you'll be having your very own someday.

I hope so.

You will, I know it. When I was your age I was just bursting with the dream of them. Just dying to get out in the world and try my hand.

And you did.

Yes I did, I tried. Funny thing is, that's still what I'm doing.

A shadow suddenly came across Bernini's face. He was gazing up the beach toward the little house. Joe looked quickly away and back again. There was pain in his eyes.

Say it, he whispered.

Bernini shook his head, his mouth set.

No say it, lad, whispered Joe. You know it's always best to say things. People hear them anyway. What is it?

Well all I meant was, she'll be home at five or six.

Yes.

Well aren't you even going to come and see her?

Joe took a deep breath.

No.

Not even for a few minutes?

No.

But we're going to have a birthday party and there's a beautiful cake. I saw it on the shelf.

No. I can't, lad.

Just for a few minutes? To have a piece of cake?

Ah, a few minutes or a lifetime. It seems there's no difference.

But then you're not going to see her at all?

Not this time. A time will come, but it's not now.

But why? Won't you tell me why? She's my mother and you're my father. Why?

I'll try to tell you, it's hard to explain. You see she has a life of her own now and I'm not in it. You are, and old friends like Munk, and new friends like Stern, and the people she works with and others, they make up her life now. Especially you. But I'm somewhere else. I mean I've been somewhere else so long, I'm somewhere else now.

But she'd like to see you.

I don't think so.

Are you afraid to see her?

Not afraid, no, I just don't think it would be for the best at the moment. Someday, but not now. Your mother and I haven't seen each other in thirteen years, and some things are too recent. Scars take time to heal. You have to treat the past gently.

What's too recent?

Sivi's death, for one.

But he was such a sad old man. He almost never talked and he never smiled, not even once. He just sat and stared at walls, at nothing. It made me uncomfortable to be in the same room with him.

That was when you knew him, lad, but it wasn't always so. Things change. There was a time when Munk knew him long ago, and your mother and Stern, when he was always smiling and laughing and telling stories, amusing everybody and making things better than they had been before. I didn't know him myself then, but they say there was never anyone, never anyone who enjoyed life more. Just accepted everything and everyone and put people at ease right away, and made them laugh and was kind and generous, and was always saying funny things. But then the fires of Smyrna got in the way, and the slaughter and the screams, and soldiers beat him with rifles and he was never the same after that. What I'm saying is that he was a good man, and that he and your mother go back a long way, long before I ever met her, and it can hurt terribly when someone like that is taken from you. When they die. It just seems then that nothing is right in the world, just nothing at all, and you feel that nothing will ever be right again. It takes time to get over that. And you know how she spent these last years taking care of him.

Bernini nodded.

Yes you do, you saw it. Without her he wouldn't have had much of anything these last years. And before that it was the other way around. Before that he helped her, along with all the others. Sivi was her link to the past, to bad days as well as good, but a link in any case, giving life some continuity, a dimension, a meaning. After all he'd been the brother of her husband, the one who died in the war before your mother and I met, and later he took her in when she left Jericho with you just after you were born. Just so many things he did for her, just so many memories she shared with him. So his going is more than it seems, more than you can imagine. When you lose someone like that, someone who's been so much a part of your life for so long, it's as if all those years have suddenly been taken away from you. Your own past, taken away from you. You feel cheated and robbed, it's just terrible to go through. Son?

Yes?

I've gone on about this because I think you should understand it. There's no way you could know it yourself, from what you saw of Sivi. No way you could realize what his death must mean to her. So that's enough of the past for her to deal with right now. She doesn't need me walking in.

Bernini nodded. He looked out to sea.

Why did she leave Jericho with me?

Well that's a direct question, isn't it. She'd have to give you her answer, but I guess mine would be that I didn't know enough. I'd had no experience with a woman, you see. Only twenty when I met her and we were together less than a year, and I didn't know what things meant. I just didn't know what people were doing when they did them. So I got things mixed up, got them wrong. I did that with your mother.

Did what?

Didn't understand the silences, the anger. I was so dumb I thought it was something I'd done. We do that when we're young. We think that anything that happens, happens because of us. So I thought I'd done something and she didn't love me anymore. Of course it was just the opposite. She did love me but she was afraid, because love had always hurt her before. So she pulled away from me and I didn't know why. Leaving me because she loved me. Terrible pain for the both of us coming out of the love we had for each other. Life can be like that, it can do that. Just turn on itself. It's the strangest thing. You have to be so careful with someone you love. People are fragile when you get that close to them. Living alone is easier by far in this world, or even living with someone but keeping yourself alone all the same. There aren't any risks then, but you're always the poorer for it. The riches are in the risks and that's the truth, you'll find them nowhere else. Not ever, as I well know.

I still don't see what you got wrong.

Joe smiled.

You don't now? Well nothing more than myself of course. That's always it. Whatever you do or don't do, you're the one who's done it. Did you know the O'Sullivan Beare clan used to have a lovely legend?

What's that?

A saying, a motto. Love, the forgiving hand to victory. That's the legend and none was ever better. It says everything that has to be said. Well I've always known the words, but when I was younger I didn't really understand them. I took people for what they said and did, and that's not enough in this world. You also have to take people for what they don't say and don't do. Sounds simple, but it's not until you learn it.

I think I've already begun to learn it.

Bernini's face was serious, intent. Joe nodded.

How's that, lad?

Well I don't listen to people's words so much. I listen to what's inside.

What's that now? What you call inside?

Bernini put his hand in the sand. He pushed it back and forth, making a trough. All at once he seemed faraway.

What's inside, lad?

Have you ever seen the fishermen throwing those little octopuses against the rocks by the harbor after they catch them?

I have.

The octopuses are so small, you wouldn't think they could be that tough. But they have to keep smashing them against the rocks over and over before they're ready to be hung up to dry. But then later when they're grilled over charcoal and cut in little pieces with olive oil over them, aren't they the best thing in the world?

They are, the very best. A feast in themselves.

Yes, said Bernini, beginning another trough in the sand Joe watched the trough grow.

But now I think I've missed your meaning, lad. What was it you were telling me about what's inside?

Just that. That's all. That even though the octopuses are small, someone has to work very hard to make them good to eat. But when they do, they're the best thing in the world.

Joe smiled. He drew a line in the sand and capped it with a shorter line, then made a loop at the top.

Know it?

A cross with a circle on top of it?

Well it's not quite a cross, is it, not quite a circle either. It's an old mark, called an ankh. In ancient Egypt it was the sign for life, or maybe the sun, same thing. My friend Cairo told me about it, and he had it from a living mummy called old Menelik.

Are there really living mummies?

It seems so. Why?

Because I've always wanted to think so.

Have you now. And why is that?

I like the idea of people not dying.

Do you? Then I think you're going to like the story of my friend Cairo being brought up by his foster father, who was in fact a living mummy.

Wait a minute. Cairo's a city, not a person.

Things can be different for different people. For me, Cairo will never be a city but a man, a great huge black man who's so strong and friendly he lifts you right up off the ground when he greets you. Puts his arms around you and hugs you, and all of a sudden you find you're up there dangling in the air. It's his way of shaking hands, of saying hello.

Really?

Yes. Anyway, this living mummy, old Menelik, brought up Cairo with a grin as dry as dry while lying at the bottom of a sarcophagus where he'd been residing through the ages beside the Nile, endlessly talking away to Cairo and telling him all there was to know about secret tombs and temples and what went on inside of pyramids, not to mention his friend the genie, Strongbow by name, who had a comet of his own as an eternal plaything.

Bernini clapped his hands.

Old Menelik? The genie Strongbow?

Exactly, lad. The stuff of dreams, that's what they are. Men have fallen by the wayside trying to keep up with the likes of them. There's magic in those tales that flies, that leaps across time with its sparkling visions, the magic that comes at one and the same time from the songs of long ago and the lovely tunes yet to be sung.

Bernini got up and began to walk around in a circle, looking for stones to scale. He stopped for a moment and raised his head.

Is that really the way it is?

How's that, lad?

It never ends?

Oh no blessed be, it never does. Just keeps right on going. I'll tell you that and so will Haj Harun and the baking priest, and the potting priest and all the rest of them. Stern and Munk whom you know, and Cairo whom you don't know, and a cobbler in Jerusalem whom I don't even know myself although we went looking for him last New Year's Eve, looked hard and didn't find him that time, but there'll be another time because Haj Harun has never forgotten him, hasn't and won't. So yes indeed, just ask any one of them and the answer will always be the same. They'll all tell you that, straight off and no question about it.

We go right on in the lives of others and there's no end to it for sure.

Why?

Ah, now you're getting to it and I can see why you like to spend your time down here on the shore, just watching and listening until you have it all. And the sea will whisper the answers, lad, it will do that for you. Gently, don't you see. Quietly, don't you know. Whispering away just for you. Because it's here for no other reason.

Bernini smiled.

Aren't you going to choose a stone, Father? Aren't you going to scale even one?

I am. That's why I'm here. To see you on your birthday and scale a stone across the water. Like to hear something else while I'm looking for a stone?

Sure.

You've got a brother or a sister in Jerusalem.

Bernini smiled.

No I haven't.

Yes it's true. Of course the child is only a half-brother or a half-sister.

Well which is it?

I don't know.

How old?

Almost eleven. Do you like the idea of it though?

Sure. But why all the mystery?

It just seems that's the way it is sometimes. It just seems some things are always a mystery.

Well who's the mother?

A saint. That's why I can't see her anymore and don't know anything about the child. She's a saint and she lives with God.

Bernini frowned. He laughed.

I don't think I should believe everything you say.

Don't you now? Can't imagine why you'd tell me that. Although of course the world is full of facts, and we're all free to choose the ones we want to believe.

Bernini went on laughing.

Father, haven't you even found a stone yet? They're all over the place.

I know they are and I'm looking. I'm looking. Now here's a possibility and here's another, but I want to take my time, I want to find one that's just right for now. Mind you, it's not always the same one that's wanted. It depends on the shape of the waves and the cast of the wind and the slant of the sunlight as well. Sometimes a skimmer will do the job, light and fast, and sometimes one with more weight to it is in order. There's no way of knowing beforehand. You just have to dream.

You're talking in riddles again, Father.

Am I now. Just jokes and riddles and scraps of rhymes? But you see a life without dreams is no life at all, a loss for sure and sadly so. Or as Haj Harun used to like to say, time is. And always said in a very ethereal manner, it was.

What's it supposed to mean?

Oh I don't know, that we're here by the sea together? That we're sharing the sun and the sea and finding our stones to scale over the water? It's not much, what we're doing. On the other hand, it's everything.

Scaling stones is the tale.

What tale?

Haj Harun's tale, I guess. And the baking priest's and the potting priest's, and Cairo's and Munk's and Stern's, and your mother's, and my own and yours. All of them about to be told, when I find the stone I'm looking for.

Sometimes you have a queer way of talking, Father.

I do, it's true. It comes from those times when I was a boy straining so hard to hear the whispers of the little people, trying so hard to catch the sounds of their singing and dancing, even though I knew I'd never see them. Whispers, that's right. Whispers, that's all. But once you hear those whispers, lad, you never forget them and you're never the same. Because they remind you of birds soaring free in the sun, and sea gulls gliding in your wake, and a fine strong tide running you home in your little boat after a night at sea, running you home to the new flowers smiling in the green green grass. And then home you are at last on your little island and it's dancing you think of and singing and making your feet fly in the sun, and maybe later, when the moon has risen softly, even holding your hurling matches brazenly on the strand.

And feasting through the ages, even that. Ah yes you do, that's what you think of. And you strain so hard to hear those whispers as the years go by. You want so much to hear them again and you do try, just try and try, you do that even though the whispers are dimmer, are farther away this year than last, last than the year before. And yes, it's true, even though you know the wonders of their world are beyond you, always were and always will be. You'll just never see them, just never, never have and never will, but still you go on believing in them and trying to hear the tunes of their dancing and the songs sung at their feasts, mysterious whispers in the sparkling sunlight, the whispers you heard when you were a child so long ago.

So long ago.

Bernini saw the tears in Joe's eyes again. He was going to run over and hug him but suddenly it was all right. Suddenly Joe was jumping up and down and laughing, running on the sand and laughing, the man his mother had told him about, the magical Irishman she had once met in Jerusalem.

Well no, not told him. Not in those words. But he had heard it anyway.

What is it, Father? What did you find?

Joe whooped. He leapt in the air and held up a stone.

Do you see it, lad? Flat and thin and just right for the asking? A wafer to fly and fly for sure. Now how many times would you say it's going to skim on the sunlight out there before we no longer see it? Before it slips beneath the waves and speeds away as fast as a fish swimming from one end of the world to the other? Just going and going where the sea goes. How many times, Bernini?

Nine times?

Nine times easy. Eleven and twelve times easy. And then after that, one more time in honor of this special day. Watch it and you'll see I'm right, lad, and it will always be so, skimming on the sunlight, swimming and swimming from here where we stand by the sea as you've learned to do, looking and listening now thirteen times easy on your birthday, as Haj Harun has done these three thousand years in Jerusalem, as the baking priest said right there in the Holy City while leavening the four concerns of his life, the four winds and the four corners of his holy kingdom. Yes, our holy kingdom. Made for us if we'd only believe it. So watch this hand of mine fly now. Watch it, Bernini lad. And watch this precious stone skip for us in the sunlight to the very ends of the earth.

It can't go that far, Father.

Oh yes it can and much more. Twice that, to tell all. In fact it will go so far it will circle the world and come back to us. That's right, that's what it will do. And if you look hard tomorrow you'll find this very same precious stone right here on the beach, right here by the sea where you watch and listen, its long journey made and a long list of marvels witnessed for sure. So watch now. Here flies our dream on the sun.

The End