Nile Shadows

Ahmad shook his head.

No. Sheer nonsense. What we have here is simply a case of that grand murky importance we falsely assign to the parent of the opposite sex. . . . Do you realize I've probably spent thousands of hours seething with resentment over my mother, and why? Why have I secretly devoted so much of my life to her? Why have I harbored this absurd notion of her overwhelming significance in the scheme of things?

It's a terrible irony, that notion, and in my case it's an irony that was discovered too late. For this mother of superhuman proportions, this mythical woman who plotted all manner of things in the world and set loose a host of brooding demons within me, this woman never even existed. And thus have I spent a great part of my life secretly confounding a shadow of my own making. . . . A terrible irony, but at my age one that can't be undone.

You see I've had no restraint, no restraint. I've been a tree swayed by the wind. Most of us are afraid because someone else is in charge of our lives, and because we're terrified of failing alone. So we wait and wait for something to happen, thinking we can accomplish something by showing patience, but time passes and we grow old, and all we accomplish is ending up alone anyway.

Ahmad gazed at the campfire.

Destiny, he murmured, my destiny. What a droll thing life is. This mysterious and merciless arrangement of logic for a futile purpose.

For a long time now, he added, I've left this place as seldom as possible. Crowds confuse me, so I stay here among my things.

***

And inevitably as the echoes of the past softly gathered in the corners of their little courtyard, as a terrible war raged ever nearer in the nighttide of that desert sky, Ahmad returned again and again to what he had come to call Stern's Polish story.

. . . the desperate escape from a prison in Damascus . . . the informer in Istanbul who had turned up floating in the Bosporus . . . Stern's headlong trip to Poland on a mysterious mission of great importance . . . and finally, the secret meeting in the house in the woods near Warsaw, only days before Hitler invaded Poland to begin the war. . . .

Ahmad stared at the fire.

Later, Stern tried to justify it to me, Joe. We were in the crypt on a Sunday afternoon, and what he was really trying to justify was his life. How he had changed over the years and why he felt it had all been necessary. And I could see how much it meant to him for me to understand, how hard he was struggling to make it sound reasonable to me. After all, I knew him, and I'd been his friend from the beginning.

But I couldn't bring myself to accept it, do you see? Not there in a place where we had known so much of what is beautiful in life. So I felt I had to tell him to stop because it was too painful for me, the way he had changed and the way I had changed, the way everything had changed. Of course it was wrong for me to do that, terribly wrong. I should have let him go on and explain it as best he could, and then I should have simply accepted it no matter how much pain it caused me, just accepted it as a kind of truth, Stern's truth. And perhaps the truth of the world today, whatever that may be.

But I didn't do that, Joe. I didn't have the courage. I was thinking only of myself and I was angry because of all I'd lost in the world, and Stern seemed to represent that to me because he'd always been such an important part of the world I'd loved and lost, perhaps even the most important part. . . . Who knows.

Who can say.

So I should have heard him out whether I liked it or not, and then I should have taken him in my arms the way we used to do long ago when we were friends who held nothing back, who laughed and cried and held each other.

Ahmad's voice sank to a whisper.

But I didn't do that. Instead I told him to stop because I didn't want to hear what he was saying, and still he kept on trying in his halting awkward way, trying so hard to find the words that would let me understand. And then . . .

Ahmad hung his head. There were tears in his eyes.

. . . and then I turned on him. Shut up, I yelled. Shut up. And the strength went out of him and his whole body sagged, and there was a wretched yearning sadness in his eyes that no human being should ever have to know, a terrible sadness beyond any hope of redemption.

So I failed him, Joe, and you have to remember what it meant. For remember. Once there had been three young friends who were inseparable and who shared every feeling and dream, Cohen and myself and Stern. And Cohen had been dead for years and now I'd turned my back on Stern and left him alone. I had done that. I had destroyed a beautiful part of his life by taking away the one thing a poor man has, his memories, and I had cruelly shouted him down by yelling that those memories were dead.

Gone. And he was nothing and utterly alone. . . .

Ahmad was quiet for a time.

No, I didn't realize the enormity of it then, but slowly I began to understand it. Slowly it crept into my heart. And now when we sit here looking into this fire, here with the darkness all around us and the power of the night boundless in its domain, the two of us huddling beside this little speck of light, two tiny insignificant creatures suspended for the briefest of moments in a realm of infinities and blackness, here in these small flames before us I see his face more clearly than ever. A burning human face passing and soon to be gone, and I failed him.

By not accepting him for what he is. By not having the courage and the grace to do that, but instead, turning away. Fully aware of the haunted sadness in his eyes and yet turning away, turning away and leaving him alone in his torment, alone in his anguish, a friend whom I have always loved. A friend and more, a fellow human being.

Ahmad shuddered.

And that's Stern's Polish story, a tale begun one Sunday afternoon in a crypt beside the Nile, begun and never brought to its conclusion. And it's my failure and a failure of the world, and we will both have to live with it.

Yet I know better than to blame the world, for the world is a metaphor and an abstraction that doesn't exist. We all have our moment to be the world, to do what is right and give love when giving seems impossible and love seems an intolerable mockery. We all have that moment once, and I did, and I failed it.

Ahmad opened his powerful hands and gazed at them in the shadows.

It's the briefest moment in our lives. And the simplest. Yet with it, we build our heavens and our hells forever. . . .

***

Who knows what Stern's really doing? muttered Ahmad one night not long before first light, just as they were getting ready to leave the courtyard and go inside.

What do you mean? asked Joe.

Ahmad leaned over the embers, glaring down at them, his face working in agitation.

All I mean is, who really knows? Of course he has contacts everywhere, and of course he has long served many causes in one way or another, to one extent or another, and of course he works for the British. But could there also be something beyond all that, some higher cause for Stern? An even more secret campaign to be waged . . . in his eyes? Something so profound, perhaps, as to be unmentionable save before God?

Well in fact he has alluded to certain things with me since the war started, and now more recently I've sensed a thread to these bits and pieces of his concerns, which he drops in front of me without intending to. For one thing, the Jews in Europe are constantly on his mind. And perhaps . . .

Suddenly Ahmad became defiant and the words burst out of him.

Well does he have some sort of traitorous relationship with the Nazis, then? With these Mongolian hordes who are storming the gates of civilization? . . . Stern says there are whole communities of Jews disappearing in Europe, and he alludes to unspeakable atrocities, and he's haunted like Liffy by images of empty railway stations late at night, from which people have been shipped away to oblivion and worse.

And he says the Allies are doing nothing about it because the evidence isn't conclusive enough for them yet. And he says there's no time to wait anymore for a documentation of death, some kind of doggerel of statistics which will convince our bookkeepers in high places.

Well I know nothing about statistics, because that's not how I account for human beings. But many kinds of agents have passed through the Hotel Babylon since the war started, and some of them have escaped from Europe and some of them have been Jews. And I've asked them things and looked into their eyes to hear the answers, and I've seen blackness. So if Stern is involved with the Nazis, I know it must have to do with getting Jews out of Europe. There could be no other reason why a man like him would strike this terrible bargain with evil. . . . But as for what he gives the Nazis in return, God only knows. I don't even want to think about it. . . . His soul, probably.

Ahmad sank to a heap on the ground and covered his face. Great sobs shook him.

Don't you see, Joe? It's not like Stern to be mentioning these things in front of me, these bits and pieces about Black Codes and Rommel and all the rest of it. He's too clever and experienced for that. And if in front of me, in front of whom else? And how could he help but know the Monastery would have to hear about it sooner or later? . . . And take steps.

Ahmad stared at the dead fire.

But I refuse to believe Stern is acting this way because he knows it will get him killed. What I fear is that he may be cracking up, and that terrifies me because Stern has always been hope to me. Just knowing he's out there and will come back someday, the way he did when we were young and he went off into the desert, just that means everything to me.

In the shadows of the little courtyard, Ahmad reached out toward the dead fire.

Hope . . . hope. We can squander all of the gift of life and even more than that can be taken from us. But not hope. We must have hope or the heavens will spin silently and it will be as if we had never lived . . . a nothingness of nothing.

***

In the stillness of midnight Ahmad stirred and tipped his head, listening to a distant clock toll the long hour.

It's difficult to speak of all that is, he murmured. Silence is what I know best, whereas Stern . . .

Ahmad stopped and adjusted his flat straw hat.

What I mean is, the two of us have taken such different paths in life. Out of failure, I sought the secret adventures of order and the pale consolations of solitude, as did my father before me. But even though Stern's failures have been far greater than mine, because he dared to risk so much more, still he has never turned away from the chaos and futility of life. . . . What I have forsaken, just that has he embraced.

Ahmad looked at Joe.

I'm not used to speaking to people, that's what it comes down to. I'm not used to trying to make sense, because when we're alone with ourselves we never have to do that. But still, it is difficult to speak of all that is, even when we're trying to describe only one single moment, as I've been trying to do with you.

These long nights, Joe, these hours deep in the desert in this little oasis we've found for ourselves . . . and every single thing I've said to you since first you approached my shabby counter in the Hotel Babylon, a way station on your journey, and asked directions for a path that would lead you to old Menelik's crypt, every word I've spoken to you . . . But tell me, have you sensed by now that all of it has to do with only one single moment? One actual, specific moment in time?

Joe glimpsed a movement in Ahmad's eyes, a glitter, a play of lights. . . . It may be now, he thought.

Yes, Ahmad, I think I have sensed that. For a moment can have so very many things to it and in it and behind it, can't it, making it what it is? Just as we do, as you just said. And trying to locate all those things that go into a moment, and give them a size and a shape, while leaving nothing out . . . Well that's an immense task surely. As immense as this midnight sky above us.

Ahmad nodded solemnly.

Yes it is, and so I'm going to try again. But this time, for once, I won't begin with all the things within and behind this moment of which I have spoken again and again, which I have approached in a thousand tentative ways because it haunts me like no other. This time I'll begin with the moment itself. Just there.

Naked.

A smile came to Ahmad's face.

But first you must tell me, Joe, whether I've managed to circle it at all, for even a failed poet can have a touch of vanity hidden away somewhere. . . . So then, this moment of mine. Has there perhaps appeared a where or a when or a what to it, for you?

I think so, said Joe, I think I've begun to get a sense of that too. . . . And the where would be old Menelik's crypt, and the when might be a while ago, not last month but not too many years ago either.

And the what, well that has to be Stern, and it might be Stern together with his Polish story. But above all, the what is you. Because that's the center, the eye on the universe that we've been talking about here .

. . are talking about now. Your moment, Ahmad. You.

Ahmad gazed at Joe. After a while he turned to the fire and set his hat at some new angle. As if in a trance, his words ebbing and flowing, he began to whisper.

. . . it was just after the war started, toward the end of 1939 Stern and I were in the crypt and it was that afternoon when he tried to justify himself to me and I so cruelly shouted him down. . . . We all die alone and unjustified, I shouted, cleverly turning his own words against him, mocking the poor wounded creature with something he himself had once said. And the rest of it, everything that came before then, was just as I've described it to you. It was after that, that the moment came.

. . . he'd injured his thumb when he'd escaped from the prison in Damascus that summer, ripped it up horribly. By then, in the crypt that afternoon, the healing had gone on for some months and the dark purple streaks in his flesh were turning to scars. Ugly scars. Deep. It was the first I'd seen of Stern in quite some time, but a new wound was no surprise. Stern was always turning up with something . . . a cut and a bruise from some new battering, another part of him nicked away, a new clumsiness caused by an arm or a leg that wasn't working properly . . . always something. But he never took any particular notice of those things, nor did I. It was part of the way he lived, that's all, so there was nothing unusual about him appearing with a ripped thumb that afternoon. Not for him, not for me. It was merely another mark from his arcane travels. Simply a small memento from his latest sortie, this Polish adventure of his. An obscure footnote, perhaps, to the beginning of the Second World War.

. . . although in addition to the coincidence that Poland was where the war had started, there was also the fact of Damascus. Something profound indeed had happened to Stern since I'd seen him last, but not on the road to Damascus, rather in getting away from Damascus. Forgive a literary man his conceits, but the irony of that parallel hasn't been lost on me either. In retrospect, naturally.

. . . in any case, inexplicably at the time, Stern's small wound caught the corner of my eye that afternoon, and held it. All the time he was talking those dark purple streaks were somewhere on the edge of my vision . . . ugly, deep, hardening into scars just beyond my conscious thoughts. And he talked and I shouted my disgustingly selfish things at him, and he sagged and said no more and the encounter seemed over. Reluctantly he was gathering himself up to leave . . . broken, weary, alone. And I was raging inside and feeling terrible, already overwhelmed with regret and shame, feeling I'd damned myself by what I had done. . . . When all at once Stern stopped near the door of the crypt. Made some gesture near the door.

A little thing, I think he raised his hand toward an old sign that's hanging there.

. . . and that was the moment. Somehow that thumb of his was there in front of us, and our eyes met and we both understood. We both knew. . . .

Ahmad sat immobile before the campfire, a large somber figure utterly still. The silence around them grew and grew and Joe, suddenly, was afraid Ahmad's mood was slipping away.

You knew? he whispered.

. . . knew, I tell you. Our eyes met and we knew. And then Stern reached out and gripped my shoulder and his hand was strong upon me like the good side of his name, stern and resolute and unyielding in the face of what can't be evaded or escaped in life. Unyielding, strong, I can feel the grip of that hand on my flesh even now . . . the hand with the ripped thumb. And he looked into my eyes and smiled that smile of his, so powerful and enduring despite the wretchedness we both felt, a sad yet mysterious smile I've always known in my heart, always, and he nodded. . . . Yes, he said. . . . Just that one word. No more.

And then the moment was over and his hand dropped away and the door to the crypt opened, closed, and he was gone.

Ahmad shuddered violently, as if he had been struck by a blast of wind from the dark reaches of the desert. He bowed his head and his voice trembled, but he managed to go on.

. . . how much time was there to be after that? Would there be weeks still to come? Months? Even a year or two perhaps? . . . No matter. It was decided and the mark had been made and we both understood. . . . Stern was to die. Stern had to die. Stern had become he who must die. It was decided and we both knew it.

Once more Ahmad lapsed into silence. Joe was as afraid as before to interrupt his mood, but he was even more afraid to let the moment pass. Urgently, he whispered.

But what gave you that sense of things, Ahmad? What happened to Stern in Poland?

Ahmad stirred and touched his nose, head bowed, still staring at the fire. His eyes flickered as he searched the flames for sensations, sounds, shapes, and this time when he spoke his voice was startlingly clear and ringing.

. . . what happened was that our world had come to an end. What happened was that we had tried to survive one war too many and we had lost. In the end, the barbarians had been too much for us. With their blackness and their forces of darkness the barbarians had come to lay siege, and they had stormed the gates of civilization and overwhelmed us, triumphing utterly. . . . Before, we had managed. Once, we had managed. But now no longer was it to be so. Stern and I, we were finished and it was over. The gates were going to burst open and we would fall there, our strength gone, our pathetic armor torn and ripped away, the life seeping out of us. And everywhere around us, vicious and unrelenting, there would echo the empty laughter of grinning barbarians, the primitive meaningless laughter of jackals, taunting us and taunting us as we lay dying.

Ahmad raised his head. He passed his hand in front of the camp-fire, as if committing his tortured revelations to the flames.

. . . a vision, then. A vision of what was and would be. A vision that seized both of us, born in that single moment when our eyes met and he said Yes and we both knew. . . . But when we knew, you understand, not anyone else, for Stern still appeared to be his old self then. He still looked the same and acted the same and there were none of those disturbing hints that have turned up more recently. In these last months the gestures of Stern's despair have become all too clear to anyone who knows him, but back then at the very beginning of the war? . . . No, certainly not. Not even the Sisters, as well as they know Stern, could have suspected so long ago that he was beginning to crack . . . come apart. . . shatter.

The fire sputtered and Ahmad stared, captivated anew by the flames. Yet again he had lapsed into silence as Joe waited restlessly, a feeling of desperation welling up inside him. At last Joe whispered, trying to be calm.

But Ahmad, what happened in Poland? What did Stern do there? What was it exactly?

Ahmad turned his gaze away from the fire, his trance broken. He rearranged his legs, his hat. With the tip of his forefinger, he touched his nose.

Exactly, you say? . . . Here now, what's this, Joe? What are the details of death, you mean, is that what you're asking me? What are the clauses and the subclauses of the pact Stern may have concluded with the Nazis? How many increments of the Black Code, or something else or whatever it is, equals how many Jewish lives on the first of every month? On the fifteenth of every month?

No, Joe, I don't know anything about these grim workmanlike orgies staged by the bookkeepers of the world, these despicable desecrations of the soul which alone seem capable of titillating the barbarians of our age, and worse, which seem to make up life in its entirety for them. This numbing banality of theirs which can delight only in a romance of the ledger and a romance of the rulebook, where abstract numbers can pile up with Germanic thoroughness, with that well-known Germanic attention to detail, with an implacable and industrious Germanic concern for categories, and for the corpses of categories . . . the mind's carrion, these things that are often called theories of history.

No no, Joe, I can't tell you anything about that. Stern and I have never talked about things like that. All I know is that he went to Poland to do something important, and he did it, and the outcome for him and for me is decided. But as for these details you seek, you'll have to go elsewhere for them. I'm not a bookkeeper who can measure human souls by using numbers, nor am I a political philosopher who can cleverly pretend to theorize into existence yet another new and nonexistent superman, or Sovietman, while logically explaining away mass murder, by the by. Stern can hold his own with these monsters of abstract theories, but I can't. There's a world I see and feel and know, but it's not that one. Stern and I, we've always opposed the barbarians in very different ways. He in many, but I in only one . . . in my soul.

In my soul. You see, Stern is truly more than I am. I've never been but one man, whereas Stern has always been many men.

Joe listened. He nodded. It was useless, he knew, to try to draw from the old poet what wasn't there.

Ahmad's knowledge was immense, but it was mostly self-knowledge and there were dimensions to Stern that simply didn't include him.

Well I understand now, said Joe, why these nights of ours have come about. And I want you to know how much it means to me that you've shared Stern here, your feelings for him, your love. But still, I . . .

Ahmad interrupted.

Yes, and I know what you're thinking now. Why is it, you wonder, that what Stern did in Poland decides my end as well as his own? That's what you want to ask, Joe, isn't it? . . . And what can I say that might satisfy you, or less, that might enlighten you just a little? Even the way I failed Stern, perhaps even that you find hard to comprehend. Because we are still brothers, Stern and I. That moment several years ago when we looked up from his thumb and our eyes met and we both knew our fate, that was after I'd shouted him down, wasn't it? In other words, even after our irreparable rupture, we were and are still brothers.

But you see, Joe, I failed him because I feel I failed him. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, it doesn't even matter what he thinks. What we feel is always true for us, it's real for us and genuine, it exists, and that's our universe.

I was always alone in the world, Joe. My father died when I was young and I never knew my mother, and there were no brothers and sisters, but then all at once there was Cohen and Ahmad and Stern, here in these byways that are my life. And the same music was in our veins and we were inseparable, and I was of them and every act and feeling of mine had a resonance in them, as did theirs in me. And then Cohen was killed and Stern went away, yet still.

Ahmad tipped his head, listening to the night. Gently, he smiled.

Joe? I'm a failed poet finally, and I'm afraid I can't explain this any better than I have. But perhaps I could add one thought that might provide a glimmer of what I feel about Stern. . . . I've spoken of the hope Stern has always given me, just by being out there somewhere and being himself, just by being. And I need that hope because it's always been a special unspoken part of my life, an intimation of the richness in man, in all human beings. And when that hope goes, life will go . . . for me.

So what is Stern's Polish story, you ask? Well I can only answer for myself, and for me the answer is simply this. Three summers ago when the war was about to begin, Stern took his life in his hands in a Damascus prison and he weighed what he found there, in his hands, and immediately he broke out of that prison and went to Poland. And in Poland he acted as he felt he had to act, as was only right for him to act, given the human being he is. Yet given who I am, and the way I feel about him and the way I feel we've been connected through the years . . . well he was also acting for me, as it turned out. And doing so, almost certainly, with never a thought for me. After all, Stern is important in this world. So important, very few people will ever know.

But Joe? I'm proud of what he did, whatever it was. I'm proud he acted for me. On my own I never could have amounted to much in life. I dreamed of giving beauty to others but that was not to be. So I failed in what I wanted to do, and there's a cave not far away whose dusty contents will testify to the multitude of any man's lost dreams and lost adventures.

But wait, listen. Even here in the darkness, even here amidst the chaos of an unspeakable war, even now God's hand may be restlessly moving within me and touching my soul. For just by knowing Stern and being a part of him, haven't I then also taken part in giving beauty to many many lives through him, through what he is? Might not that also be so? And if perhaps it is, then who can say? . . .

Slowly, Ahmad nodded. He smiled, his face at peace, and gazed around the little courtyard.

A thumb . . . and a moment. So small, our world, and yet so vast. From the cave we know all too well to this mysterious sky we dream under. And Stern? . . . And myself? Well to be completely honest, I have no idea whether Stern feels his life has been justified by what he has done. He alone can decide that. But listen to me now, Joe, and feel the wondrous sweep of our majestic universe with its apparent contradictions.

For in the single moment I've spoken of, a single moment in time which is also my life, Stern has justified my existence, for me. And that, that is truly the gift of gifts. For without it, we recede into dust. But with it, we take our place as dreaming creatures in the grandest of all schemes, and become one with the poetry of the universe.

***

Later that same night Ahmad turned to study the sky to the east. Not a hint of the grayness of dawn had appeared above the courtyard wall, but they both knew it couldn't be long in coming now. Then too, Ahmad must have realized that his journey into the past with Joe was nearing its end, probably with that very sunrise.

For me, said Ahmad, this hour always brings Stern to mind, but not for the reasons you may think. I know this is the hour when he turns to morphine . . . sadly. But that affliction is a burden of only the last decade or so, and I remind myself of all he has suffered, and I also recall the many other sides to Stern and how he has always been there in some obscure corner within me, whispering to me in his soft voice, or simply listening and forgiving me in his kindly way.

I have so many images of the man from over the years. From the boulevards and the cafés, from the riotous nights when he and I and Cohen drank and swaggered and raved away the hours, dreaming our way into eternity. Yet there will always be one image of Stern I cherish above all others. A startling image from long ago that speaks of man in the universe, a vision forever stunning in the simplicity of its mystery.

It's a memory of Stern as a young man going out into the desert in times of great sadness or joy, and playing his violin in the eye of the Sphinx in the last darkness before dawn, alone and soaring with his strong somber music, those awesome flights of tragedy and yearning that can only come from a human soul.

Stern's haunting canticle in the wilderness for the lost sunken moon . . . his only companions the unknowable Sphinx and the fleeing stars.

***

And there was still a solemn rite Ahmad kept to, in memory of all the fabled dreams of his youth.

Every Saturday toward the end of the afternoon he would excuse himself, going first to take a bath and then emerging toward sundown in a mended shirt and the one old suit he owned, both newly pressed and shiny, a spotted tie around his neck and his one pair of dilapidated shoes newly smudged with polish, his dyed red hair slicked down with water and his battered flat straw hat cocked at some odd angle, his spyglass in one hand and his dented old trombone in the other, a genteel spectacle of quiet dignity, a gentleman without means.

Slowly then, because it was difficult for him, he would labor up the stairs to the roof of the hotel, there to sit for hours in the soft evening breezes, peering at the city through his spyglass and playing his trombone in the darkness. He claimed he could see the little crowded squares where he had passed the evenings of his youth. He even claimed he could make out the cafés where he had once held forth with such success, amusing his friends far into the night with heroic couplets and sudden bursts of song from his favorite arias.

So Ahmad claimed, alone now on the narrow roof of the rotting Hotel Babylon with the melancholy sounds of his trombone, above the twinkling lights of the great restless city.

And of course it made no difference, Joe knew, whether Ahmad could really make out those little cafés in the darkness or whether he only imagined he saw them, alive once more with laughter and surging with music and poetry, no end to the glasses of wine and friendship and above all no end to the wonders of love, the soft air of his great city echoing with those evenings of long ago when the whole world had seemed to stretch before him, as he said, and he was still young and strong and not yet ugly.

-12-

Beggar

Joe stood close to a building across the way, studying the little restaurant Liffy had told him about. There was nothing unusual about it but he stood there staring anyway, fascinated.

It was a small quiet neighborhood tucked away behind busier streets. A moment ago he had been pushing through the crowds of shouting men in cloaks and turbans, the honking taxis and the sheep and camels and rickety lorries and Greek merchants and Coptic traders, goats gathered at crossings and Albanian planters and drunken Anzac soldiers, Italian bankers and Indian soldiers and Armenians and Turks and Jews, carts selling juice and carts selling nuts and carts selling fruits, barefoot laborers bent under huge heavy sacks and everywhere the poor wandering aimlessly, chanting the names of gods and saviors and the makings of an imaginary evening meal.

And then all at once he had turned a corner and here he was in a quiet little neighborhood where everyday people lived, the war far away. Seemingly so.

There wasn't much to see. A woman carrying vegetables home. An old woman shaking her head and muttering, a little group of women talking. Men reading newspapers at the tables of a tiny café. A small square and narrow cobblestone lanes, a water pipe where children filled bottles. Patches of shade and flowers, gray clothing hung up to dry. Little balconies and open stairways and half-open shutters, odd sounds clicking together. A beggar sitting alone in the dust.

Joe passed in front of the small restaurant, the kind of place where most of the customers were probably known by name, men with meager incomes who either lived alone or had no one at home to cook for them.

He peeked in. Some customers for the evening meal had already arrived, shabby dignified men who were lingering over each dish, trying to wait until they had finished their soup before they unfolded their newspapers out of boredom, loneliness. A small man in a gray suit was making a show of greeting a waiter as he removed his red fez and went through an evening ritual of pretending to select a table, probably the same table he had been going to for the last twenty years.

As Joe moved off into the shadows, he found himself wondering whether this was the kind of place where he would have expected Maud and Stern to come at the end of the day, to share a simple dinner and a carafe of wine. Later to move across the square to the little café to have a sweet, because Maud liked sweets after dinner. To sit together at one of those tiny tables and sip coffee and talk, and also just to be alone together under the stars.

And no, he wasn't surprised. It was the ordinary feeling of the little square that struck him, that and the blessed quiet which seemed so rare in Cairo. He could understand how it would appeal to them.

People coming and going and doing their commonplace things, far from the war. Lentils and barley and cigarettes, a glass of wine, little cups of sugary coffee. A man selling used clothes. Children laughing.

Women sprinkling handfuls of water on the cobblestones to lay the dust at the end of the day. A hum of distant cries. A solitary beggar with downcast eyes.

No, it wasn't much of anywhere really, and none of it surprised him. The peculiar thing about Stern, after all, was that he appeared to be such an ordinary man in so many ways. The flamboyant figure who lived in Ahmad's imagination had long since disappeared with the years, and Joe knew that if he were to see Stern here on this street for the first time he would probably not even have noticed him. For Stern would have looked like anyone else in the little restaurant, the same as the man reaching up to take down his small inventory of secondhand suits, the same as the man making change in the little café or the clerk turning down an alley, the same as any of these people who were simply making a life, no more.

Making a life.

Stern's words, Joe realized. Stern's words spoken long ago in Jerusalem, in answer to Joe's eager questions about what Stern was really doing beneath it all. Words from another time and place altogether spoken when Joe had been newly arrived in Jerusalem and groping to find his way in the world, and Stern had already been a man with years of hard experience behind him.

Of course, that wasn't all of it. The man who appeared in Bletchley's files, and in many files under other names, was also vastly different from anyone on this street. With the quiet lives these men and women lived, they couldn't have conceived of where Stern went and what he did. Yet in another way this quiet street was all of it, for Stern had the same fears and hopes as these people. He wanted things to be better and he tried hard to make them better. He had his small successes and his greater failures and one day when he was gone, nothing would have changed particularly. And in the meantime Stern came to this little restaurant to escape the noise and the crowds at the end of the day, to meet an old friend and talk about everything and nothing and silently share the minutes, at peace for a moment.

And Maudie?

No, it didn't surprise him to imagine her here either. Her life had also been unusual in so many ways, yet in other ways it wasn't at all. For surely she'd never wanted anything more than to be herself, to care and to live life fully.

Modest, like these people. Doing the best she could to make some sense out of the terrible mistakes of the past. So often a stranger again in the endless slippage of lives, the conflicting journeys of hope and need where people met and parted. Trying to face the wounding demons of the past, not escape them, because the past never went away. But trying to know herself well enough so those demons could no longer torment her. Struggling to stand alone and yet also to love—in the end, the explanation for all her wanderings. From the coal fields of a little town in Pennsylvania to the mountains of Albania, and Athens and Jerusalem and Smyrna, and Istanbul and Crete, and now here. A lifetime of searching, trying to find her place.

Joe gazed down the narrow little street. He looked up at the fading light and somehow everything seemed right. After all these years this was the kind of place where Maud and Stern would meet for a quiet evening together, here in this ordinary little neighborhood with its modest concerns, its small failures and triumphs. After all these years of struggle and pain and love, of losing and trying again, this was exactly where two people would come to celebrate life in the midst of a terrible war. To talk and sit silently, to smile and laugh and share for a moment those dreams that could never be wholly lost or forgotten, coming together in this simple place as the world raged and died just a little bit more beyond the corner .

. . beyond the solitary beggar who sat at the end of the street in the dust, alone in the twilight, unmoving.

A beggar of no particular era, homeless and stateless and of no use to anyone, a beggar of life from nowhere who would one day return whence he had come. And yet also, strangely, the man for whom the war was being fought, the prize for all the great armies, the solitary man who would survive their terrible victories and their legions of victims.

Anonymous in his rags in the dust at twilight, a beggar surveying his limitless kingdom. . . .

***

Joe hovered off to the side, out of the way, waiting for her to come as Liffy had said she would. And then all at once she was there down the street, a small woman moving quickly in the way he remembered so well. That hadn't changed at all.

She stopped to greet a shopkeeper, her face lighting up, and that hadn't changed either. There was the same eagerness in her smile, the same concern as she tipped her head and made the shopkeeper laugh, some little thing said in passing.

Joe smiled too, he couldn't help it. When he had known her before, she had made an effort to take clothes seriously, even though somehow it had never seemed to work. But now apparently she had just given up on it. Yet she was beautiful, Joe couldn't believe how beautiful she had become with the years.

Such a strong face and her eyes so expressive, so direct and smiling.

She was going into the restaurant and Joe turned away, excited and confused, frightened. Twenty years, it had been, and where had the time gone since they'd been together? She seemed a stranger now and yet she could never be that, they knew each other too well. They had a son who had been born in Jericho. They had met in Jerusalem and gone to the Sinai, to an oasis on the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba.

Two decades ago and less than a year together . . . but still.

He wanted to walk up behind her and whisper her name, and see her smile and look into his eyes.

Maudie, it's me. . . . Maudie.

Instead he turned away, he had to. How could he explain what he was doing here? What could he say about Stern? No, he didn't know enough about Stern yet. He didn't know enough about any of it yet.

Joe moved quickly up the street, excited and afraid, confused. She seemed a stranger but she couldn't be that. He knew her, of course he did, and she knew him.

The beggar on the corner held out his hand as Joe rushed by, a long slender hand, calloused and hard and beautiful, as mysterious as an ancient map of some lost desert. Joe glanced at the beggar's shadowy face and gave him a coin and kept moving, his thoughts tumbling, racing. He had gone several blocks before he suddenly stopped in the midst of the swirling crowds, stopped dead still, alone and hearing nothing in the warm night air.

The beggar.

It was impossible. The beggar at the end of that quiet street had been Stern.

Stern? . . .

***

Joe had no idea how long he stood there in the middle of the crowded sidewalk, oblivious to everything around him. He turned.

No, there was no point in trying to go back, Stern would be gone by now. But what was he doing there?

Why was he watching over Maud? And why was he back in Cairo when Bletchley had said he would be away for two weeks?

Bletchley?

No. Joe was sure he couldn't have been lying about Stern having gone away. Nothing would make any sense if he had been. So Stern must have returned to Cairo without Bletchley's knowledge, against Bletchley's orders, and in fact Joe was beginning to think Stern could go almost anywhere without anyone knowing it. He was like Liffy with his disguises, only more so. With Liffy the disguises were always part of a role, but with Stern they were simply another part of him, another face on the turnings of his path.

And now Stern knew Joe was in Cairo, which meant he had to know why someone like Joe had been brought in, and that made everything backward because Joe himself didn't know why he was here, not really. How could he when he didn't know what Stern was doing, let alone why he was doing it? . . .

Unless Ahmad had been hinting at something real when he spoke of Stern bartering away his soul to the Nazis. Unless there had been more in that than one of Ahmad's dramatic turns of speech. . . .

Joe drifted along through the crowds, feeling more lost by the moment. Everything was moving too quickly and he had to break out of these networks of the past which seemed to obscure Stern ever more deeply in the feelings of others. . . .

Talk to Bletchley then? Put it to Bletchley outright?

No, that was too dangerous. He didn't want to be the one who told Bletchley that Stern was back in Cairo. Not the way things were, the reasons for Stern's return unknown.

Talk to Liffy?

Yes, and for other reasons as well. Since becoming so deeply involved with Ahmad, Joe had begun to have an uneasy feeling that Liffy might not be telling him everything he knew about Stern, that he might be holding something back because he cared so much for Stern, an effect Stern often had on people.

Instinctively they wanted to protect him, to safeguard that fragile essence Stern carried within him, perhaps for everyone. Joe himself had always felt that way and there was no reason why Liffy shouldn't, but the sooner he talked to Liffy the better.

Joe stopped at a public telephone, keeping his eye on the young Egyptian across the way who was following him on Bletchley's orders. It didn't bother him that Bletchley would know he had gone to the restaurant where Stern and Maud often met, or that he had waited there to catch a glimpse of Maud.

Bletchley would have been expecting him to do something like that by now. Nor was he concerned about his behavior since then, for it could only tell Bletchley that seeing Maud had confused him.

He dialed Liffy's number and let the phone ring once before breaking the connection. He made a show of continuing to dial numbers, reaching Liffy's phone again and letting it ring twice before hanging up. So there was nothing to do now but wait and see if Liffy turned up in an hour where he was supposed to.

Nothing but one minor matter. Joe spent some time eluding the young Egyptian, and when he was sure he was no longer being followed he headed in the direction of the bar where he hoped Liffy would be waiting. It was down by the river and he hadn't been there before, but it was supposed to be a safe place where Europeans seldom went.

Strictly a refuge for the lowest of lowlifes, Liffy had said.

One of those downstairs dives, Joe, where the dregs of riverfront society and other serious alcoholics fade away in the shadows a little bit more every night. But also the kind of cave where a spirited actor who never succeeded, and an ex-shaman from an obscure American Indian tribe, could comfortably mutter together in sign language while blowing coded smoke signals in the air, without anyone noticing a thing. Certainly no self-respecting member of any superior race would ever show his face there, so it's our kind of place, Joe. A club that will have us without examining our forged credentials, a home of sorts for those who haven't been home since the Babylonians took Jerusalem, say about 586 B.C.? . . .

Joe smiled to himself as he moved along in the evening crowds. What in the world are all these people doing? he thought. Don't they have any idea there's a war on? . . . And so the evening had begun in an ordinary quiet neighborhood and Joe almost laughed out loud, thinking of Stern back there. A kind of relief, he knew, from the tensions building up inside him. But it was stunning all the same. . . . Stern dressed as a beggar? Sitting in rags in the dust at twilight at the end of a cobblestone lane?

A wonder, he thought, that beggar hasn't changed. He probably decided the moment he saw me to try to get a coin. He'd like that, Stern would, just the sort of thing that would give him a quiet chuckle. I'll have to ask him about it sometime.

But the giddy mood didn't last. Almost at once he felt the muscles in his stomach tighten.

Fear, he thought. Out-and-out fear and why not, this whole thing scares me to death. Nothing's looking easy now, just the opposite and getting worse.

Codes, he thought. Ahmad keeps saying Stern has codes on his mind. Well Stern must know his codes all right after all these years, especially these codes we call people and how to unlock their meanings, because that's what Stern's always been . . . a master cryptologist, a master decipherer of the human soul. Only maybe even more so now as the stakes climb higher. So we'll just have to find out why Stern was a beggar in the dust tonight, surveying his limitless kingdom, ah yes. . . .

***

Liffy was in the bar, standing at the counter. He smiled as Joe walked up.

Good evening, Mr Gulbenkian, Liffy called out, using the name that was on the false passport Bletchley had given Joe, part of his strange cover as a naturalized Lebanese citizen of Armenian extraction, a dealer in Coptic artifacts, in transit.

And a very good evening to you, said Liffy again, and welcome to the world of the underclasses. How fares the pursuit of Coptic artifacts on this fair night?

Let's go outside for a walk, said Joe.

They left the bar and moved away from the crowds, finding their way down the paths of a public garden beside the Nile.

Disaster? whispered Liffy uneasily, staring straight ahead.

Not that bad yet, replied Joe. It's not vodka time. Crisis only.

What happened?

Stern's back in Cairo. I saw him near the restaurant where he and Maud go. I didn't have a chance to talk to him because I didn't realize it was him until too late. He was disguised as a beggar. But Bletchley said Stern was going to be away for two weeks and now he's back without Bletchley knowing it, against Bletchley's orders. Why? Everything's moving fast and all of a sudden I don't have a couple of weeks to pick up the signals, nothing like it. I don't know enough yet to go to the Sisters, but I may have to try to see them soon anyway. I wanted to talk with you about it.

In answer, Liffy merely nodded. He was staring straight ahead as they moved along, withdrawn in a way that wasn't like him. A thought struck Joe.

It doesn't seem to be news to you, Liffy. Did you already know Stern was back in Cairo?

Liffy said nothing. For some moments they walked in silence.

I didn't know it for a fact, whispered Liffy at last.

Oh God, thought Joe. . . . Listen, he said quietly, I don't have to tell you Bletchley's been holding out on me from the very beginning, and now Bletchley's got to find out pretty soon that Stern isn't where he's supposed to be, and that's going to start all kinds of trouble. It makes things seem hopeless all of a sudden, because there's no time anymore and I'm nowhere and I can't help Stern this way. So if you can tell me anything. . . .

Liffy groaned. He turned.

Oh look, Joe, I feel very close to you and I feel very close to Stern, but this just isn't my kind of work. I don't really understand any of it and I don't really want to. I'm only a prop here, I told you that.

I know you did. And I respect the fact that you don't want to get pulled into Stern's affairs, and mine.

Only because I'd make a mess of it for both of you, said Liffy, because I know I'm no good at this sort of thing. You'd think I would be after all the time I've spent with disguises and playacting, but that's just it.

What the Monks and the Waterboys do just isn't real to me and I can't take it seriously. Playing at it or laughing about it is fine, but no matter how hard I try I can't really convince myself that any of it makes any sense. Maybe that's because so much of the time I'm wearing some ridiculous costume in some ridiculous role. It's strange, but to me it's like being with Cynthia.

In what way, Liffy?

Well, you know when I go to see her she likes me to pretend this or that, because she thinks it's romantic, and I don't mind because it's still a game in the end, and I know that and so does she.

And this isn't? Is that it?

Well that's the point. This is a game to me but it doesn't seem to be to other people. Other people seem to take it seriously. To me, Cynthia is real. When we're holding each other late at night, that's real. But not the red cloak I might be twirling around in front of her earlier in the evening. That was just fun, nothing, a game.

I know, said Joe. I feel the same way.

You do?

Of course, Liffy. Nothing in this world is ever as real as a woman you hold in your arms. That's as close as we ever come to the truth of being alive, knowing it and not just thinking about it, which is always a second-rate activity.

But how can you manage it then? Doing this?

I can't very well, said Joe. And I know I can't and that's why I gave it up a long time ago. But I came here because I believe in Stern, and someone has to find out the truth about him for his sake, so he won't die thinking it's all been for nothing. Someone has to bear witness now and it doesn't matter whether it's you or me or Maud or somebody else, but I do know it has to be now if it's going to be. Now, God help us.

They were sitting on the bank of the river, gazing at the reflections of light on the water. Liffy was trembling, and when he spoke his voice was so weak Joe could hardly hear him.

. . . someone implied, yesterday, that Stern had just returned to Cairo . . . someone who trusts me, who would never imagine I'd say anything about it to anyone.

This man's involved with clandestine work?

Yes, whispered Liffy, but not the way we are, not with ours. At least that's what I think, I'm not really sure of anything.

This man knows what you do? Whom you work for?

Yes.

He knows Stern well?

Yes. That's how I met him originally. Through Stern.

Why does he believe you wouldn't say anything?

Liffy looked at Joe.

Because I'm a Jew and he knows me. Does that surprise you?

No, I thought it was probably that. He works for the Jewish Agency then?

Liffy made a nervous gesture with his hand, as if brushing something away from his face.

I don't think that's supposed to be known. I'm sure it's not.

Joe nodded.

Do you know which section he reports to? Is it the political section?

Some part of it, I imagine. Would Stern be involved with that?

It's likely, said Joe.

Once more Liffy made the nervous gesture, passing his hand over the side of his face.

Joe? I don't know what's right anymore, I have no idea what's right. . . . Oh why can't things be simple?

Why can't they be the way they are on the war posters? This is the job, let's get the job done. Why can't life be like that? . . . Oh I just don't know what to do. Can't you tell me there's this and there's that, so I can choose and try to do what's right?

Sadly, Joe shook his head.

I wish I could, Liffy, but you know as well as I do that nobody can do that for us, not when the stakes are so important. Our decisions are always our own, and it begins and ends there. The clamor of the world just goes on and won't let up and still we have to find ourselves in it and find our name in the book of life, as impossible as that is, and nobody can do it for us and if we don't do it it's as if our name had never been there, as if we'd never existed at all. And meanwhile the clamor goes right on all around us and it always says the same thing, that nothing matters, so why decide anything? Stern, me, you . . . what difference does it make? How can one person ever matter? . . . But you know that's not true, Liffy. You know the two of us, right here, now, are the whole world. There's nobody here but us and that's the way it is and we're all of it. . . . But I don't have to tell you that. You know it better than I do.

Silence again between the two of them. Another long moment of silence as Liffy's mouth worked and he stared down at the river.

The man's name is Cohen, whispered Liffy. You could try to see him tonight. He's quite young. I'll tell you what I can about him.

And then Liffy turned and gripped Joe's arm, the anguish in his face so moving Joe would never forget it.

Long after the two of them had parted for the last time that image of Liffy would still be with him, a reminder of a moment on the shores of the Nile, a memory of a terrible war and many things.

Joe? . . . O God have mercy.

Yes Liffy, I know, and truly I wish I didn't have to find out anything at all about Cohen and what he does, and I pray it will turn out all right for him and for all of us.

Liffy shook his head. His hands fell away. There were tears in his eyes.

But it won't be all right, it can't be. We're in too deeply now and I don't mean just Stern and you and me, or Cohen or Ahmad or any of the others. There are too many little spots of light on this vast river suddenly, too many reflections of the stars broken by these immense currents of time at our feet. Too many little sounds in the world that will be lost in the whirlwind forever, too many little echoes that will be removed from the book of life. This time it's not just Stern who won't survive. . . . Many of us won't, and many things.

I know it, he whispered, burying his face in his hands.

Joe said nothing. He put his arms around Liffy and held on to the flesh and bone with all his strength as Liffy wept in the shadows.

PART THREE

-13-

Cohen

It was a dark cobblestone lane with tiny shops squeezed one next to the other, the narrow alley barely lit by weak lights casting a feeble glow. The upper stories of the buildings overhung the alley to provide shade during the day, but at night they obscured the sky and closed in the alley, giving it the oppressive appearance of a tunnel.

The alley was deserted at that late hour, the storefronts dark. Most of the shops in the little quarter dealt in antique coins and semiprecious gems and various artifacts from antiquity. Here and there a thin line of yellow light showed between the locked shutters overhead, shining dimly from the bedrooms that fronted on the alley.

Joe picked his way carefully over the uneven cobblestones. It was an eerie feeling moving through the darkness there, knowing so many people were nearby and hearing the sounds they made, yet without a visible sign of life anywhere.

A pot striking stone. A muffled voice. A bolt sliding into place.

And his own footsteps surprisingly loud in the narrow alley and echoing in the darkness. A hundred eyes could have been watching him and there was no way he could ever have known it. But then all at once he was standing in front of a narrow shop with an old wooden sign overhead in the shape of a giant pair of eyeglasses, the gold lettering chipped and faded.

COHEN'S OPTIKS

He leaned forward and peered into the small shopwindow where a long brass spyglass was suspended on invisible wires, a printed legend beneath it.

Lenses made to order. Fine lenses for all purposes.

To the left was a thick wooden door, not the entrance to the shop but the separate entrance to the living quarters upstairs. Joe raised the bronze hand of Fatima attached to the middle of the door and let it fall three times, causing echoes to boom up and down the alley. He intended to wait several minutes before knocking again, and he was already reaching out for the graceful bronze hand when he suddenly realized a little panel had been opened in the door in front of his eyes.

What is it? whispered a woman's voice in Arabic through the panel.

Joe couldn't see anyone in the darkness. He leaned forward.

I have to see Mr Cohen, he whispered in English.

Come to the shop tomorrow, whispered the woman, this time in English. It was a young woman's voice, he thought.

This concerns something else, he said. Please tell him Liffy sent me.

The panel closed silently, and in another moment the door opened just as silently. Bolt and lock and hinges all carefully greased, thought Joe. A thorough gent, as Liffy said, and this would be his younger sister.

He stepped inside and the door closed behind him. Vaguely, in the darkness, he could make out the upper half of a face.

Wearing a scarf? he wondered. Been out and only just returned?

I don't know anyone named Liffy, whispered the young woman. Who are you and what do you want?

I have some special business with your brother, Miss Cohen. The name's Gulbenkian. I'm soliciting charitable contributions on behalf of Armenian refugees from the massacres in Asia Minor.

You're twenty years too late then, whispered the young woman.

And that's exactly what I would have said until an hour or two ago, whispered Joe, when Liffy told me otherwise. That slaughter is already a couple of decades gone in the past, I was saying to Liffy, and the world has moved on to bigger and more impressive slaughters, so how can your friend Mr Cohen or anyone else be expected to remember the Armenians today? But Liffy smiled and shrugged, you know how he does, and he said your brother's concern for refugees has a way of transcending time, so to speak. He said your brother has a long memory when it comes to just causes, like all the Cairo Cohens.

So please, Miss Cohen, if you could just tell him Liffy sent me I'm sure he'd agree that Liffy's not one to be sending idle visitors around to call at this dark hour of the night, not unless it was important.

I told you, we don't know anyone named Liffy.

That's what I mean. If you don't even know him, his visitors aren't likely to be idle. Of course I could also go rushing ahead and say I'm an old friend of Stern's, but that would be getting down to business straight off and I'm told that's not the way to go about things in the Levant. So now. I'll just stand here and wait in the dark until you have a word with him, if you don't mind.

He could hear her breathing. He was also beginning to be able to see her. She was a tall young woman who stood very straight, her hair falling down from beneath her scarf. She looked as if she had just returned from somewhere.

It's quite all right, he added, it's what I've been doing for most of my life. Waiting in the dark, I mean, for some kind of answer to come to me. Once I even spent seven years in a desert in Arizona, a good half of it in darkness, thinking about Stern and the many sides to the man. Amazing when you get into it, how many sides he does have. Do you mind if I smoke while I'm waiting?

Joe took out a cigarette and struck a match so she would be able to see his face. He was careful not to glance at her. She hesitated only a moment.

Good, he thought. Take the look you're given and come down on one side or the other. Has to be that way when you work alone.

I'll just be a moment, she said.

And I appreciate it.

He blew out the match.

***

The two of them sat in a back room on the ground floor, in the small workshop where fine lenses were ground for all purposes, as the sign out front said.

Cohen was tall and lean and angular, a generation younger than Stern. A dark lock of hair slipped over his forehead and he pushed it back. There was an unmistakable air of elegance about him, even when he was in shirtsleeves and worn slippers, surrounded by the buffers and trays and grinding wheels of his profession. Part of it was the graceful way he held himself, especially the way he moved his hands. He himself was so handsome women would have probably said he was beautiful.

Cohen smiled pleasantly, touching a long thin forefinger to his brow. Now that, thought Joe, would be devastating to the young ladies in the cafés, if he ever had time for cafés.

Well well, said Cohen. Here we are past midnight and at last I have a chance to meet a man called Gulbenkian. My sister tells me you're the new chief of the British Secret Service in the Middle East, or of Section A.M. for Asia Minor or After Midnight or whatever it is. Who can possibly stay current with all the vague intelligence units that keep popping up in this part of the world? I certainly can't. As your friend Liffy says, it seems to be a case of distorted images and refractions receding into infinity. All very mysterious and incomprehensible, according to Liffy.

How's that, Mr Cohen? I don't believe Liffy has slipped that one by me yet.

No? Well he was referring to the glare of the sun on the desert. It produces a multitude of little worlds, he says, which are all separate. Reflections, he calls them. But which world might yours be, and what might that have to do with me?

Well if the truth be known, said Joe, I came to discuss a magnifying glass your great-grandfather made in the nineteenth century.

Cohen laughed, relieved.

Is that all?

Yes. Only that, just imagine. But you see it was a very powerful magnifying glass, so powerful it has a way of letting us look right down through the years, from way back then when it was made, right up until the present. So powerful it can tell us who you are and who I am and why we're sitting here consulting together late on a clear Cairo night.

I wasn't aware we were consulting.

Oh yes, said Joe, no question about it. Now this magnifying glass I'm talking about is so powerful, mind you, that when a man puts it to his eye, his eye becomes a good two inches wide behind it, which is an eye so big it probably sees a good deal. Now your great-grandfather, who founded Cohen's Optiks right here where we sit, made this glass for a friend of his, an English botanist who happened to be skulking around these parts in the nineteenth century, one Strongbow by name. All right so far?

Cohen smiled.

Yes.

Good. And this man Strongbow wasn't an everyday fellow by any means, no more than was his friend Cohen, but one at a time. Strongbow started out as a botanist all right, but before long his wanderings got the best of him and he became an explorer, exploring just about everything in this part of the world and using his powerful magnifying glass to get a better look at the sights along the way. Then after doing that for about forty years he decided it was time for a change and he became an Arab holy man, whereupon he gave away his worldly goods as holy men tend to do, having no use for them on the paths they travel.

And since his magnifying glass had always been so precious to him, he decided to pass it along to another of his dearest friends, who was also a great friend of your greatgrandfather, a black Egyptologist by the name of Menelik Ziwar. Still all right?

Yes.

Fine. Now this Ziwar person was able to put the powerful glass to good use, using it to decipher the ancient mutterings in stone that he was always examining underground, hieroglyphs as they're called. And he did so until he died and the magnifying glass was laid to rest on his chest, in the sarcophagus where this Ziwar intended to pass the ages in a crypt beneath a public garden beside the Nile, right here in Cairo. This Ziwar you see, this old Menelik, was accustomed to talking to mummies as a result of his lifelong profession, but since his eyesight had been failing in his later years he thought it advisable to make his eternal voyage with a magnifying glass firmly in hand, the better to peer down through eternity without missing the details. So that's what he did and that's what lies on his chest today, that excellent and stirring device given to him long ago by his old friend Strongbow, which had originally been devised by another great friend to the both of them, a superior craftsman by the name of Cohen. . . . Your great-grandfather.

Cohen smiled and touched the corner of his mouth. Right, thought Joe, devastating to the ladies if only he had time for them.

Excellent and stirring? asked Cohen. Isn't that a peculiar way to describe a magnifying glass?

It is, said Joe. But this magnifying glass was excellent because your great-grandfather, its first owner, had made it that way. And then it was stirring on top of that because its second owner, this botanist turned explorer turned Arab holy man, Strongbow, and its third owner, this black former slave turned archaeologist, Menelik Ziwar, because all three of these great friends had an uncommon way of stirring up time to savor a new result of their own making, which was an Irish stew of history so to speak, although none of them was Irish.

But you're Irish, aren't you, Mr Gulbenkian?

That's right, and more so on some occasions than others. The weather seems to affect it, like an old wound. When it gets very dark out you begin to feel this stiffness at the base of your skull, and pretty soon it sneaks up toward your eyes, a sort of creeping paralysis of the mind, and drink seems to be the only way to waylay it.

Would you like a drink? asked Cohen.

Don't mind if I do, now that you mention it.

Cohen reached into a cupboard and brought out a bottle and a glass.

Is arak all right?

Thanks. Just by itself is fine.

Cohen poured and placed the bottle on a table beside Joe.

An Irish Gulbenkian, murmured Cohen. That's remarkable.

Joe raised his eyebrows as he sipped, his face lighting up with a kind of hope.

Do you think so? Still, we're much better at wishing and dreaming for things than at having them happen.

Like most people, I suppose.

Then you're not really soliciting charitable contributions for Armenian refugees from Asia Minor?

Well I'm doing that too in a way, over the long haul, but I admit tonight it was just a bit of amiable subterfuge meant to get me in the door. Cover, Liffy calls it. Secret agents are always using one kind of cover or another, according to him. Again, like most people. But you used the word remarkable, and that's true, that's what they were all right, all three of them. Strongbow, old Menelik, your great-grandfather Cohen. Just a remarkable triumvirate back when they were young, before they went their separate ways. Back when they were about your age, it must have been.

Joe sipped again, his face thoughtful.

In those days, he said, those three friends used to get together every Sunday afternoon in a cheap Arab restaurant they'd found for themselves on the shores of the Nile, a pleasant filthy place they'd taken a liking to, and there they'd feast and drink and carry on, telling each other all the things they were going to do in this world. And when the afternoon was coming to an end and they were as drunk as lords, over the restaurant railing they'd go, just leaping into the Nile to drift away on the great swirling currents with contented smiles on their faces, enjoying the last good rays of the sun and belching and bubbling and snoozing ever so happily, just effortlessly pissing away their troubles so to speak, lords of the noble Nile for a moment in their youths. . . .

Cohen's long thin hands drew graceful shapes in the air. He smiled and shook his head.

I'm sorry but you must be mistaken, he said. You must have three other men in mind, because I know for a fact my great-grandfather always dined at home on Sunday. It was a family tradition.

***

That's right, said Joe, he never did all of it. Cohen started out in the restaurant with his two friends, but already being a family man, he didn't spend the afternoon carousing there but went home to have Sunday dinner with his fine young wife and young son, as you say. Then when Sunday dinner was over he'd suggest a pleasant walk down by the river, and in the course of this pleasant stroll the family would pass a felluca tied up, ready for hire, and the son would beg for a little sail and Cohen would kindly agree, and the whole family would climb on board for a lovely cruise in the late afternoon.

Well it would just so happen that while they were out there sailing on the Nile, Cohen would spot a couple of belching bubbling bodies floating by on the great river, his good friends Strongbow and Ziwar dead drunk on the currents of time, and the felluca would take a turn or two and Cohen would pluck his friends out of the water and lay them out on the floorboards to sleep it off. And a good thing it was, too, for if Cohen hadn't done that then Strongbow and Ziwar might have gone right on floating down the Nile and out to sea and been lost to history forever, which would have been a loss for all of us. So that's how those Sundays worked and that was Cohen's Sunday role, an essential one, because without him those other two wouldn't have been around to see Monday. . . . Your great-grandfather. A faithful friend.

He was a good family man, murmured Cohen.

Oh he was definitely that, said Joe, like all the men of the Cairo Cohens. And he was also on his pious way to becoming the patriarch of his clan as well as a hugely wealthy man, after first being viewed as crazy. For it seems he had two mysterious dreams one night, the first depicting seven fat cattle coming up out of the Nile and being eaten by seven lean cattle that followed them, and then right on top of that another dream, this time of seven full ears of corn being devoured by seven lean ears.

Cohen smiled, relaxing and enjoying himself.

Do I hear an echo from the Bible? he asked.

And so you do, replied Joe, and of course messages from God were often said twice in those days so nobody would get them wrong. Well knowing the good book as your great-grandfather did and the history of his people in Egypt and all, and being himself in Egypt, he didn't need a prophet to tell him what his two dreams were all about. So the very next morning this Cohen put aside the lenses of his trade and headed out into the fields of Egypt to buy grain. He'd decided to give up grinding glass, you see, in favor of grinding grain.

Cohen drew some shapes in the air, a quizzical expression coming over his face.

Right, continued Joe. And at the time there happened to be plenty of grain in Egypt, yet here was this Cohen going deeper and deeper into debt to buy up all he could and store it away in warehouses. And he went on doing that for seven years and naturally everybody in the country got into the habit of calling him Crazy Cohen, for who in his right mind would fill up more and more warehouses with grain when all the fields were heaped with it already?

Well obviously no one who's sane, that's who. Obviously only a Crazy Cohen, a ward of God who'd been snatching messages out of thin air, thinking he'd been chosen to hear them. But he carried on in his delusions, Crazy Cohen did, never forgetting for a moment his back-to-back dreams in sevens, and lo and behold and surprise of surprises, all at once there was a terrible turn to the harvests in Egypt that wouldn't let up, with the result that almost no grain grew in Egypt for another seven whole years. And during that second stretch of seven years, the lean stretch, all that stood between Egypt and starvation was Crazy Cohen and his demented pious foresight, and his warehouses.

Joe leaned back and smiled.

Chosen, it seems, he was. And thus by keeping the faith and keeping his mind on my namesake, he made a stupendous fortune. . . . A pious gambler. Your great-grandfather.

Cohen nodded thoughtfully.

Your name is Joseph?

More commonly, Joe. Also O'Sullivan Beare. But my coat isn't many-colored, as you can see.

Cohen nodded again.

Do you also have eleven brothers, Joe?

More, I'm afraid. Or at least I used to. Over the years a lot of them seem to have fallen off roofs in the New World, while drunk. Thought they were reaching for the stars, don't you know. Queer place, the New World. Some people actually believe it's that.

Cohen gazed at Joe and drew a circle in the air.

So history comes around, he said, and that much is history. But I don't see what any of it has to do with us.

Right, said Joe. History hiding its real intent behind a cover, like secret agents and most people. Now let's just recall those three young gents who were such close friends in the nineteenth century, said Strongbow and Ziwar and Cohen. Of the three of them, Ziwar was a Christian and Cohen was a Jew, and Strongbow, although born an Englishman, was on his way to becoming a Moslem holy man. So already, to those of a religious bent, we have something of a representative gathering for this part of the world.

Cohen laughed. Friendly fellow, thought Joe, and so far so good. He poured more arak for himself as Cohen gestured at the buffers and grinding wheels in the workshop.

Religion aside, do these tools speak of great wealth to you?

No they do not, said Joe. But there used to be a saying in Cairo, I'm told, which explains that. A little madness is a dangerous thing. Remember the Cohens. . . . Which saying was as accurate as can be, for what happened in Cairo in those days was that old Crazy Cohen's son, who was partly practical and only a little mad and therefore known as Half-Crazy Cohen, what happened was that Half-Crazy went on to spend the entire family fortune while in the company of a great friend of his named Ahmad and two beautiful young women known as the Sisters. Some of the fortune went to the racetracks and the casinos, and some of it for champagne to fill alabaster cups of pure moonlight when the four of them were out carousing on the Nile, so long ago. . . . Such madcap living by your grandfather in his youth, in other words, said Half-Crazy Cohen, that all the Cohen fortune got spent. So that later when your father came of age he had to find a trade to support himself, and what better trade to turn to than the one that got the Cohens started in Egypt in the first place? Lenses. Nothing grand about it but honest work all the same, so back your father came to this very house where your great-grandfather had started and resurrected a faded old sign in the shape of a pair of giant spectacles, a symbol of eyes that can see, the sign we find hanging out front tonight. . . . And that, I believe, is the tale of the Cairo Cohens over the course of four generations and more than a century, stated in its essentials. Rags to riches to rags it goes, and whoever said we all begin the same and end the same knew what he was talking about.

Cohen smiled, opening a silver cigarette case. He offered it to Joe, who took a cigarette and struck a match for both of them.

Are you also an itinerant Irish historian, Joe?

More so on some occasions than others, but it's really the present that interests me, so let's head that way and consider the time when your father was a young man in Cairo, before the First World War. Now at this point old Menelik Ziwar was living in retirement in a crypt beneath a public garden beside the Nile, using a gigantic cork-lined sarcophagus as his bedroom, where he was known to be at home on Sunday afternoons, as they used to say, meaning he was ready to welcome friends and serve them a bracing cup of underground tea. And since so few people had ever heard of old Menelik to begin with, we shouldn't be surprised to find that most of his guests were the children of former friends.

A suggestion of a frown flickered in Cohen's face, even though he was still smiling. Joe pretended not to notice it.

So for one, said Joe, there was the grandson of his old friend Crazy Cohen, your father. And there was the son of an old friend and fellow dragoman-in-arms named Ahmad, the son also Ahmad. Then there was the son of the great explorer Strongbow, the child born to the Jewish shepherdess Strongbow married late in life, young Stern. And of course the Sisters from their strange houseboat, older than the other guests and the only ones who had known Menelik in his prime, long-term residents on the Nile who never wanted to miss a good thing near the river and seldom did. And that was the inner circle gathered around old Menelik's cork-lined sarcophagus on Sunday afternoons back before the First World War.

There were some others who dropped in now and then, but we don't have to concern ourselves with them tonight.

For the first time Cohen stopped smiling. But his composure was still remarkable and Joe admired him for it. Stern's influence, thought Joe. There's no mistaking it.

And after these friends had tipped away their tea, Joe went on, they would unpack their musical instruments and get ready for the weekly concert that was so dear to the heart of old Menelik. For as that wise living mummy used to say in his five-thousand-year-old tomb—I wouldn't, dream of trying to pass eternity without the music of life. Eternity, old Menelik used to say, just doesn't work without music.

Examine anyone's notion of the great beyond, even the vaguest, and you'll hear melodious strings soaring in the background, or at least a lute being plucked. . . . Thus the concerts those friends always put on for old Menelik when they came to call, Stern quite naturally the leader. Stern tuning his violin and using his old Morse-code key to tap on Menelik's sarcophagus and get everyone's attention, old Menelik himself ecstatic at the prospect, the music soaring as everyone joined in their separate moods. . . . Stern and Ahmad and your father and the Sisters. . . . Your father thoughtful as he played his oboe, that very oboe we now see resting in a place of honor in its case on the wall behind you.

Joe paused.

But your father never had a chance to teach you to play it, did he, David?

No, said Cohen. He never did.

***

Joe sipped arak. Cohen was still as calm as ever, so calm Joe was inevitably reminded of Stern. And in fact from the very moment he had entered the house Joe had felt Stern's invisible presence, which was heartening to him. It meant Stern was loved and cared for here and Joe was grateful for that. But he still had to make it possible for Cohen to trust him enough to talk about Stern, and that wouldn't be easy because Cohen would never say anything that might bring the least bit of harm to Stern. Joe was certain of that and it only increased his respect for Cohen.

Well, he thought, I've made what connections I can with the past and now there's nothing for it but to bring us up to the here and the now and pray he'll tell me some little thing. Pray is all.

Joe reached down for the cylindrical leather case he had brought with him. He unzipped the case and let it fall away, holding up Ahmad's spyglass and extending it to full length.

Cohen, puzzled, stared at the spyglass and then at Joe.

***

And now, said Joe, we come to another excellent and stirring device, also made here in Cohen's Optiks.

Used for enlargement or its opposite, and also useful for just plain seeing things. . . . I hope.

Joe put the large end of the spyglass, the wrong end, to his eye. He gazed through it at Cohen.

It's true, he said, that the world looks exceptionally neat and tidy this way. Ever wondered why?

Why? asked Cohen.

Because small things always look tidy. That's why we try so hard to reduce things and put them in categories and give them labels, so we can pretend we know them and they won't bother us. Order, it's called, the explanation or an explanation, the reason for and the reason why. It's comforting to us, naturally it is, who wants to live with chaos all the time? . . . Well not much of anyone in fact, because it suggests we're not in charge and can't understand everything. So we have this little game we play, rather like children lining up their toys on a rainy afternoon and giving each toy a name, and then calling them by these made-up names and telling them what they are and why. . . . And sometimes we pretend we can do that with life, lining up people as it suits us and telling ourselves what they do and calling it history.

Like children with their toys, making it more comfortable for ourselves by pretending we order the chaos when we hand out names.

Joe lowered the spyglass, collapsed it, put it back in its leather case.

Know what, David?

What?

Life isn't like that. It's just not like that at all and neither is Stern and what he does. A label just won't do for Stern. Ten or twenty contradictory adjectives might be accurate, but how much would that help us to place him?

Joe shook his head.

Not much at all. Because the truth is Stern's as complex and chaotic as life itself. And he's human and he's going to die.

Joe stared hard at Cohen. He smiled.

And yet I know there'll never be an end to him.

***

Joe looked down at the spyglass on the floor.

Good workmanship, that. Made by your father for his friend Ahmad. The same Ahmad who is now a forgotten desk clerk at a Biblical ruin called the Hotel Babylon.

Cohen stared down at the spyglass, confused, unsure of himself.

But why. . . ?

Why did your father make it for Ahmad, you mean? Because Ahmad was the very king of the boulevards in those days, and a king should have the wherewithal to survey his kingdom. So the spyglass was a joke at the time, but now Ahmad uses the spyglass when he goes up to the roof of the Hotel Babylon on Saturday evenings to look for his lost homeland, like the Jews of old. And he takes his trombone with him and he wears his only suit, a flower in his buttonhole and a smudge of polish on his shoes and his dyed red hair slicked down with water, and he peers through his precious spyglass and pretends he can see the great city where he once ruled as king, alone there in the night of his captivity, a desperately yearning and haunted captive of the past.

Cohen lowered his eyes. Joe spoke very softly.

Your father died in the First World War, I know that. He was in the British army. The campaign to take Palestine?

Yes, whispered Cohen.

A young man, then. About your age?

Yes. It was a freakish accident. The Turks had evacuated Jerusalem but a deserter was hiding in the hills and fired off a round. One shot and then he threw up his rifle and surrendered. An illiterate man, a peasant. He didn't know his army had already left the city.

Your father and Stern were the same age?

Yes.

And after that Stern saw to your upbringing, is that it?

Cohen raised his eyes and gazed at Joe.

Why do you say that?

Because that's the kind of thing Stern would do. It's Stern's way.

Cohen dropped his gaze. He spoke with great feeling.

If it hadn't been for him we wouldn't have been able to stay together. He supported my mother and made it possible for us to keep the shop, and then when my mother died he took care of Anna's and my education. . . . Just everything.

Cohen picked up the silver cigarette case.

This was my father's. He had it with him the day he was killed. Stern gave it to me when I was a child. I don't know how he ever recovered it.

Cohen held out the case to Joe. There was Hebrew lettering engraved in the corner.

It was a present from Stern to my father on the day he enlisted. Do you read Hebrew?

No, but I can read that. Life, or your father's first name. Or both.

Cohen took back the case. He looked at Joe uneasily.

Shouldn't you tell me why you're here?

Yes I should, said Joe, and I think I ought to start at the beginning, back when I was much younger than you are and didn't know the smallest part of what you know about the world. Back when Stern and I first met in a mythical city.

Cohen watched him. He smiled.

Where did you say you met Stern?

Joe nodded.

That's right, you heard it correctly. I met him in a mythical city.

Slowly then, Joe smiled too.

And now like a child with his toys, shall we give it a name? Shall we call it Jerusalem?

***

Joe spoke quickly. When he had finished he leaned back and sipped from his glass, giving Cohen time to absorb it all. Cohen sat with his elbows on a workbench, his chin propped up in his hands, deep in thought.

I like him, thought Joe, continually recognizing little things that reminded him of Stern. I like him and why not, he could almost be Stern's son.

Finally Cohen moved.

But why not get in touch with him? Speak to him directly?

Could you arrange that?

Yes. He was here yesterday but that was a personal call. There's a way I can leave a message for him though, and he'd contact me within twenty-four hours. Isn't that soon enough?

It might be, said Joe, but I'm not sure that's the way to go about it. You know how Stern is. If I spoke to him now he'd probably thank me for the information about Bletchley and then be up and on his way, not wanting to cause me any trouble. He'd keep his problems to himself unless I could show him I was already part of the game.

Well do you trust this man Bletchley? asked Cohen.

To do his job. And his job right now is Stern.

But you don't know what part of Stern's work he's interested in.

True enough, said Joe. All I really know is that Bletchley's deathly afraid of something Stern knows, or something he thinks Stern knows, same thing. Yet Stern's been working with Bletchley's people for years and why this suspicion about him all of a sudden? What triggered it?

Joe shrugged in answer to his own question.

No matter. There are any number of possibilities and an informer's just one of them, but that's neither here nor there now. Bletchley's made it clear he's not going to tell me why he has a case against Stern, and that's something Stern wouldn't tell me either. So I have to find it out myself, elsewhere, or I won't be able to help Stern because he wouldn't let me. He'd try to keep me out of it, and I didn't come here for that.

But what is Bletchley after? asked Cohen. Could it have anything to do with Stern's work for us?

Joe shook his head.

Not strictly speaking, not Palestine or the Jewish Agency directly. The British concern is the war and it has to be something to do with the Germans. Just for openers, let's begin with Stern's Polish story.

Cohen looked puzzled.

Do you mean the time he disappeared just before the war broke out?

Yes. I assume you know he escaped from a prison in Damascus in order to get to Poland when he did, but did you know that escape almost cost him his life?

No. I had no idea it had been that dangerous.

It was. Didn't you notice his thumb later, when he got back to Cairo? The way he'd ripped it up?

Yes of course, but that was an accident of some kind. He explained it to me but I don't recall exactly . . .

Not an accident, said Joe. He did that clawing his way out of prison, and the strange thing is he'd been due for release within twenty-four hours. But Stern just doesn't take chances without a reason. Did he ever talk to you about that trip to Poland? Why he had been in such a desperate hurry?

Cohen frowned.

All I really remember is that he was very excited.

Excited?

Yes. As if he had taken part in something very important, almost as if there had been some kind of priceless breakthrough. You know how quiet Stern is about what he does. Well that time when he finally turned up again, he could barely contain his excitement. I remember Anna mentioning it, saying how wonderful it was to see him as his old self again. So exuberant and lighthearted, so enthusiastic. It was the way we'd always remembered him from before.

Before?

Yes. Back before all the changes came over him during these last years. Back before everything began to weigh on him so heavily.

Ah yes, thought Joe, back when Stern was so lighthearted and exuberant. Back when he was his old self

. . . .

And for a moment, Joe found his own memories slipping back through the years.

***

Of course it wasn't just that Stern had changed since David and Anna were younger. It was also that the two of them had ceased to be children and had learned to see more deeply, to sense Stern's complexity and the contradictions in what he did, what he believed in.

Then too, as children they wouldn't have known about his morphine addiction and all that implied. As children they would have seen only Stern's kindness and love, not the despair that went with it in the bare rented rooms where he passed his nights in one dreary slum after another. Not the worn old shoes, sad reminders of journeys to nowhere, of the battered suitcase which held all he owned in the world, tied together from year to year with the same old piece of rope which was forever being carefully knotted, carefully unknotted, when it was time for him to move yet again. As children they would have known a very different Stern, as had Joe's own son, Bernini. When Joe had seen him in New York, Bernini had talked a great deal about Stern as he always did, recalling Stern in a very particular way from his childhood. . .

Stern?

Bernini had smiled rapturously.

A great bear of a man who was always smiling and laughing when they had gone to meet his ship in Piraeus. The gangways clanging and noise and confusion everywhere as people rushed back and forth, and then all at once there was Stern in the midst of all the shouting passengers, laughing and waving and struggling down the gangway with his arms full of gifts, Stern's wondrous presents from everywhere.

Trinkets and charms and incense and a little sheik's costume for Bernini to wear, and the Great Pyramid made of building blocks, complete with secret passageways and hidden treasure chambers. And lovely gifts for Mother too, as Bernini had said, rare wines and delicacies and a beautiful thin gold bracelet, the bracelet making a special impression upon Bernini because Maud seemed so touched by its simplicity.

And then back at their little house that afternoon, after all the presents had been admired, Stern opening the first of the bottles of champagne and banging around in the kitchen as he began to conjure up the feast they always had on the night of his arrival, Stern laughing and dashing spices here and there as his cooking filled the house with delicious aromas from all the lands of the Mediterranean.

Bernini had smiled happily.

Stern's feasts? There had never been anything like them.

And it would go on like that for two or three days, nothing but champagne and delicacies and one treat after another, until finally the hectic visit was over and once more little Bernini would be standing with Maud on a pier in Piraeus, the crowds solemn now as they waved good-bye to the passengers along the railings, Stern a little apart from the others but waving and smiling as always . . . laughing, as always.

And that was what Bernini remembered. Unaware, as he was, of all the things Stern and Maud had talked about late at night in the candlelight of the narrow garden by the sea. Unaware, as well, that Stern had once again squandered all his money, spending what little he had on others as he always did. . . .

Stern?

Oh yes, Bernini knew Stern. He was a big jovial man whose sudden appearances always meant laughter and toys and feasts, and above all, magic. The exquisite magic of tales that spoke of the infinite wonders a child could one day discover and make his own. . . . So it was no surprise to Joe the way Cohen and his sister remembered Stern from their childhoods, from the time when Stern had been exuberant and lighthearted, as Cohen said. When he had still been his old self, as Cohen said, and had not yet grown somber under the weight of his burdens. For Stern had always tried hard to keep hidden the dark corners of his heart, and David and Anna had never suspected what lay behind the kindly words and the tender hands. But now in the last few years they had begun to see it, and sadly so, Joe imagined.

Reluctantly so. . . .

***

Joe looked up.

Priceless, you said? Stern acted as if he had achieved some kind of priceless breakthrough in Poland?

But there's only one thing Stern would consider priceless. Life. Just that.

Yes, murmured Cohen, still deep in thought.

But isn't there anything you can recall, asked Joe, about that trip of his to Poland? Does the Pyry forest mean anything to you? A place known as the house in the woods, near Warsaw? Any of that?

I'm sorry. Nothing.

I see. Well let's put Poland aside for the moment, it doesn't seem to be getting us anywhere. Let's talk about codes.

Codes? said Cohen, suddenly alert and wary.

Yes, codes. That doesn't bother you, does it?

No of course not, replied Cohen, too quickly perhaps.

Joe nodded, recalling Ahmad's fears that Stern might be talking about forbidden things in front of others because he knew it would get him killed, because he didn't have the strength to go on anymore.

Oh well then, said Joe. . . . You see I already know Stern's talking a lot about codes these days, but I also know he's always been fascinated by them, and we do have so many different kinds, don't we?

Codes of law and ethics and behavior, codes that apply to secret thought patterns and just on and on. In fact you might even say codes are a metaphor for what we are beneath the surface of things. And some of them seem so universal we think they can be written in stone, while others are so obscure no one but ourselves may ever know they exist. So private, for that matter, that we may not even know they exist because most of the time there's no need for us to know. Because most of us can go through our whole lives without that kind of situation ever arising.

Cohen moved uneasily.

What kind of situation?

Oh I don't know. Something extreme, say, something that's more than just ambiguous. Something that goes beyond any notion of right and wrong into a kind of no-man's-land of morality where nothing's recognizable, where there's not the slightest hint of better or worse or terrible and not so terrible. Just way out there beyond all that where a man's alone and nowhere, with nothing but the deepest part of himself for company.

Cohen moved impatiently.

This is too abstract, I don't know what you're trying to say. Can't you be more specific?

Joe nodded.

I guess I can and I guess I'm working myself up to it. I guess I don't even like to imagine such a Godforsaken place because it terrifies me and that's the truth, David. Sometimes I don't like to remember where I've been. . . .

Joe broke off. Cohen was moving restlessly back and forth, becoming as disturbed as Joe was. But Joe knew he had to go on, there was no avoiding it.

I'll try to be more specific, David. Say your personal code was based on a reverence for life. On never harming or molesting life and certainly never taking it. But then there came a time, a moment, when if you ordered death for some, many more would be saved. What would you do?

Order it, said Cohen immediately, relieved. But isn't that what war is, any kind of war? Why are you bringing that up now and agonizing over it? Aren't men making those terrible decisions every moment in Cairo and in the desert? In Europe? Everywhere?

Yes, said Joe. God help us, yes. But what if the situation were the same but not quite the same? What if you stood alone over a little girl who was maimed and dying and there was no hope of saving her and her pain was unbearable and she whispered Please, and there was a knife in front of you and nothing else in the world because the world was gone, and you were alone and nothing worked and nothing counted and there was nothing but screams and suffering and dying and a little girl's twisted body and her eyes in unbearable pain and her whispers, Please, and a knife, and you picked up the knife and pulled back her head and her throat was in front of you as frail as all of life, and it was life. Would you do it, God help us? Would you?

Cohen was straining forward as if he were going to scream, so harsh and unrelenting had Joe become, his voice and his eyes, every part of him. And Cohen might have screamed if Joe hadn't suddenly shuddered and moaned and clutched his hands together in a wild violent movement. For a moment Joe seemed utterly exhausted and unable to go on, but then all at once he was whispering again, leaning forward and staring, all the harshness back in his voice. Cohen moved in his chair. He looked down at the floor.

It's horrible, he whispered, horrible. How can anyone answer something like that? It's not fair to talk about it in an abstract way.

Cohen made a futile gesture in front of his face as if he were brushing something away.

In fact this is all too abstract. There's a world war going on and the suffering is incalculable and we all know that, so what's the point? This talk about a little girl. . . .

Suddenly Cohen sensed something. He looked up and found Joe's eyes hard upon him, and a fearful suggestion of doubt swept through him.

That's right, said Joe softly. There aren't many people in this world who have Stern's faith, and it was a fiery night at the end of the world when I saw him pick up that knife twenty years ago in Smyrna. A night of death and screams deep in the blackness of nowhere, and Stern was alone and I was alone and the little girl was lying between us, and I didn't have the strength to touch that knife and I wouldn't today. But I'm no match for Stern in many ways, nor are you, nor are most of us. And there's nothing more to be said about that, one way or another. We all do what we can in life. We try to no purpose and we do what we can and what we can't do, we don't. . . .

A muscle twitched in Joe's face. He looked away, lowered his eyes.

He seemed calmer now, but Cohen himself was still shaking. Never had he witnessed anything like the intensity he had seen in Joe's eyes and heard in Joe's voice, a terrifying glimpse of some world he never wanted to see himself. And as Cohen sat there watching Joe, it suddenly struck him how small Joe was.

He hadn't thought of it before because it wasn't the impression Joe gave, not at all. But Cohen noticed it now and it seemed strange to him somehow. . . . Such a small thin man, even frail in appearance.

Joe was sitting quietly, gazing down at the floor. Slowly, he looked up again.

***

Codes, said Joe. They can be like names in what they tell us about people and don't tell us. . . . Take Rommel. Everybody calls him the Desert Fox because of the uncanny way he anticipates every move the British make. He doesn't have half the forces the British have, but somehow he always manages to have his armor in the right place at the right time to give the British another mauling. But is he really so clever?

Or is somebody reading the British codes for him?

Cohen reeled, shocked.

What are you talking about now?

Codes. Maybe something called the Black Code. But wait, one step at a time. Let's just assume for a moment that Stern considers an Allied victory inevitable.

But it isn't inevitable, Cohen blurted out.

I know it isn't, but let's just assume Stern looks at it that way for whatever reasons. Because he thinks Hitler's armies will die in Russia as Napoleon's armies did. Because he knew it was inevitable for the Americans to come into the war and shift the tide to the side of the Allies. Or more simply, because he doesn't believe the beast inside us can triumph in the end, not even with the Black Code. Because he believes in the Holy City of man and his faith is unshakable.

Stop, hissed Cohen.

No wait, slowly. It's possible a man could believe that much, it's possible Stern could. And if he did and if he were certain deep in his heart that Hitler was going to lose, then let's take another step and say . . .

Stern's a Jew, shouted Cohen. His mother was a Jew and he's a Jew and the Nazis are slaughtering thousands of Jews.

And then let's say there was a way, continued Joe quietly, to save a large number of Jews by giving the Germans something in return. . . .

Cohen leapt to his feet.

A way, whispered Joe, to keep those thousands and thousands of Jews from becoming . . . millions.

Cohen stared down at Joe. He stood with his arms by his sides, glaring down at Joe in horror, his anger raging out of control.

Millions? Millions? Are you mad? What on earth are you talking about? The Nazis are beasts and Hitler's insane but the country is Germany. Germany. My own family is German, we lived there for centuries. The Nazis are monsters but the Germans aren't howling barbarians on horseback. They're not Mongols and this isn't the thirteenth century.

True, said Joe. It's the twentieth century and the Germans are methodical and industrious and orderly.

And they organize well and they work hard and they pay attention to detail and they keep good records and they're very thorough. They're not Mongolian hordes racing around on horseback.

The veins bulged in Cohen's neck.

And so?

And so I have to find out about Stern and the Black Code, said Joe quietly.

Get out, shrieked Cohen, pale and shaking with rage as he stood over Joe, his fists clenched.

You're mad. Get out of here.

And then Cohen's fury exploded and he stooped and grabbed the spyglass and swung it.

The blow struck Joe full on the side of the head and knocked him out of the chair. He went crashing down to the floor, spinning, upsetting a tray that sent glass shattering down around him. He was dazed and lying facedown, not really aware what had happened, not having seen the blow coming. He pushed out his hand and cut it on broken glass.

Clumsily he lurched to his knees, to all fours. There was a roar in his head and the pain was intense and sinking deeper. He choked, spitting out blood. Blindly he reached up and gripped something, a workbench, got one foot under him and pulled himself to his feet. He stood there holding on, swaying and choking and coughing up blood, trying to see. Somewhere near him was Cohen, a tall figure, a blur. The roar in his head was deafening and he couldn't think. A hand twisted his arm and pushed him across the room.

Joe was staggering, limping, bumping into things. A sharp metal corner drove into his thigh and there was another loud crash of shattering glass. His head banged into a door and he fell heavily against it, hanging there. The spyglass was being stuffed under his arm.

Cohen had abandoned him. Cohen was somewhere back in the room speaking through another door, saying something to his sister. Joe finally found the door knob and turned it, staggered into the corridor and almost fell on his face in the darkness. He caught himself, felt a wall, leaned against the cool stones and pressed his forehead there, trying not to fall, trying to breathe.

The door behind him closed. A hand touched him and Anna's voice whispered.

It's all right now, I'll help you. This way.

Joe let himself be led down the corridor in the darkness. When they reached the door to the street she moved closer to him. She seemed to want to say something.

My right ear, mumbled Joe. I can't hear anything in the other one.

He could feel her breath.

I'm sorry, she whispered. My brother has many worries and Stern has always been like a father to us.

Perhaps you could come back tomorrow.

No. It wouldn't make any difference.

She seemed to agree. She whispered again.

I was listening, I heard what you said. I think you're wrong about Stern but I also think you want to help him.

She hesitated.

Might as well say it, whispered Joe. If I don't find out the truth others are going to come looking for it, and they're not going to care about Stern.

He felt her breath on his ear. She was still hesitating.

Oh say it, he whispered, dear God just say it. Does the silence of this world have to go on forever?

He swayed, bumped into her, sank back against the wall.

Please listen to me, Anna. I like your brother and I know Stern's been like a father to both of you, but what I said isn't unthinkable because nothing is, nothing ever. Look at the Nazis. And I know your brother's too young to take all this in, and you are, and it's not something any sane person should ever have to hear because it's beyond the human kind, God help us. . . .

Joe reached out in desperation and seized her by the arm.

But listen to me for Stern's sake, Anna, because he's going to die, and soon. There are depths to the human soul beyond all imagination, and you think you know Stern and you do know him in your way, but he's also more than that and I know it, I've seen it. And yes, he could barter away his soul and that may be exactly what he's done, God have mercy. . . .

Please try to calm down, she whispered.

I am trying, I am. It's just that I can't see and I can't hear and there's a shrieking in my head and I'm blinded by the darkness and I know what's going to happen and I'm frightened . . . afraid. . . .

He loosened his grip on her arm, but he didn't let go of her. Hunched there against the stones, unable to see, the whole side of his head torn with pain, he didn't dare let go of her.

Anna? Forgive me for saying those things back there. I'm sorry I had to say them but Stern is what he is and there's no way to . . .

Anna? I'm afraid he's coming apart and I want to find out the truth about him. If there were only some little thing, Anna, just something to go on while there's still time. . . .

Joe was sobbing for breath, no longer able to hold himself in, giving way as Cohen had before him. He heard the bolt on the door slide open, felt her hand tighten over his. Her lips were next to his ear.

He's never mentioned anything about a Black Code, she whispered, but there was something he said a few weeks ago. The three of us were having breakfast and Stern was in a good mood. My brother happened to step out of the room and Stern suddenly laughed. I remembered the remark because it seemed so odd. . . .

Yes?

He said Rommel must be enjoying breakfast that morning with his little fellers. At first I thought I'd heard fellahs, meaning fellaheen, but it wasn't that. It was little fellers. He didn't explain it and I don't know what it means, but it might lead you to something. The American military attaché in Cairo is a Colonel Fellers.

Oh?

David didn't even hear the remark. And please try to help Stern, try to help him. Good-bye.

Joe didn't have time to thank her. She squeezed his hand and the door closed behind him and all at once he was alone with the eerie sudden sounds of the city at night, peering up and down the narrow alley, trying to remember which way he had come.

-14-

Bletchley

Bletchley's smirk was monstrous in its contempt. His mouth sagged and his single eye bulged grotesquely.

Bletchley's face of concern, Joe reminded himself. . . . Bletchley's face of sympathy.

Another man would have shown his feelings by softening his expression then, but Bletchley could never do that. Not in his shattered ruin of a face with its severed muscles and missing bones. In Bletchley's half-dead face everything always came out looking wrong. Concern appeared as a grin of contempt, sympathy took on a smirk of disgust.

No wonder little children ran away from him on the street, thought Joe. No wonder strangers turned their eyes away in horror. Bletchley's shattered face couldn't speak the truth and he couldn't go around shouting it out every day of his life. So he smiled at the world, or tried to smile, and his humiliation never ended.

He was gazing at Joe's bandaged ear.

You weren't able to get a look at them?

No, said Joe. Common thieves in the night, I suppose. I don't even know whether there were two or three of them, or only one for that matter.

Bletchley sighed.

Well please don't go taking yourself down deserted alleys again at night. If you have to go out for a walk stay in an area where there's some life, where the patrols come by. There's no sense getting banged up like this.

Bletchley was using a handkerchief to clean the skin around his black eye patch. Sometimes when he did that he reminded Joe of a battered old tomcat trying to clean himself, ripped and torn and scarred from his battles but still trying to keep himself presentable. Of course Bletchley wasn't old. He just gave that impression because of his half-dead face that no one had ever been able to fix.

I would have taken more care, said Joe, but I didn't think I was looking all that prosperous these days.

Bletchley peeked over the top of his handkerchief and saw that Joe was smiling, mocking himself. He laughed, a snorting sound accompanied by an idiotic lopsided grin.

Well you don't look that prosperous, for a European. But prosperity is relative, isn't it? Anyway, you're beginning to look more like the rest of us now. Like the rest of us, that's it.

Bletchley went on snorting noisily. Joe smiled.

I am? How's that?

Your ear, said Bletchley. It looks as if it might be missing under that bandage, as if you'd just lost it at the front. Perhaps you don't remember your interview with Whatley too clearly, but Whatley only has one arm.

Oh. No, I don't remember that too clearly. A one-armed Whatley, you say, once the fastest gun in the west but it's only a memory now? Sounds like one of Liffy's songs.

Bletchley snorted.

It is odd when you think of it, but all the Monks do seem to be missing a part or a limb. Crippled, that's it.

Joe heard a ringing in his ear.

True? Do you suppose that means there's some sort of secret law that you have to be a cripple to be in intelligence?

Bletchley snorted.

To be intelligent, you mean? Well you may be right, I never thought of it that way before.

Bletchley finished dabbing around his eye patch and put away his handkerchief. The look of contempt came back into his face. Concern, Joe reminded himself.

Don't you think we ought to have a doctor look at it?

No need to bother, said Joe. Nothing to it really, and Ahmad seems to have a sure touch with bandages.

Yes, a man of unsuspected talents. He did some volunteer nursing work in the last war, as I recall. Drove an ambulance mostly. Men of a literary bent used to like to do that, apparently.

Sounds more like the Spanish Civil War, said Joe. Were you ever in Spain then?

Bletchley looked uncomfortable.

No. I was having some operations done.

It itches, said Joe, grimacing, pointing to his ear.

As usual, they were sitting in the small cellar room on the far side of the courtyard behind the Hotel Babylon. A single naked light bulb hung from the low ceiling, a cord leading down to the electric ring on the table where the kettle was steaming. There was also the chipped teapot and the two dented metal cups between them. As always, a newspaper lay at Bletchley's elbow and the meeting was being held at night, the customary time for dealings with the Monks, as Liffy had said.

What's new that's not in the papers? asked Joe.

Nothing good, said Bletchley. Nothing but one disaster after another. Bir Hacheim has been wiped out with its Free French and its Jewish Brigade, and now it looks like Rommel's going to be able to isolate Tobruk. We'll have to try to hold the line at El Alamein.

Can Tobruk take a siege?

It did last year for seven months. It's not as strong now, but Rommel shouldn't know that.

Bletchley looked down at the table.

Of course there are other things he shouldn't know, this Desert Fox who has become such a hero to the Egyptians.

And the El Alamein line? asked Joe.

It depends on several factors, supplies for one. Ours and theirs. If Rommel has the fuel to keep pushing, well, we'll flood the delta and lose the Canal and take what we can to Palestine and Iraq. The implications are unthinkable and that's what we're thinking about now.

I see.

Joe glanced at the newspaper.

What about the personal columns? Any better news there?

Bletchley's face twisted into a kind of blank stare, his eye widening. An expression of sorrow, Joe knew.

This isn't being reported yet, so don't say anything about it. All right?

Yes.

Bletchley hesitated.

We had a large-scale operation under way behind their lines, paramilitary units, special strike forces, that kind of thing. We were trying to get at some of the more important bases they've been using to raid Malta, to stop our supplies from getting through. Well it was an absolute failure from beginning to end.

They were waiting for us. . . . Waiting for us, that's it.

Bletchley stared blankly at his metal cup and the two of them sat in silence for a time. Joe had made his report, such as it was, not mentioning the Cohens and not really going into any detail about Ahmad.

Bletchley had listened in only a half-attentive way, and his questions had appeared to be more concerned with Joe's impressions of Old Cairo, rather than with Stern. It seemed peculiar to Joe, but then, he always found Bletchley's manner peculiar. Something to do with Bletchley's mask, a face that never reflected what the man was feeling or thinking.

Bletchley was moving his metal cup around, nudging it a few inches to one side, a few inches to the other.

The scraping noise made by the cup was the only sound in the room.

Night, thought Joe. Everything happens under cover of darkness when you're dealing with the Monks.

You shouldn't be so hard on yourself, Bletchley said finally. After all, you've only been in Egypt a little over two weeks, which is nothing for an assignment as complicated as yours. No one expects results right away and two weeks is barely enough time to learn your way around.

Joe nodded.

I know, but somehow it seems much longer than that. Probably because of where I'm staying. . . .

Bletchley scowled. Thoughtful, Joe reminded himself.

It is an odd old structure, Bletchley murmured in a noncommittal way.

He looked up from his cup.

Does your ear still itch?

Yes.

Isn't that supposed to mean someone's talking about you?

I hope not, said Joe. I'm supposed to be an unknown visitor here, just A. O. Gulbenkian in transit.

Bletchley continued to scowl.

A strange cover, said Joe. Whose idea was it anyway?

I'm not sure, answered Bletchley, still preoccupied. But don't try to expect too much from yourself too soon. Two weeks is nothing.

Why does he keep saying that? wondered Joe. What's he talking about? Rommel's getting ready to overrun Egypt and he keeps saying there's all the time in the world. It makes no sense, or isn't he worried about Rommel reading the British codes anymore? What's changed that I don't know about?

Bletchley was pushing his cup back and forth. The meeting seemed over. Joe got to his feet and lingered beside the table, not sure whether Bletchley had anything more to say.

Well I'll be on my way then. . . .

He started toward the stairs. Bletchley was still staring down at the table, his eye wide, empty.

See here, Joe, I could find you another room. This accident of yours, this isn't always the best part of town to be in. What do you say?

Joe shrugged.

Oh I don't think it matters. We are where we are, I guess, but thanks anyway.

Joe climbed the narrow stairs and stepped into the alley. Later he would often recall that quiet moment in the small bare cellar and Bletchley's concern, Bletchley's sorrow, his questions about Joe's welfare and his offer of another room elsewhere. At the time it had sounded like such a little thing, but had Bletchley meant something more by it? Something a great deal more important?

Could it even have made a difference and saved a life?

Two lives? Three lives?

***

As soon as Joe stepped into the night he heard the rumble of trucks in the distance. Everywhere now there were trucks moving into Cairo, pouring in from the desert with wounded soldiers and stragglers who had lost their units. Guns of all sorts and RAF wagons and recovery vehicles, armored cars and countless lorries crammed with exhausted sleeping men, crowding the roads outside the city beyond the pyramids, transports rolling in from the wreckage of the long campaigns in the Western Desert.

And smoke above the British Embassy where documents were being burned. And huge crowds in front of the British Consulate where refugees waited silently, hoping for transit visas to Palestine. And rumors that the British fleet was already preparing to sail from Alexandria to the harbors of Haifa and Port Said, to escape Rommel's advancing panzers.

Unmistakable signs, thought Joe. The fingerprints of war. And everywhere in Cairo the same whispered question.

When will he arrive? When will he get here?

***

But Joe had no thoughts for Rommel. It was Bletchley's melancholy remarks that obsessed him, the failure of the special operation behind enemy lines which Bletchley had talked about. For that must have been the mission that was going to have kept Stern away from Cairo for two weeks, and its collapse meant that Stern's last mission for the Monastery had officially ended.

Hours ago? Days ago?

In any case, Stern was now due back in Cairo so far as Bletchley was concerned, and whatever Stern had been secretly doing was now finished and at an end. Bletchley would see to that. Bletchley who did his job well, and who seemed to have arrived at a new sense of calm despite the news from the front. So for Joe there was very little time left. And sadly, as he had known all along, the outcome would be the same for Stern no matter what he learned now.

Indelibly the same, Stern's passage, Stern's fate, the mysterious weaving of Stern's journey over the years. Even Liffy had finally come to realize that when he had found Joe limping down the alley to the Hotel Babylon that morning, before daybreak. Liffy rushing up to help Joe after having waited all night in the shadows for Joe to return from his visit to the Cohens, fearful and more, frantic that something might have gone wrong.

As indeed it had. Dreadfully wrong. A small cry escaping Liffy then, when he had learned what had happened.

That's not like David, Liffy had said of the blow that wounded him so deeply.

Violence, Liffy had whispered with a shudder. It's terrifying. Even when we abhor it, it can seize us.

And then he had fixed Joe with his eyes there in the alley, gripping Joe and whispering urgently and looking for all the world like some tormented prophet of antiquity who had just seen a vision of the coming destruction of his beloved Jerusalem.

Whatever Stern has done, Joe, you must prove it's right for the sake of all of us. It doesn't even matter if you and I are the only ones who ever know the truth, or if just one of us does, even that would be enough. For I have this haunting feeling that unless Stern's right in what he's done, with all he knows, there can be no hope for any of us in this monstrous war without end.

-15-

The Sisters

Flowers, boomed Ahmad. . . . Flowers are the keys to this particular queendom, therefore you must select the makings of your nosegay with special care. These two old dears are shamelessly sentimental and always have been.

Ahmad raised his head and solemnly sniffed the air, considering the matter further.

Or better yet, take two nosegays, he said to Joe. They may be twins and they may be in their nineties, but that doesn't mean they've always gotten along in every respect. They've had their differences over the decades and I suspect there's still a certain sisterly sense of competition, especially when a man comes to call.

On second thought, why not let me prepare your nosegays? Although it's been awhile, I'm familiar with their tastes and also with the color schemes on the houseboat. I did their interior decorating, you know, the last time they had it done, which must have been around the turn of the century. I don't recall exactly when it was, but one of them would surely remember. Between the two of them they remember everything. In fact there used to be a popular saying in Cairo which was a great favorite among boatmen, particularly.

Fear not, nothing can be lost on the Nile. For what the Sphinx forgets, the Sisters remember.

In other words, mused Ahmad, see all . . . hear all . . . speak what? In some respects, you might say, these two old dears are rather like the Nile itself.

And with that Ahmad's massive face swayed majestically with the beginnings of a smile.

Two nosegays.

A darkened dilapidated houseboat, a rambling pleasure barge of yesteryear, where memories included everything.

Two tiny ancient women, twins, whose shadowy floating realm on the Nile had gradually come to be Joe's ultimate destination in his search for the truth about Stern.

The prospect of Joe visiting the legendary Sisters had even caused Liffy to emerge from his somber mood. Either that or Liffy had brought all his acting abilities to bear for Joe's benefit and was staging a bravura performance, laughing and joking and dipping into a variety of roles to encourage Joe.

The three of them, Ahmad and Liffy and Joe, had met for a strategy session in the narrow courtyard behind the Hotel Babylon, late in the afternoon as the sun was sinking. There amidst the creeping vines and the hanging flowers, the rustling old newspapers and the heaps of debris crumbling in the corners, they sat beneath the single palm tree as the shadows gathered in the slums of Old Cairo, Ahmad solemnly serving tea from a heavy silver tea service that had once belonged to old Menelik, the tea service resurrected by Ahmad from the epic clutter of his dusty little closet especially to mark the occasion.

Ahmad's manner had never been more dignified. Obviously to him an official visit to the Sisters, a social call by Joe or anyone, was an event of the most profound significance.

Ahmad poured.

Teatime, he announced in his ponderous voice, gesturing at the cups. Tea in time and need I point out that vast empires have risen and fallen on just such queer civilized rituals as this? Now then, mates, who will take what? Cream, sugar, what?

Before Joe could say anything Liffy had made a quick pass over Joe's teacup, and his own, with what appeared to be a small pocket flask. Liffy flashed a brilliant smile.

A new invention, he explained quickly to Ahmad. A tricky combination of essences that takes the place of the usual sugar and things. Discovered, some say, in a remote desert in the New World where it is known locally as Irish-Hopi tea. Perhaps you'd like to try a splash yourself?

Ahmad's huge nose twitched above the little table where they huddled. He hovered, sniffing. He frowned.

Cognac?

Liffy nodded.

Egyptian cognac?

Liffy nodded again.

Foul, muttered Ahmad. Deplorable. But drink away at your cups of wretched Irish hope, the two of you, and meanwhile let's get down to business, social business, the only kind worth mentioning. Now then, before Joe can hand over his flowers he must first get in the door. And since he hasn't been invited to the houseboat, how will he accomplish that?

Ahmad smiled knowingly in answer to his own question. With a flourish he reached under his faded lavender nightshirt and produced a tattered piece of hard thick paper, which he placed on the table with great ceremony. The paper was badly stained, its faint engraved lettering illegible. Liffy and Joe leaned forward, studying it.

What in the world can that be? asked Liffy, mystified. Is it a secret pass of some kind? Your own ultimate forgery, good for anywhere in a universe of receding stars? Is that why the lettering is so dim? A carte blanche, perhaps, issued by the last pharaoh on his deathbed and good for immediate access to all secret tombs? A reissue of the same, promulgated by the last caesar on his deathbed? Or perhaps a highly prized invitation to Queen Victoria's birth? . . . What on earth is it, Ahmad? What could this curious document be?

A formal invitation, announced Ahmad triumphantly, to the grand costume gala that was held in old Menelik's crypt to honor him on his ninety-fifth birthday. Now that was music, and if anything will get Joe across the gangplank and into the houseboat, this will.

It will? asked Joe in wonder. Is it possible someone could still read it?

No one has to read it, said Ahmad. A piece of memorabilia as unforgettable as this need only be recognized by its general size and shape and disposition. And it will be recognized by those who know it, by those who have traveled that joyous underground route, as the saying goes.

Excellent, said Liffy. Excellent. An invitation in time saves . . . well yes, of course it does. Now then, Joe, let me brief you on the more current intelligence making the rounds in the bazaars. But first, a warning.

The Sisters are to be visited only at night. All informers agree on this fact, straight off and straightaway.

At night? repeated Ahmad thoughtfully. That, I daresay, is true.

Liffy nodded at Ahmad, his manner grave.

Precisely. There'll be a moon tonight and lunar facts, after all, are lunatic by definition.

Liffy turned back to Joe.

Simply a matter of vanity, perhaps? A sure knowledge that sunlight would show up unwanted wrinkles?

Possibly, intoned Liffy. Or possibly the information these tiny twins are heir to can only be grasped in the sudden intuitive glimpses that come where moonlight reigns.

In any case, continued Liffy, night is the milieu for this approach of yours. Night with its curious echoes and its soothing breezes off the Nile. If anyone tries to visit the Sisters at any other time, according to reliable gossip, they just won't be there. Of course they have to be there really, somewhere on the houseboat, because they never leave it and haven't in decades. But it seems the place has as many hidden passageways as the Great Pyramid, so when the Sisters are being elusive, well, they're as inaccessible as Cheops, at least so far as modern man is concerned.

Cheops, the prototypical little man obsessed with erections, muttered Ahmad with disdain, stirring his tea.

Precisely, said Liffy, throwing Ahmad a vigorous nod.

He turned back to Joe.

Now then, as for the houseboat itself, as for this shadowy structure looming at the end of a gangplank, this floating vision Ahmad so tactfully refers to as their particular queendom. . . . It seems this houseboat has had a very special relationship with British intelligence for some time. In fact there are those who claim that without this houseboat, there would be no British intelligence in this part of the world. Just none at all, nothing but blather and sand. So I guess it would have to be called the premier safeboat in the Levant.

Liffy delicately touched the ends of his fingers together, one hand against the other, making a sphere. A demented gleam crept into his eyes.

And now we may be drawing near the very heart of the clandestine matter. Breathe evenly, please, let the muscles in your neck relax and just consider the year 1911, if you will.

Ahmad sighed.

Now that's a year worth mentioning, he muttered. Not quite as grand as 1912, but a stunning performance all the same.

Precisely, said Liffy, vigorously nodding at Ahmad again. That was a year, too. I can see we're on solid ground here. Now then.

He turned back to Joe.

The year for what, you say? Well for one thing, that was when Churchill was given the Admiralty for the first time. And during his first year in his new post, that august presence set two goals for himself. The first was to convert the fleet from coal to oil, and the second was to secure a certain world-famous houseboat on the Nile as his secret flagship.

Abruptly Liffy puffed out his jowls in Churchill's familiar scowl. His head sank into his shoulders and he glowered resolutely at Joe.

As is well known, young man, he boomed, I achieved the first goal. As of 1911, oil was in and coal was out. But as is less well known, I also achieved my second goal. That houseboat did become my secret flagship, and a very pleasant home away from home it always was, too. Once the particulars had been arranged, I immediately fired off a congratulatory cable of welcome to my new companions-in-arms.

THE SISTERS,

THE NILE.

LADIES:

GLAD TO WELCOME YOU ON BOARD. THIS IS GOING TO BE MORE FUN THAN

CHINESE GORDON'S LAST STAND AT KHARTOUM IN '85.

YOUR OLD PAL,

WINSTON.

The following day, boomed Liffy, glowering, jowls set, I received a return cable at the Admiralty in London.

YOU CHERUBIC LITTLE UPSTART. YOU WERE STILL IN SHORT PANTS IN '85, SO HOW

COULD YOU POSSIBLY KNOW WHOSE STAND WAS FUN THAT YEAR, LAST OR

OTHERWISE?

ANYWAY, NOW THAT YOU'RE IN CHARGE OF THE BOATS OF THE EMPIRE, KEEP A FIRM HAND ON THE THROTTLE AND CRANK UP THE STEAM, GIVE THE BOILERS

HEAD AND STOP DRAGGING ANCHOR.

AND WE'RE GLAD TO HAVE YOU ON BOARD, WINNIE. ANY OLD TIME.

US.

THE NILE.

Liffy laughed.

Awesome, he said in his own voice. They seem to have known everyone in their time. But remember, only at night.

***

Oh, and one other thing, added Ahmad.

Be careful not to make any stray remarks about Catherine the Great or Cleopatra, or about lost family fortunes or about someone called Uncle George. At least not until you have a sound feel for the conversation. I'm not sure those topics are still sensitive, but they might be. Of course, any allusion to human height or size would be out of the question, just cause for immediate dismissal from their queendom, but I don't have to tell you that.

Ahmad smiled happily. He sighed.

They're foolish old dears, no doubt about it. But they're a rare pair and basically very friendly, and certainly likable when you get to know them.

Precisely, agreed Liffy, nodding. All rumors have verified that since long before Churchill got out of short pants and began reaching toward the tiller.

He turned back to Joe.

Now then. Let's start at the beginning again and make sure we've left nothing out, because memories which include everything can be tricky.

Liffy paused.

Now in the beginning there was Egypt and the Nile, and the Sphinx and the pyramids. . . But also in the beginning, strangely, curiously, there were these two tiny women, twins, called Big Belle and Little Alice.

And in the beginning these sisters, who are the Sisters . . .

***

Free the serfs, thundered Big Belle to no one in particular as she moved stiffly across the room, the declaration apparently a mere pleasantry meant to take the place of a remark on the weather.

Of the two tiny sisters, Big Belle was slightly shorter. But she was also bulkier, which perhaps explained why she was commonly known as Big to her sister Alice's Little, although neither one of them was ever so known to her face, according to Ahmad. Both of the tiny ancient women were wearing old shawls and cotton slippers.

Big Belle stopped in front of the chair where Joe was sitting and held out a glass, her face severe.

You said whiskey, young man. Will that do? It's Irish, but I have to warn you, it's Protestant. Jameson's.

Can you manage?

I can, said Joe. As far as I'm concerned, drink is beyond tribal strife.

Big Belle put her hands on her hips and beamed. Standing, she seemed about as tall as Joe was sitting.

Good for you, she boomed. I always appreciate a man who leaves politics and religion at home when he comes calling on a woman.

Chirping noises rose from across the room, from the chair where Little Alice was sitting.

Women, trilled Little Alice. When a man comes calling on women. You know as well as I do, Belle, that Joe came to call on both of us. He brought two beautiful nosegays, or are you trying to ignore that?

Little Alice smiled sweetly across the room at Joe.

You'll have to forgive my sister, she chirped. Belle's so short, poor dear, she sometimes tries to forget there are taller women in the room. But I suppose it's only human nature to try to ignore the things that bother us. I'm almost five feet tall, you see, and I've always had a willowy figure.

Big Belle still stood with her hands on her hips, beaming, in front of Joe.

You're not a hair over four-feet-eleven, she called out over her shoulder, and you've been skinny since the day you were born.

Little Alice sat up straight in her chair.

Well at least I'm not four-feet-ten like some people, and I've never been stout because of all the chocolates I eat.

Better than that dairy mess you pick at, boomed Belle over her shoulder.

Yogurt is very healthy, Alice called out. And it has always kept me willowy.

Willowy? thundered Belle. How can anyone who's four-feet-eleven be willowy? Anyway, I'm sure Joe didn't come here to hear about your obsession with being skinny.

Belle smiled at Joe.

You'll have to forgive my sister. The reason she starves herself into being skinny is because she thinks it makes her look younger. Can't face her age, never could. Younger sisters are like that, I suppose. Just desperate to stay young forever.

How much younger is she? asked Joe in a normal tone of voice. The two sisters had been shouting at each other across the room, apparently because one of them was hard of hearing.

How much younger? said Belle. Eight minutes, more or less. But the way she talks, you'd think it was forty years.

Some people whisper, Alice called out, because they're afraid their lies will be overheard. Where's your knitting, Belle?

Belle left Joe and went to look for it. Joe sipped his whiskey and gazed around the room.

***

It was an unusual sitting room they had led him to, an airy old-fashioned sunroom on the side of the houseboat that faced the river. High narrow windows rose one beside the other from floor to ceiling, interrupted in the middle by a windowed alcove where a pair of tall French doors, as tall as the windows, opened onto a narrow veranda beside the water. The moon had already set at that late hour, but since the sunroom was mostly windows and all the curtains were pulled back, the stars and their reflections off the water would have been more than enough to have lit the parlor. A few candles flickered here and there but their only purpose seemed to be romantic, to cast a soft play of shadows over the scene.

Most of the furniture in the room was made of light airy wicker, ghostlike and insubstantial, painted white.

Occasionally some handsome old mahogany piece would turn up in the dream, solidly rooted among the floating wicker shapes.

A small portrait of Catherine the Great hung at one end of the room, a portrait of Cleopatra at the other end. Both had been done long ago in pen and ink, apparently by the same artist, and both were badly faded. The portraits weren't meant to be realistic, the figures represented being strictly Victorian in dress and concept, the one imperial and opulent and haughty, an autocratic woman at court, the other playful and hinting at sensual delights in a vaguely Oriental manner, thoroughly proper in keeping with Victorian precepts, yet also suggestive of the hidden recesses of a nineteenth-century Turkish harem.

Both portraits, in fact, might have been meant to represent unsuspected aspects of a giggly little Queen Victoria in the frolicsome days of her youth, before she took on the burdens of empire, the tiny future queen having decided to succumb to fantasy one rainy afternoon in some castle or other, and abandoned herself to the secret joys of dressing up, as little girls were known to do. This impression was reinforced by the fact that the young faces in the two portraits were close enough in appearance to be the faces of twins. Tiny twins. Yet even in the portraits, the girlish figure of Catherine the Great was noticeably bulkier than the girlish figure of Cleopatra.

There was also a beautiful antique harpsichord in one corner of the parlor.

All together the sunroom was a magical setting by starlight, despite the number of wicker chairs and wicker settees crammed into it. Joe guessed that as many as thirty or forty people could have found a place to sit in the room at any one time, more if any degree of intimacy had been allowed. Of course the Sisters had been famous hostesses when they were younger, so perhaps this vast array of spectator seats beside the Nile was only to be expected.

Yet with only the three of them now in the room, a certain melancholy air to the parlor was unmistakable.

An inevitable feeling of time having slipped away on the currents beyond the open French doors, taking with it a host of memories of laughter and gaiety and leaving behind these hauntingly empty wicker shapes as ghostly reminders of other worlds and other eras, forgotten now elsewhere surviving only in the hearts of these two tiny ancient women.

Big Belle found her knitting and stiffly arranged herself in a wicker chair beneath the portrait of Catherine the Great. Little Alice cocked her head at the portrait of Cleopatra and nodded wistfully, as if hearing some echo flit across the water. Joe, meanwhile, smiled at them both and gazed out through the open French doors at the night and the river.

***

You've hurt your ear, said Belle somberly. Were you trying to listen to something too closely?

I'm afraid so, answered Joe.

It's like that, is it?

I'm afraid.

Belle continued to stare at him.

You remind me of my Uncle George, she announced abruptly. He used to wear a short beard and a shirt without a collar, and there was generally a makeshift bandage someplace on his head. He had your coloring and your build and he must have been about your age when he passed on.

Jesus, thought Joe. And I bet he gambled away the family fortune and dabbled in underage barmaids and drank himself to death. Sounds like the voice of doom and this is no way to get things started. But the important thing is, did they like this Uncle George or not?

Belle still stared at him severely.

Oh help, thought Joe, the curse of Uncle George is upon me. But mightn't that compulsive lecher have been a wee mite endearing to his lovely young nieces just once in a while? Maybe a friendly smile in their direction as he lurched down the gloomy winter corridors of their family estate, before he fired up the samovar and locked himself in the study to mutter over Paracelsus and rage with his vodka bottles? An uncle-ly pat perhaps, warm and respectable, before he went crashing out into the night to attack the peasant girls in their hovels? Before he stole all the family jewels and all the deeds to the family estates and fled on the spring train from St Petersburg, racing to Nice of course, there to madly gamble everything away in a monumental fit of drunken hysteria?

Belle's face softened.

The poor dear drank to excess but we were always very fond of him, she said, as if reading Joe's thoughts.

Three cheers for the rascal then, Joe almost shouted, I always knew Uncle George would pull it out in the end. Of course he drank to excess, but didn't all the great souls in Russia either drink or love to excess in the nineteenth century? Of course they did, poor dears, but the fact is we're still very fond of them.

Joe smiled.

That's a handsome harpsichord in the corner. Do you play it?

Oh no, Alice does. My instrument is that little one you see on top of the harpsichord. It's a kind of old-fashioned bassoon.

Known as a piccolo faggotina in F, Alice called out gaily. Leave it to Belle to find an instrument with a name like that. Belle will have her own way, Mother used to say. She will do exactly as she pleases.

Little Alice laughed.

Belle and her fagot tina, she chirped. Her fagot tina, the piccolo instrument she plays. I mean things weren't said that directly in the old days. One just didn't step into a parlor and blurt out things like that, but of course Belle always did. And in F, mind you, so there was no way to misinterpret what she was saying. I mean realll-ly.

Little Alice tossed her curls.

Do you like shepherdesses? she called out to Joe.

Big Belle sniffed, studying her knitting.

And how is the poor man supposed to interpret that, Alice? My sister, she called out to Joe, is referring to those porcelain figures on the table beside you.

Joe inspected the figures. He picked one up and admired it.

Oh that one? Little Alice called out, twirling a ribbon on her shawl. That one was an Easter present from a Serbian prince.

A birthday present, declared Belle. And he was hardly a prince.

Little Alice pushed back her curls. She smiled prettily at Joe.

Belle is so contrary, she just can't help it. Belle will find fault Mother used to say. She will be stubborn.

Affectionately, Little Alice gazed at her sister.

Should you be drinking that gin straight, dear? You know what the doctor said.

The doctor be hanged, proclaimed Big Belle emphatically, and Little Alice sighed, a faraway look in her eyes.

Well perhaps that porcelain was a present for my birthday, but I still remember that Serbian prince as if it were yesterday. His older brother had gambled away the family fortune, the castles and estates and everything, and then he had sneaked away to Nice where he lived in shame in a small garret room he rented, occasionally writing sketches on Balkan intrigue for the local newspapers. Dimitri had to go to work on the stock exchange in Cairo but he never held it against his older brother. He used to visit Nice every spring to pay off his brother's tradesmen. He would have liked to have given his brother money but he knew his brother would just gamble it away. Finally the brother died of consumption in his garret one dark winter night, leaving a note that said, Forgive me, brother. Dimitri cried, but really it was a blessing for everyone.

The brother died at noon on a summer solstice, stated Big Belle conclusively. He fell under a carriage in Nice while chasing a young French sailor across the street, in full view of everyone. As for Dimitri, he was in no way an aristocrat. He got his start by making a corner on coffee, the Piraeus, 1849.

I said he worked on the stock exchange, mused Little Alice, which is the same thing really. Anyway, I can picture him as if it were yesterday. A plump figure of a gentleman in a white coat that shined from ironing, waving his long white ivory-handled flyswatter as he came down the club steps on the stock-exchange side of the street. The peddlers would be running after him, offering him early asparagus and mangoes and calling him count or baron. Of course, he was no such thing. Just a rich Greek who had made a killing in cotton.

Annex the Crimea, thundered Big Belle. Damn those Turks. Organize a colony called Alaska.

But a generous man, mused Little Alice. He was always giving me porcelain shepherdesses.

Big Belle looked up from her knitting.

Who's that you're talking about, dear? One of your beaux?

Yes, Dimitri. That rich stockbroker from the Balkans whose nationality I always mix up. I've just never been able to get the Balkans straight in my mind. Was he a Serbian or an Albanian or a Croat, or was he some other odd thing? You remember him, Belle.

I certainly do. I probably knew him better than you did, although I was only his paramour's sister. He always came to me for advice before he made one of his periodic plunges in the market.

Well what was he, Belle? Was he an Albanian?

No. He was a Montenegrin peasant and he got his start in coffee, the Piraeus, 1849. He was something of a pirate and the only cotton he ever saw must have been in his children's underwear. He himself wore silk. . . . Dimitri, yes. Married late. A good catch. Everybody had an eye on him. The advice he wanted from me would sometimes get out of hand. After a while I had to refuse to meet him in private.

Big Belle turned to Joe.

You'll have to forgive my sister. She makes things up, always has. Flighty.

I am not, Little Alice called out, sitting up straight in her chair.

Thick-thighed, added Alice under her breath.

What's that? said Belle over her knitting.

Dimitri gave me that porcelain in 1879, mused Alice. I remember because that was the year he asked me to move into the villa where the drawing room was done in the Turkish style. All the things in it, the woods and the velvets and the lamps of pink and blue Bohemian glass, everything was faded and opaque and dusty. And the rooms on the first floor all smelled of cinnamon and Arab cooking.

You're making things up again, said Big Belle. The year was 1878, the year Pius IX died. You're trying to move up dates to make yourself seem younger than you are.

Thick-thighed, whispered Little Alice.

Belle gazed at her sister affectionately.

I'll have you know the men I've been acquainted with have always preferred women with some meat on their bones.

Tra-la, twittered Alice. And especially the bones women sit on?

And what's that supposed to mean?

Just that if they hadn't fancied a plump bottom to begin with, they wouldn't have been coming around to see you in the first place. After all, you were known as Big Belle for a reason.

Belle smiled with satisfaction.

On that account, I never heard a single complaint from any man. They were always pleased and often ecstatic.

I'm sure they were, said Alice. Why wouldn't they be? Those kinds of men always did prefer you.

When men go oystering, replied Belle, there are those kind and then there are the other kind. And as I recall, the latter were always talking about you in the cafés. Pretty Little Alice and her pretty little mouth. Oh I remember.

Do you now? But how did you know what they were saying in the cafés, Belle? I always thought cafés were for silly people and you only went into town to see your stockbroker?

And a good thing I did, too. If I hadn't, I can't imagine where we'd be today. The Lord only knows what would have become of us if our future had been left in your hands.

Belle, really. This houseboat was a gift to whom, I might ask?

And who has paid the bills on it for the last forty years, if I might ask?

Alice tossed her head.

Money has never meant anything to me, that's true enough. I've always been a gypsy at heart. Who cares about money? Who cares?

Belle sniffed.

That's easy for you to say. Nothing more substantial than a daydream has ever meant anything to you.

Dimitri, mused Alice. His ironing woman was a Copt, I remember. She had the Coptic cross tattooed on her wrists and she spoke Italian because she'd been educated by nuns.

You'd be the one to know, said Belle. You always did like to poke around in the servants' quarters.

Because I always found them interesting, that's why. More interesting than the people who strut in drawing rooms and put on airs. Servants have fascinating things to tell you. That's where I learned to read hands and Tarot cards.

Put on airs? What's that supposed to mean?

Just that that Croat or whatever he was, that Dimitri, was a terrible bore. Oh Belle, he was. Admit it for once.

He was Montenegrin and fabulously wealthy, and if you'd had an ounce of sense you could have asked him for that villa and he would have given it to you, instead of just those little porcelain trinkets.

Money money money, never anything but money. I like my shepherdesses and I don't give a hoot about money.

Of course you don't, why should you? Haven't I always been here to see that we're provided for?

But he was such a bore, Belle. All he could talk about was his tedious researches into the Balkan aristocracy. I mean really, who could care about such a ludicrous notion? That and his daubs, as he called them, those cheap paintings he bought in Europe and insisted on attributing to unknown pupils of various seventeenth-century masters. Dimitri indeed. That Croat.

You may say that now, but I'll have you know the stocks I recommended he give you that Christmas paid excellent dividends for decades. Right up until the last war, thank you.

Well you ought to thank me, Belle. If there were any dividends, I certainly earned them. Do you know he actually told me once that Albania was a good place to buy paintings? Ah ha, I thought, now it's all going to come out. A mysterious tale about stolen masterpieces and a secret castle high in the Albanian Alps known only to dissolute Russian princes and unscrupulous Levantine art dealers. That's what I imagined, but when I asked him why Albania was a good place to buy paintings, his answer was that they were cheap there. Can you believe it? Of course paintings were cheap in Albania, why wouldn't they be? What kind of a painting could you have found in Albania sixty years ago? Or today, for that matter? Of course they were cheap, how ridiculous. They were utterly worthless.

Stop prattling, said Belle. There are no Alps in Albania. Don't become overexcited just because we have a male guest, you're not a fifteen-year-old flirt anymore. Stop squirming and try to compose yourself.

Would you like more sherry?

I think I will have a little more. Being reminded of Dimitri makes me thirsty. . . . Arghh. Always that sticky starchy taste gumming up my throat before the guests arrived for dinner. And there was never any relief from it. An hour later, between soup and fish, just when I was beginning to be able to swallow normally again, Dimitri would come prancing down to my end of the table and wiggle his eyebrows and whisper something about a quick private stroll down to the bushes at the end of the garden. Between soup and fish, mind you, and I would even have to make up the excuse we gave our guests. Dimitri indeed. . . . Arghh. What a Croat. You're right that there was nothing aristocratic about the way he got through a dinner.

Belle had put aside her knitting and was stiffly crossing the room to Alice's chair, a decanter in her hand.

Her left arm was hanging down in some strange way, Joe noticed, and she almost seemed to be dragging her left foot. She poured from the decanter into Alice's glass.

Is that all I get, just a half? My throat's suddenly dry as can be.

Your nerves, dear. Remember what the doctor said.

He's a silly young fool.

That's as it may be, but we know what happens when you drink too much sherry. Remember what happened that last evening with Dimitri.

I do remember too, said Alice. We were getting to the end of dinner and the savory was just about to be brought in, when Dimitri came prancing down to my end of the table and wiggled his eyebrows and whispered the usual whisper, and I just stood up and smiled and spoke very clearly to the guests, most of whom were his business associates.

Please excuse us, dears, but Dimitri simply insists we race down to the end of the garden so I can taste his very own savory behind the bushes, the sticky starchy kind, tra-la. But start right in because we'll be back in a minute. Dimitri's always very fast in the garden, or anywhere.

Little Alice laughed.

And that was the last I saw of him and his boring stockbroker crowd. Dimitri bolted faster than he'd ever done anything in his life, even behind the bushes.

Alice, said Belle affectionately. Try to behave yourself. I just can't imagine what Joe must be thinking.

Belle was stiffly, slowly, returning to her chair. Was her face set like that because of pain? wondered Joe.

Alice emptied her sherry glass at a gulp. She smiled across the room at Joe.

I did drink too much sherry that evening, she confided, and I am excitable. And I'm also impulsive and changeable and not the most practical person in the world, just as Belle says. But we are what we are, aren't we? Belle has a head for solid facts and dates and things like that, and I just don't. When I remember things I think of colors and patterns and impressions. It's just the way I am.

Belle had resumed her knitting. Joe noticed her loving glance at her sister.

You used to paint beautifully, said Belle.

Oh no, not beautifully, but I enjoyed it and that was the important thing. It was a way of expressing myself. I always used to say I'd be a recognized painter by the time I was fifty.

Little Alice looked down at her lap.

But it didn't work out that way, she added in a quiet voice.

Alice has crippled hands, said Belle softly. Arthritis. It happened years ago. It was very unfair.

Oh well, murmured Alice, we can't have everything. And there's always a reason why something should be so, rather than otherwise. At least that's what I've always told myself.

She smiled. A bright smile.

I'm a dreamer, she said, Belle's right about that too. When I was little I used to get up early and go out and run through the fields to feel the wind in my hair, and then I'd climb a tree somewhere to spy on people. But I wasn't spying on them really, it was just that I liked to look over walls. I hate walls, I've always hated walls. So I used to climb trees so there'd be no walls, and I'd look down into people's yards and make up stories about what they were doing. When I went out for my run Belle would still be in bed, but then when I got back she would be sitting on the front porch, reading a book. Belle was always reading as a child. She will be bookish, Mother used to say. She will be stubborn and not go out and play like other children. You always had your nose in a book then, didn't you, dear? And I could never understand it. I always wanted to be out running and exploring and living like a gypsy, and I could never understand how someone could just sit around all day and read.

Belle wrinkled her nose. She sniffed contentedly.

You silly. What do you think reading is? I could go all over the world in books.

History books, said Alice. You always read history. And when I came back from my morning run we'd sit on the porch and Mother would bring us cookies and milk, and I'd tell you all the things I'd seen, and you'd say I'd made them up. And then you'd tell me some stories from your history books, and I'd say you'd made them up.

Alice laughed.

What a pair we were. So very different from the very beginning.

Yes, murmured Belle. Uncle George always used to say that. He used to say he could never believe we were twins, we were so different.

And on rainy afternoons, said Alice, you'd bring the brown stool in from the front room and put it next to the kitchen table, and you'd climb up there and pretend you were an empress sitting on your throne, remember? A great empress of all the somethings, and I would be your lady-in-waiting and bring your jewels.

Did you mind? asked Belle.

Oh no, I loved it. Especially when you asked for your crown and I brought it in on a cushion the way you said, and I waited in the doorway until all your ministers had taken their places and you told me to advance, and in I marched in front of all of them, very carefully because I was always afraid I might trip, and I stepped up on the stool and the moment had come at last, and I put the crown on your head. Oh I was so proud then. And later when court was dismissed we'd go into the bedroom and you'd drape me with scarves in front of the mirror, and I'd dance. I wonder why I always imagined Cleopatra wore scarves and danced?

I don't know, said Belle. Perhaps you saw a picture somewhere. But dancing in scarves is nice and you were so pretty.

Oh no, not pretty.

But you were. You were a beautiful little dream in gossamer veils, and you just floated through the air.

No no, murmured Alice, I was just myself. But the books never claimed Cleopatra was pretty, did they?

They just said she was charming and had a lightness about her, and that's what always appealed to me, the lightness, the light. Any fool can be born with a pretty face. That's nothing.

Abruptly, Belle's hands went still above her knitting. She was staring down at the floor and Alice noticed it at once.

What is it, dear? Is your side bothering you again?

No, it's not that. I was thinking about the little brown stool and climbing up to sit on the kitchen table, to play at being the great empress of all the somethings, nearly ninety years ago now. How foolish it seems.

The empress of what, I ask you? Our little front porch?

Belle's face was sad. She stared at the floor.

Well you were, said Alice softly. You were, you know.

I was what, dear?

The empress of our front porch. For me, you were.

Well, murmured Belle. Well. That's something, I guess.

And it is, said Alice, it is something too. I've never been so proud in all my life as when the time came to enter the court with your crown and all the ministers bowed low, and I walked in holding the cushion high, so afraid I'd trip, and you smiled at me, Belle, right there in front of everybody. And it made me feel wonderful inside and suddenly I knew I wouldn't trip and everything was going to be all right.

It was the proudest moment of my life, whispered Little Alice, and it always will be. Always.

***

When three or four clocks in the parlor struck the hour, Belle excused herself to take some medicine. As soon as she had left the room Alice came over to sit beside Joe. She put her hand on his arm.

Tip your head, please? I want to whisper.

Joe did so.

It's about my sister. I know she seems grouchy sometimes but she doesn't really mean it, it's just that she's in such terrible pain. First she broke one hip and then she broke the other, and there were all these operations when they put in plates and wires and I don't know what, and the doctors said she'd never walk again because nothing's supposed to heal at our age. But they didn't know Belle, did they? When Belle's determined to do something she just sets her jaw and goes ahead and does it. It doesn't matter who says it can't be done, she just does it. Belle will refuse to listen to others, Mother used to say. She will just get that look on her face and do exactly what she wants to.

Little Alice smiled warmly.

Even Uncle George, the poor dear, used to say the same thing. Well after she had all those operations, Belle decided she was going to walk again. And she went on trying and trying with her lips tight and her jaw set, and finally she did it. The doctors said it was a miracle but I knew it was just Belle being herself.

Belle likes to pretend, you see, that she doesn't believe in miracles. She likes to think she's too rational for things like that.

Little Alice laughed merrily, then turned serious.

So she learned to walk again, and soon after that she had a stroke. That's what you notice about her left side, she's partly paralyzed. Usually I get her medicine for her, but tonight she didn't want me to because you're here, I could tell. And that's why I let her bring you your whiskey and pour my sherry, because I could tell she wanted so much to do it. Belle's proud that way. She wants to keep up appearances.

I just thought you should know, added Little Alice. So you wouldn't think badly of her.

I could never do that, said Joe.

And she was always so talented, continued Little Alice. Everyone admired her for it. She used to write beautiful stories in French and Russian which she'd learned mostly on her own, from books, because she's so clever with languages. And comedies that were witty and subtle and made you laugh and laugh long after you'd finished them. Belle was going to be a writer, you see, and I was going to be a painter.

Privately, we always had those dreams, just between the two of us.

Little Alice looked down at her hands.

Those particular dreams didn't work out for either of us. But there were other things to compensate, and Belle has never stopped writing. The work that has come to mean the most to her is a history of the life of Alexander the Great, for children, which she has worked on for years and years. She's completed three or four volumes but she hasn't gotten to the end yet, and it's all told simply and directly so that a child can understand it and appreciate the great accomplishments. Not the military victories so much as the journeys to strange lands and all the strange peoples Alexander met, so children can appreciate what it means to try hard and live your own life. Someday she may finish it, I don't know.

Shyly, Alice looked up.

Or maybe not? Maybe she can't bring herself to finish it and the story of Alexander the Great will just go on and on forever, like the Nile?

Little Alice smiled.

It's true that people are affected by where they live, and we've lived here so long it's almost like a dream.

Oh yes, we're ancient and we know it. Sometimes I think we're as old as the pyramids, so much has passed by us here.

She laughed.

But I'm chattering again, aren't I? Belle's right, I just can't help myself. But you see I never wanted to become old and even now I don't feel old, even though I look a hundred and ten, more or less. I know it sounds strange, but inside I feel exactly the same as I did when I used to go for my runs early in the morning and I'd come back and find Belle sitting on the porch, reading, and Mother would bring us cookies and milk. Inside, it's still me.

Little Alice frowned.

And I could never picture myself living like those little old ladies you used to see around here, who never appeared in public until the sun went down. You used to see them gathering like old crows on the corners of small empty streets just after sunset, shaking their ancient hats and chatting in French with Greek or Armenian accents, or Syrian or Maltese accents, and then they'd go strolling off in a cluster along the flowered railings to their daily card game in some damp darkened room that you knew would be cluttered with heavy Moorish-style furniture, the arabesques and mother-of-pearl gleaming feebly in the gloom, the fragile inlaid filigree all gummed up with dust.

I hate dark rooms, whispered Little Alice. And I don't want to look like an old crow in some ridiculous old-fashioned hat, and I hate those tiresome card games old women play and the heavy gloomy furniture that always goes with them. I like things light and airy and I never wanted to be old, and somehow I've never been able to picture myself that way. I know I'm as ancient as the hills but I don't feel that way. I feel as if I'm just still me.

Little Alice abruptly smiled.

But here I am prattling again. Tell me, do you like Egypt? It's changed so much since we first came here.

Originally, Belle and I were on the stage and that's why we never married. In those days actresses never got into families. Nowadays it's different, but it used to be like that.

You must have been very young when you came to Egypt, said Joe.

Oh yes, we were. With white camellias in our shining dark hair. And it was unforgettable, that first sparkling winter we were here, nearly three-quarters of a century ago.

Was it that long ago?

Yes, that's when it was. We came for the opening of Aïda, for the first performance of Aïda that was ever given anywhere. But we didn't come as wealthy tourists or as the guests of someone who was wealthy. We were poor then and we didn't know a soul in Egypt and we came as slave-girls in Aïda, just two little slave-girls off at the back of the stage. Aïda opened at the khedivial opera house in honor of the opening of the Suez Canal, and there were guests from all over the world in Cairo then, and not one of them paid a penny for anything. Everything was free, given by the Magnificent, the khedive Ismail. The shops and hotels all over Egypt just sent in their bills to the minister of finance, who paid the lot of them without a murmur. The road to the pyramids was built then, so the Empress Eugénie could visit them in her carriage.

Little Alice nodded to herself.

And even though we were just slave-girls in the production, we began to attract a certain amount of attention, because we were twins, I suppose. And before long we were being invited around to dinners and to sunset sails on the Nile, and then later came the beautiful houses, the villas that were museums of china and carpets, the rarest in the world. And Belle had her residences and I had mine, and it was lavish, I can tell you. We used to call on each other in our carriages or meet along the river somewhere, and then in the evenings we'd be sitting in our separate boxes at the opera, in the first tier, our breasts covered with diamonds and every pair of glasses in the house turning from one of us to the other, looking to see what we were wearing and watching to see which gentlemen we spoke to, and with how much enthusiasm.

Little Alice smiled shyly.

People used to talk about us in those days but I don't suppose they do anymore. I don't suppose people even remember we're still alive.

Oh yes they do, said Joe. And there are all kinds of mysterious tales about the mysterious sisters who live in a rambling houseboat on the Nile.

Little Alice clapped her hands in delight.

There are? Still? Even though we're a hundred and ten, more or less?

Little Alice grew wistful.

What kinds of tales? Where do they say we came from?

Ah, now that's the most mysterious part of all. Nobody claims to know where you really came from, but one story is that you were Russian princesses running away from a family scandal. An uncle had gambled everything away in Nice, or some such thing, so friends bundled the two of you into a sealed train in St Petersburg one cold winter night, at the Finland Station, and you went abroad with the best of old Russia in your suitcases and never went back again.

It sounds like a nineteenth-century novel, whispered Alice happily.

It does, doesn't it? And then there's a totally different story, just as intriguing, about the two of you being Hungarian actresses who went to Paris at a young age and became a hit there. And another story begins in Venice, and another in Vienna, and just on and on. There's no end to them really, and one is more exotic than the other.

Little Alice smiled, looking down at her hands.

Just imagine, she murmured. Isn't that lovely. . . . Uncle George would have liked that, she added with great feeling.

And who was Uncle George, said Joe, if you don't mind my asking?

No, I don't mind. We loved him a great deal and we both like to talk about him now. It didn't used to be so easy. . . . He was our mother's brother and he was the only relative we had, the only family. He ran the pub in the village where we grew up. It wasn't much of a pub but that's what we used to call it. When Belle and I were children we cleaned up for him there. We mopped the floors and carried in the firewood and did the washing up. We always thought it was very exciting to be in such an adult place.

You were English, then, originally?

Yes, from a little village near York. Our father had worked in a factory and he was killed in an accident when we were babies, so Mother took us back to her village. The only thing we ever knew about our father was that he was a laborer and drank a lot because he was unhappy. Mother never talked about him, Uncle George told us what we know. Apparently our father used to beat Mother when he drank, we overheard Mother and Uncle George talking about it once. And then after he died Mother made quilts and things like that to sell, but it was really Uncle George who made life possible for us. He was a bachelor and he helped out with our food and our clothes and other things, and the presents Santa Claus gave us at Christmas, and the presents we received on our birthday, were always from Uncle George.

It was Uncle George's cottage that we lived in when Mother took us back to her village. It was small so he moved out back into the shed and let us use the cottage. He made wonderful things with his hands, mostly for us, but he must have been unhappy too because he also drank a lot. He was a kind man and very gentle and he was always so good to us. When we were children, there wouldn't have been any Christmases for us without Uncle George.

Little Alice gazed down at her hands.

He drowned himself in the millpond one New Year's Eve. He went down there alone in the darkness and drowned himself and they found him on New Year's Day. He would have been forty that year. And after that Mother said she wanted to leave the village forever, she said she just couldn't live there anymore.

Well she had her own dreams, Mother did, and she wasn't just like other people, and there was a little money from the cottage and from Uncle George's share of the pub, and she used that to take us to Italy, which was an unheard-of thing to do in those days for people like us, common people who were poor and uneducated and didn't know anyone. But she was a brave woman and she wanted her daughters to make something of their lives, so she took us to Italy because she loved the sun, and an Italian man she met gave us singing lessons, Belle and me, and that's where it all began for us. All of it.

Little Alice tipped her head.

It's strange, isn't it, those exotic tales people tell about Russian princesses and Hungarian actresses, and Venice and Paris and Vienna and all the rest of it. Of course, I'd be speaking less than the truth if I didn't tell you we used to encourage that sort of thing when we first came here.

Little Alice looked up at Joe.

Two little girls, she whispered. Two little girls mopping the floor of a pub in a village near York, a long time ago. And then later the singing lessons, and eventually appearing as slave-girls in the first performance of Aïda that was ever given anywhere, just tiny parts for two young girls. And so it all began, and so it goes.

Suddenly her smile was gone and she was gazing up at Joe with a childlike face, in a questioning way.

So it's no wonder, is it, that we never left? That we stayed in Cairo, in faraway Egypt?

No wonder at all, said Joe. After all, not everyone has the chance to be Cleopatra beside the Nile.

Little Alice stared at her cramped gnarled hands.

Oh yes, she whispered, oh yes. And that's what I always used to tell myself when I sat in my box at the opera and everyone looked at me and envied me for my diamonds and I felt nothing but rage and sorrow because I could never get married. And later when I was home again in whatever villa it was, and the man had left to go home to his family and the servants were in bed, and it was very late and I was all alone again and crying and crying in bed because I knew I could never get married, that's what I used to tell myself. Ten thousand times I must have said it as I cried myself to sleep. We can't have everything in life, so remember how lucky you are. Think of the good things you have and just remember. Remember.

. . . Or as Uncle George used to say, You can take what you want from life. All you have to do is pay for it. . . .

Joe reached out and plucked a tear from her cheek.

There now, he murmured, there now. And so we do remember, and so we do pay. And what a beautiful night it is to be here with the two of you in this wondrous room, the stars so bright and magical upon the river.

***

Big Belle cleared her throat by the door, a noisy growling sound. Slowly, she came limping back into the room, smiling broadly.

Here now, what's this? Are the two of you holding hands already? I'm gone for no more than a minute and my little sister is already flirting with some gentleman caller?

My fault entirely, said Joe. We got to talking about the past and I'm hopelessly sentimental, I have to tell you that.

You're Irish, thundered Belle.

Well that's right.

Well don't be redundant then, we heard you the first time. Now let me take your glass and refill it for you.

It's getting late and we have some talking to do.

Alice moved away to her chair. Belle returned with the new glass of whiskey.

Will that do?

It will. A mite large as before, but then.

But then, life should be large, boomed Belle. Otherwise, what's the point? Now you've been sitting here patiently letting two old sisters carry on the way they're used to doing, and you've hardly said a word, which must mean you're out looking for things. My guess is you have some questions to ask. Do you?

Yes, as a matter of fact.

Fact? thundered Belle. Fact, you say? Well since Alice and I have lived a total of almost two hundred years, and gossip being what it is in Cairo, and men being what they are anywhere, Alice and I have come across a few facts in our time. But first, tell me this. Do you work for this man Bletchley?

In a way, I do. But in a way, not.

What do your questions have to do with, then?

Joe looked from one sister to the other. Straight out and straight ahead, he thought. They drink their gin straight here and they serve their whiskey straight and they call a Dimitri a Dimitri, at the dinner table or anywhere else, so it's not a time for niceties now.

Joe looked from one sister to the other.

Stern, he said. My questions have to do with Stern.

Belle's knitting needles stopped clicking. Immediately the two sisters were on guard and a silence settled over the room.

Stern is a very dear friend, Alice said quietly after a moment.

I'm aware of that, replied Joe. That's why I'm here.

Do you know him well? asked Belle.

I did. I haven't seen him in a few years.

Where did you know him?

In Jerusalem, it was.

In what connection?

I worked for him for a time. Later we became just friends.

Worked for him? Doing what?

Smuggling arms into Palestine. For the Haganah.

Big Belle stirred. She seemed to be recalling something.

Do you know anything about scarabs?

One only, answered Joe. A giant stone scarab with a mysterious smile carved into its face. A great huge and hollow giant stone scarab. That's what I smuggled the arms in. Stern had set me up to pass myself off as a dealer in antiquities.

When exactly?

After the last war.

Belle studied Joe more closely.

What does the Home for Crimean War Heroes mean to you?

It means a charity in Jerusalem, said Joe, where I lived when I first arrived in the city. I was on the run from the British and in disguise, and I lived there until I met Stern. They gave me a used khaki blanket which I still have. Their standard award of merit, it was.

Little Alice was becoming so excited she could hardly sit still. A smile was growing on Belle's face.

Do you play cards? asked Belle.

I don't now but I did once. Poker. Twelve years of it in Jerusalem.

Big Belle suddenly beamed. She whooped as a crescendo of chirping noises erupted in Little Alice's corner.

That Joe, thundered Belle, the Irishman who lived on a roof in the Old City. Free the serfs. Annex the Crimea and the hell with the Turks. Why didn't you say you were that Joe and not just some odd rowing companion of young Ahmad? We've heard a good deal from Stern in the past about that Joe.

Happily Belle grabbed the gin bottle at her elbow and upended it, taking a drink straight from the bottle.

Little Alice's mouth fell open.

Belle. What on earth?

Big Belle smacked her lips. She sighed noisily and licked her lips with an enormous smile.

I know, dear. Forgive me.

But Belle, realll-ly. I haven't seen you do that in sixty-five years.

Belle laughed.

Sixty-seven, dear.

Not since that very first time when you were going to spend a night with Menelik, said Alice. Not since that afternoon when we were somewhere together and Menelik sent a note around just begging you to spend a quiet candlelit evening with him in his sarcophagus, to celebrate his retirement from his digs in the field.

I know, dear, and what a grand invitation it was to a young woman not much more than twenty.

Hieroglyphs engraved on a heavy slab of stone, no less, in Menelik's very own hand, with accompanying translations engraved beneath it in demotic Egyptian and ancient Greek. Menelik's very own Rosetta Stone of love. Just think of all the time and thought it must have taken him to turn that heavy basalt slab into an invitation. No young woman in her right mind could ever have responded to that with anything less than a resounding, Yes I said Yes I will Yes.

I remember, mused Alice dreamily.

Indeed you do, said Belle, and so do I. It isn't often that a suitor presents his case to a woman with words actually written in stone.

To the woman of my dreams, the incomparable Belle.

Dearest:

Today I retire from a lifetime of active archeology and go underground for good and forever.

Won't you please help me inaugurate my future life in the crypt by the Nile that is to be my new home? Among its many delights is a most spacious sarcophagus, cork-lined, which is to serve as both my bed and bedroom, and which will simply take your breath away. Large, my dear, as well as timeless, and need I add that they don't make them like that anymore?

Until an hour after sunset then, my most beautiful Belle, for a time we will both cherish as the night of a lifetime.

Easily. Clearly. And until that moment when I hear your sweet knock on the door of my anonymous crypt, I remain,

Your most ardent and devoted of admirers above or beneath the sands of Egypt, both ancient and modern,

All my love,

(s) Menelik Ziwar.

P.S. Don't bother to dress. After a life of determined Egyptology, all of history is at my disposal and we can wander wherever we choose, adopting such costumes and manners and methods as may suit our purposes, our moods, our tastes, and above all our grand designs for lovemaking throughout eternity.

Belle sighed. She smacked her lips.

No, she said, you don't see invitations like that anymore, no more than you meet a man like Menelik.

Menelik was different, and his unusual invitation was just the beginning of the unusual delights we were to know together that evening. One might have thought a sarcophagus would be a trifle cramped for the tour through history Menelik had in mind, but that was beforehand. Before Menelik got his hands moving and the champagne flowing and started peeling grapes and dipping them here and there.

Belle. I just don't know what to say. I mean, realll-ly. What can Joe possibly be thinking?

I know, dear, but Menelik was an out-and-out contortionist and there's no use denying it. I've never known anything like it, he was just everywhere at once. It must have been all those years he spent excavating ancient tombs, bending himself around in tight quarters. Not to mention doing so in the dark much of the time, when he had to depend on his fingertips to do his seeing for him. Oh, Menelik's fingertips. It makes me shiver to think of them even now.

Belle? Are you sure you're all right?

I am, dear, perfectly, I haven't felt so good in sixty-seven years. It's also that first rush the gin gives you when you gulp it straight from the bottle, there's nothing like it. I never could abide sipping from glasses in order to appear ladylike. Menelik used to say there was only one way to deal with a bottle of gin. The same way you deal with me, he used to say. Just grab the fellow firmly and upend the rascal and swallow for the life of you.

Belle.

Big Belle smacked her lips. She laughed.

Now he was a man, Menelik was. Who could ever imagine such a thrilling night in a sarcophagus? And a sarcophagus that had originally belonged to Cheops' mother, of all things? Oh yes, there was never a moment's rest when you were with Menelik and he was mulling over five thousand years of Egyptian history. Just when you thought all that coming and going through the ages might have tired him a little, he'd twist himself around somehow and all at once he'd be whispering in your ear again. Do you know what they used to do, he'd whisper, back during the XII Dynasty? No? Well it's rather clever. All you do is move this leg a little like that, and your left hand here, and your other hand . . . oh yes. Oh yes. Oooooo.

. . .

Belle. Please.

Big Belle sighed. She licked her lips and beamed.

And then there was that specialty Menelik used to claim had been invented during an even earlier dynasty, but which was really nothing more than a very elaborate hum-job with a few sacred props thrown in. . . . Oh, Menelik. It's exhausting just to think of him. Perhaps I ought to have one more, all at once I'm feeling thirsty. These memories. . . .

Abruptly Belle hoisted the bottle of gin and drank again. She sighed and placed the bottle back on the table.

But why didn't you tell us you were that Joe? That Joe, just imagine. . . . Well all right then, all right. On to business.

Belle's knitting needles began to click in the stillness. Alice glanced at her sister and straightened her shawl, going through a final flurry of flutters before subsiding quietly into an alert position. Belle cleared her throat

Are you ready, Alice?

Ready, Belle.

Belle gazed at Joe.

Stern's in trouble?

Yes.

You think it's serious?

Yes.

How serious?

Joe looked at her and then at Alice.

I'm afraid it's the end.

Belle's fingers stopped moving. She stared through the open French doors at the river, her jaw set.

I refuse to believe that, she said. Please begin with your questions.

***

I'm on unsure ground here, said Joe. I've got some bits and pieces but I don't have an overall shape to what I'm looking for. You might say it's the same as it used to be for Menelik back when he was digging up the past and everything he found was partial and broken and dusted by time, and he had to try to put it together so that it would make some sense. To see who the people of that particular dynasty were, and what they had been up to. A little bit like that maybe. I suppose we all have to delve into the Egyptologist's craft now and then, and there even seem to be some hieroglyphs involved. A code, so to speak. Things I can't decipher because there's no Rosetta Stone for this one.

This one? asked Belle. What's that, this one? What is the code? What does it cover?

Stern's life, I guess you'd have to say, I suppose that's what it really is. And since you know Stern as well as you do, you can understand it's not a simple matter to sift the sands through your fingers and come up with something with a shape to it, a coherency that translates into words. The end result has to be simple enough because Stern's just a man. But that's only once you know how to read the hieroglyphs.

A Greek word meaning sacred writing, murmured Belle.

Joe nodded.

Yes, Greek. Like a good many things in this part of the world.

But the writings the word denotes are much older, mused Belle.

Much older, said Joe. So my task is a little bit the same as Menelik's used to be. Of course the best thing would be to talk to people who aren't here, but you can never do that. And it's also true that what Menelik dealt with happened four or five thousand years ago, while what I'm looking for happened yesterday or a month or a year or two ago, but it's the same thing really. Ancient history always begins yesterday, doesn't it?

Or even with your afternoon nap, murmured Alice. Sometimes everything that happened before then is like a dream, little shards of this and that. And Menelik, bless his soul, would have been the first to say so.

True, said Joe. The evidence never is in, not by half. So, like Menelik, I have to blow the dust off the shards and nudge the bits and pieces around and see if I can make a picture out of them.

Belle's patient, said Alice. She's always been clever at jigsaw puzzles. I have no patience at all but I can sense patterns sometimes. They just come to me.

Well? said Belle

Joe nodded.

Yes. There's this, for example. Rommel knows things he shouldn't know and it has something to do with codes. British codes. It's as if Rommel could read them. The important one may be called the Black Code, and somehow a Colonel Fellers may be involved, he's the American military attaché here in Cairo.

Because Stern said recently to someone, first thing in the morning, that Rommel was probably enjoying his little fellers at that very moment, over breakfast.

Arab boys? asked Alice.

Too simple, declared Belle.

Oh.

The little things over breakfast, said Belle, have to refer to the American colonel.

Oh of course.

Belle closed her eyes to concentrate. A few moments later she opened them.

Nothing. Alice?

Alice was staring dreamily across the room toward the door. They followed her gaze. Belle sniffed thoughtfully, quietly.

Is it the door, Alice?

No, the doorstop.

Belle and Joe studied the doorstop. It was made of wood and hand-painted, a small upright tableau depicting two vivacious young girls from the nineteenth century, smiling in long curls and flowery hats and voluminous dresses, carrying parasols. The clothes and the sky had been done in delicate pastels, faded now by three-quarters of a century of Egyptian sunlight. The painted earth at the bottom of the block of wood, the weight of the doorstop, was richly dark and blackened by the passage of time.

We must have worn a dozen petticoats in those days, said Alice. How old were we when I painted that?

Fourteen, replied Belle. We were in Rome.

That's right, and I painted a lot of them one summer, trying to make a little money. I used to go around to the tables in the pensione at teatime and sell them, remember? But that's the only one left now, the only one we brought to Egypt. Just look at those hats, Belle, and those ridiculous dresses. How did we ever move around dressed like that?

It was clumsy. We were very restricted.

Oh we were, we were. I used to hate wearing all those petticoats. And just look how rich and black the earth is, not red and sandy the way it is here. Oh how strange this is.

It is strange, Alice. I wonder what brought all of that to mind just at this moment?

I have no idea, I can't imagine. But didn't we think we were very grown-up when we could dress like that?

Yes, petticoats and everything.

That's right. And we were only fourteen years old, and the Italian men were always . . . and now Joe has mentioned a Black Code and the black in that painting seems to remind me of something, Belle.

Something having to do with sex in Rome.

Sex way back then, dear? That's a rather extensive subject, I'm afraid. Or are you thinking of something we might have heard about more recently?

Yes, more recently. Within the last year, perhaps. Oh that's maddening, it's right on the tip of my tongue.

Why do we have to be so old and have so many things to remember? But you must know what I'm thinking about, Belle. Sex. Rome. Can't you remember?

There are hundreds of incidents to remember, dear, but which one of them is on your mind now? Maybe it might help if you narrowed things down. What kind of sex was it, exactly?

Italian sex. Seduction. Age leering at youth and innocence corrupted. A poor young cleaning woman just in from the country and a suave older man spending money on her and giving her an evening beyond her wildest dreams, and then taking her back to his candlelit flat overlooking the Piazza Navonna and whispering bella bella and making fantastic promises while pulling off her petticoats and exacting a few concrete promises in return. Oh just think, Belle, think. I know you can recall it.

Suddenly Belle's knitting needles clicked once.

Of course. That's it, Alice, you've found it.

Little Alice smiled shyly. Big Belle turned to Joe with a triumphant expression.

Isn't she a marvel? The Black Code is some kind of American cipher which the Italians managed to get their hands on in Rome. They stole it from the American Embassy with the help of a cleaning woman who was on the night shift. That was five or six months ago, around the beginning of the year, and the Americans still don't know about it, apparently. Now one would assume the Italians passed along their discovery to their allies, the Germans. What's the job of a military attaché, exactly?

He reports on the military situation in the country where he's stationed, answered Joe.

Ha, peeped Alice. Do Belle and I look like military secrets?

Indeed, said Belle, the attachés we've known always seemed to be up to something quite different. But let's assume this Colonel Fellers is more conscientious than most and actually does his job. What if he's been sending reports back to Washington on a daily basis? His reports would naturally include a synopsis of British intentions, the locations of British units and their strength and morale, and British plans for offense and defense. He would send his reports by commercial wire, which means that practically any clerk in the Egyptian Telegraph Company would have access to them. Or anyone else along the commercial telegraph route to Washington. Furthermore it's likely that he would file his reports at the end of the working day, which is to say early every evening.