Nile 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.

In the Black Code, chirped Alice. Seduction made me think of it.

And so, concluded Belle, allowing for some deciphering and translating in the dark hours, the timing would be just right for Rommel to have his little fellers sitting beside his herring at breakfast the following morning. Everything that would be useful for Rommel to know, carefully compiled by Colonel Fellers.

Belle smiled, Alice smiled. Joe was utterly astonished. He looked from one sister to the other and whistled softly.

And there, said Belle, is the secret behind the Desert Fox's uncanny foresight. He can read. And thus it seems it may not always be wise to praise famous men.

Or to put it another way, chirped Alice gaily, you know a man by what he puts his nose into first thing in the morning. Little fellers? Herring?. .

What do you think? Belle asked Joe.

In answer Joe whistled again, very softly.

I think the two of you are astounding, he said. And I also think the Black Code is about to join Hammurabi's code as one more chunk of ancient history in the sandy Middle East. From now on it's herring only for Rommel's breakfast, and a once dashing hero is back to looking like a surly thug when not in uniform.

Well there, twittered Alice brightly.

Belle clicked her knitting needles with conviction.

Next? she said.

***

Joe nodded. He frowned.

I'm sorry, but a few things are still a little unclear to me. Bletchley has told me almost nothing and I haven't been able to talk to Stern yet, so the hieroglyphs are still a mite mysterious. The truth is, I still can't make out Stern's role exactly.

Ask questions then, suggested Belle. Isn't that why you're here?

It is, said Joe, and I have to admit I feel a little bit like some ancient Greek traveler come to pay a call on the Sphinx.

Little Alice laughed.

Come now, we're not as enigmatic as all that, are we? Two forgotten little old women with their aches and pains and their lives behind them?

Joe smiled.

No one would ever describe you that way. The two of you are a legend, you must know that.

To others maybe, said Alice, looking down at her cramped hands, her laughter gone.

Just look at those, she whispered sadly. Two ugly claws, that's what they are.

There there, said Belle in a quiet voice. We mustn't dwell on the unfortunate things, dear. After all, life has been very kind to us in so many ways.

Alice looked up at her sister, who smiled and nodded in encouragement.

Belle sitting stiffly erect.

What a will of iron, thought Joe. Two broken hips and part of her paralyzed and nothing holding her together at all really but that fierce mind of hers, that iron soul that won't give up because she knows her little sister couldn't manage without her. Because she knows Little Alice would just float away like the beautiful dream she's always been. Wind in her hair and running through the fields and climbing trees to see over walls, a pretty singing bird who'd just take flight on the rays of the sun and float off in the summer air forever if it weren't for her older sister waiting back there on the porch where she's always been, solid and substantial and just a mind now, just a soul that won't give in. Big Belle, they've always called her and that's what she is, determined and fierce and all mind and soul now. And precious little else now, God have mercy.

Belle turned to him.

You have questions?

I do, said Joe. I was wondering if Stern has known all along that the Germans have the Black Code?

Not all along. He found out not too long ago, as we did, by way of the Italians. They're good at so many things, but war isn't one of them. Winston summed up the matter once with his usual flair for words. An Italian blitzkrieg was the phrase he used, which is certainly the most hopeless of concepts, and also one reason I've always liked the Italians. A people incapable of making war well are blessed by God. In any case, Alice and I knew only that this American cipher had been stolen in Rome. We didn't know what use it was being put to, or about this Colonel Fellers here in Cairo. But Stern would have been aware of all that. And more important, the Germans would have known that he was.

You're certain of that?

I am now. It's simple enough to reconstruct it in retrospect. I would say the Germans were probably present when the truth slipped out in front of Stern. So if he had spoken to the British, the Germans would have known immediately who had given the secret away. You understand, I'm sure, that Stern's extraordinary value to the Allies has always been that he's thoroughly trusted by the other side. It's this very unusual quality he has about him. This ability to inspire trust.

I know, said Joe.

So knowing that the Black Code had been compromised, Stern was placed in a terrible position.

Stern's usual position, it seems. But the two of you suspected this?

Yes, we both sensed it. We could see how tormented he'd become. It was obvious something was torturing him, but we didn't know what it was until tonight.

This is an idle speculation, said Joe, but do you think Stern was planning to tell the British eventually?

That's neither idle nor speculation, replied Belle. The reason Stern returned to Cairo a few days ago was precisely to do that. Again, this has only become clear to us tonight. Until a few days ago he'd been hoping the British would uncover the truth about the Black Code through other channels, other sources.

He'd been desperately waiting and praying for that. But when this last mission turned out to be such a disaster, he decided he couldn't wait any longer. His mission was part of a larger scheme, apparently, which was a total failure.

Yes, I know about it, said Joe. There were special strike forces and the like against the German and Italian bases being used to attack Malta. Bletchley mentioned it. Stern was probably serving as a pathfinder, the contact for one of the commando groups behind enemy lines.

He was devastated when he returned, continued Belle. Truly wretched. He said he feared the tide might really have turned in favor of the Germans. So he had decided to talk to Bletchley.

Joe was puzzled.

Yet I was with Bletchley yesterday evening and there was no hint at all that he even knew Stern was back in Cairo.

No, Bletchley didn't know Stern was back, or at least he didn't know then. As it turned out, Stern didn't have to go to Bletchley. As soon as Stern reappeared in Cairo he learned that what he'd been so desperately waiting for had finally happened. The British had finally learned about the breaking of the Black Code through other channels.

That would explain Bletchley's new sense of calm last night, said Joe. But at the same time Bletchley has been implying all along that this was exactly the kind of thing that worried him about Stern. This business that's now cleared up by the fact that Colonel Fellers and the Black Code were the source of all the trouble. So it just seems strange that Bletchley didn't say anything about it, or give me some hint that the situation had changed and Stern was no longer under suspicion.

Joe nodded to himself, puzzled anew. But Belle said nothing and he noticed that her face was impassive as she stared at her knitting.

Trouble, thought Joe, for the first time sensing that the Sisters were withholding something from him.

***

What could it be? he wondered. Obviously it had to do with protecting Stern, but why? From what?

And why had Bletchley said nothing if the revelations about the Black Code cleared Stern of suspicion?

Didn't it have to mean that Bletchley had some deeper concern about Stern? Some fear that far transcended the Black Code?

The writing on the wall. The hieroglyphs of Stern's life. Joe still couldn't read them, they were still a mystery. And he was sure now the Sisters were holding something back, guarding some secret because of their love for Stern. Cherishing Stern, as so many people did.

And then there was Belle's mention of other channels. Bletchley, the British, had learned about the Germans deciphering the Black Code through other channels. Did that mean some low-level informer who was secretly working for the British, or was much more than that involved? Was that why Bletchley had said nothing to Joe? Because these other channels were so very important Bletchley couldn't even hint at their existence?

***

Belle sat rigidly in her chair, her mouth set.

Perhaps it's the timing that's confusing me, said Joe, the sequence of events. The Black Code was stolen in Rome toward the beginning of the year?

Belle nodded.

No earlier?

Belle shook her head.

It doesn't fit, he thought. That was when the three men in white linen suits had turned up in Arizona, just about the same time the Germans were getting their hands on the Black Code and putting it to use in North Africa.

So obviously Bletchley had studied Stern's file and picked out Joe's name and asked that Joe be recruited to come to Cairo for another reason altogether. For something that didn't have anything to do with a serious security leak in Cairo, and the suspicion that Stern might be behind it. The appearance of the Black Code affair was merely a coincidence, something that had turned up in the interim and been cleverly put to use by Bletchley to mask his real concern from Joe. So Bletchley's real concern must have always been elsewhere, his fear of Stern something more profound.

And as so often the same thought returned to Joe, an inexplicable episode in Stern's life that wouldn't go away — Stern's Polish story. He wondered whether the Sisters would discuss it. He wondered if they even knew anything about it, so mysterious was it becoming in Joe's mind.

***

Belle still sat with her mouth set, waiting.

I don't mean to pry, said Joe, but it seems you've seen Stern more than once since he's been back.

That's true enough, said Belle. He's in the habit of coming here quite often, he's always done that. But it has nothing to do with Bletchley or what he does for Bletchley. Stern's visits here go back to a time before he began his revolutionary work. To the days when he was a young student in Cairo.

I see. I didn't know that. To be frank, as well as I knew Stern in Jerusalem, he never mentioned you.

Belle smiled.

He's like that, isn't he. Very private and protective of those he loves. And I imagine there have been other revelations for you concerning Stern since you've been here.

Yes. Many. And I have a feeling the most important ones are yet to come.

Belle frowned. She gazed at Joe.

How long have you been in Cairo? she asked.

A little over two weeks.

Such a short time. . Tell me, how do you feel about these revelations you've had concerning Stern?

Joe shrugged.

Ah well, he said, that's hard to put into words because Stern's life is more complex than most. But all lives are secret tapestries that swirl and sweep through the years with souls and strivings as the colors, the threads. And there may be little knots of tangled meaning everywhere beneath the surface, tying the colors and threads together, but the little knots aren't important finally, only the sweep itself, the tapestry as a whole. So what saddens me about Stern is that I may never even glimpse the sweep to his life. Not even have a glimpse of the tapestry as a whole. . That's how I feel.

Belle nodded, gazing at him, deep in thought.

She's trying to decide what to do, thought Joe. They know exactly what I need but they're protecting Stern the way everybody does.

Little Alice stirred, a faraway look in her eyes.

And oh he was such a handsome boy, she murmured. I remember so well the first time we met him, right here in this very room. Menelik had brought him to meet us. Menelik and Stern's father had been great friends in the old days, and when Stern came to Cairo to study, Menelik was like an uncle to him. He brought Stern here the very day Stern arrived in Cairo from the desert. .

To this very room. And Stern was so young and strong and pure, so determined to be honest and kind in life. And those beautiful ideals of his, and that wonderful enthusiasm. Of course there were other sides to him as well, I suppose there had to be, growing up in the desert the way he did, in a tent on a dusty little hillside in the Yemen where there were no other children to play with, so much alone from the very beginning and accustomed to that, because it was the way it had always been. A kind of solitude you could see in his eyes, a mark of sadness perhaps, a touch of the barren desert deep within him that would always be there, no matter what. A quietude, a stillness, and it did have its lonely side to it. You had to admit that.

But there was also so much warmth and tenderness in him because people were so precious to him, because of his loneliness as a child, I imagine. And you only had to look at him and listen to him talk for just a moment to be filled with joy. You couldn't help yourself, you were just swept away. This is what life can be, you felt. This joy and this beauty and this freedom, this exquisite music drawn from the silence of the desert.

Even though life doesn't turn out that way for most of us. Even though things happen and get in the way and we seem to arrive at some little place in life, by chance as much as anything else, and just stay there.

Never having done as much as we would have liked, never doing all the things we dreamed of doing once. Even though it is like that for most of us in the end, when we look back.

Even so, you felt something different when Stern was with you. You only had to look at him to know there could be so much more, truly beautiful things. It was hope that he gave you. Hope. You felt it. You just knew it.

And he stood right there that first afternoon, I remember. It was his first day in Cairo and he stood in those open doors by the river, his eyes shining, and he said how wonderful it was to see all that water, to just stand beside the Nile and look at it. And he laughed and he said that might sound foolish to us, but that when you had grown up in the desert the glory of all that water was simply miraculous, simply beyond imagination. Truly a wonder, he said, laughing. Truly a gift of God. A gift of His variety and splendor.

He had an Arabic name as well then, I don't remember what. Menelik would remember but Menelik's dead now. And he stood there in the open doors with his eyes shining, laughing and gazing at the Nile and just feasting on all of it like a hungry man brought to a great table. And he told us all the beautiful things he was going to do in life. Hope. Hope. .

So very young then, back in the beginning. A thin excited boy with everything ahead of him, filling our hearts to overflowing with joy, his joy, the magic of just being able to look and see and feel and love.

That's how rich the world was for Stern. So miraculous for him and so unexpected in its gifts, its blessings. .

Yes, we all felt it that first afternoon. Menelik and Belle and myself, we all felt it although not one of us said a word. But we understood the magic of that moment. Watching him, listening to him, we all knew he was precious to this world and it would always be so. Precious. A special human being, a man apart.

Always to be so. .

Silence then in the room. Silence for a time.

Finally Belle picked up her knitting. The rhythmic clicking began again.

There's more you wish to know? she asked.

A few things perhaps, said Joe.

***

Joe scratched his beard. He picked up his empty whiskey glass and put it down again.

There's a trip Stern made to Poland, he said. Nearly three years ago, just before the war broke out. I'm convinced it's at the heart of everything because Stern was reckless for once, and that's not his way.

Joe stopped.

Are you familiar at all with any of this?

Alice looked at Belle, whose face was impassive.

Why would Stern have done that? asked Belle after a moment.

To save lives, said Joe. To preserve the lives of others. And I understand he felt there was some kind of priceless breakthrough while he was in Poland. Do you know anything about it?

First, said Belle, there's a question we have to ask. How important is it for you to find out about this?

Very.

Very, yes. All kinds of things seem important along the way, but in the end? You might be surprised what's important to Alice and me when we look back on life.

I don't think so, said Joe.

Alice sighed.

Nor do I, she said, and Belle doesn't either. But what she's asking in her delicate way, Joe, is this. What if it meant your life?

I know that's what she's asking, and the answer has to be the same. I came to Cairo to find out about Stern, that's all.

But why is that so all-important to you?

Because he deserves it. Because the end is coming for him and he deserves a witness to the truth of his life.

But why? Why do you feel that so strongly?

Because he's explored the human soul more deeply than anyone I've ever known. Because his life looks like nothing but failure, and I can't accept that without knowing it to be true. Because long ago in Smyrna during the massacres, deep in the night that began our age of genocide, I watched him pull back the head of a dying little girl and slit her throat, and that moment has forever haunted me. Because unless there's some meaning in his life, I can't see where there would ever be any meaning anywhere.

And does there have to be? asked Belle.

No.

For you or for anyone?

No.

Do you feel it's our right, just because we were born?

No. But I feel we should seek it.

And yet you yourself, Joe, find Stern's life to be a chaotic tapestry. And in such a vast network of colors and threads and souls and strivings, what can you expect to find?

Nothing perhaps.

But if you did find out. . about him, what would it tell you?

It might begin to tell me what life is, and how it should be lived.

Belle stared at him and then she turned away to gaze through the open French doors at the river. Alice had also turned away and was looking out at the river, and again there was silence in the strange room so crowded with ghostly wicker chairs, the dozens and dozens of pale shadowy shapes drifting with the reflections of the stars off the water, airily floating in the soft yellow glow of the few candles that still burned in memory of other eras, dimly now and low with the late hour.

And it's decided now, thought Joe. The weaving's done and they know what they're going to say or not say to protect the rare fragile thing they cherish.

It was Alice whose small voice finally broke the silence. Little Alice gazing at the river and speaking quietly in the stillness.

How hard we try, she murmured. How hard we try.

***

The two ancient women seemed far away, lost in thought. Abruptly Belle's knitting needles clicked once.

All right, she said. All right, young Joe, you'll have what you want to know. But whatever we tell you now is for Stern's sake. It doesn't concern the war, not this war or any war, because we have nothing to do with such things. So for Stern's sake, then, because we love him and because he's always been like a son to us, and there's no limit to that kind of love.

Belle paused, her hands holding her knitting. Alice sat erect, watching her.

Over the years, said Belle, we've known many people from many lands who have come to tarry here in the course of their restless journeys and be touched by the timelessness of the place. And there's nothing new about that, people have always done that. Alexander the Great stopped here, wondering whether he might recognize something, before setting out to reshape the world. But it was already a tradition by then and long before young Alexander there had been visitors in search of man's past, his nature, come to view the enigmatic pyramids and the enigmatic Sphinx and the great river that gives life in the desert. A Greek word, enigma. A riddle, something obscure. Do you know the origins of the word?

No, said Joe.

It means to speak darkly, murmured Little Alice. To speak allusively. And the root of that is the Greek word for a tale.

Yes, said Belle. Oddly enough, the ancient Greeks had the idea that such was the nature of an account of life. To recite a tale, to speak of life, was to speak darkly because the essentials forever lay just beyond the clear light of the mind, tempting and allusive and beyond. To them, a tale was felt and experienced and its truths were known that way. But a tale could never be reduced through recitation to mere landscapes and seascapes and other topographies of the soul, however mighty, however brilliant the telling of it. Nor could the shadows and the echoes of a tale be removed in the speaking of it.

Belle studied Joe.

By chance, we know the name of their first great teller of tales, don't we? Or at least time and tradition have assigned a name to this blind man who would otherwise be anonymous, who must have sat in the dust of some wayside recounting what he had overheard from the din raised by those who passed him by, or what he imagined he had overheard. And curiously enough, since you mention Smyrna, it was that very same ancient Greek city in Asia Minor where this obscure blind man was said to have been born.

Blind Homer seeing deeply behind his dead eyes, seeing brilliantly in the dust of the wayside through the perpetual shadows of his mind. Homer's blind eyes at play for all time on the dancing glittering seascapes, on the hard unyielding landscapes of the ancient world where others passed him by on their journeys, passed him by while imagining they sailed and strived in the clear white light of their days. When in fact he was the one who saw the journey, not them, because he was blind and they had only lived it.

And that ancient Greek image of blind Homer seeing more than the great heroes of whom he spoke, seeing more than those who have eyes, is an enigma in itself. And as an enigma it whispers to us and hints at things and suggests far more than we might want to acknowledge readily, and it remains an enigma untouched by millennia, no less of a truth today and yet no more resolvable than it was then, three thousand years ago. An enigma as dark and allusive and true, still, as it ever was. And with that we are brought to the code you now look for in Cairo.

Belle paused, gazing at Joe.

Today? This century? Stern? A sudden unexplained trip to Poland just before the war broke out? A priceless breakthrough?

Enigma, she said, is the name of the code machine used by the Germans. Just before the war broke out, a Polish intelligence service acquired one of these machines. Stern learned of its existence through contacts and he knew the machine had to be turned over to the British before Poland fell. Consequently, he went to Poland at once and there were hectic clandestine meetings in Warsaw that finally resulted in the most important meeting of all, held in a secret signals-intelligence post buried underground in the Pyry forest, a concrete bunker referred to as the house in the woods. Stern wasn't at that final meeting himself, but he played some part in arranging it. Just what part I can't tell you, because Alice and I don't know that. In addition to the Poles at the meeting there were three men from London, two of them professional experts in cryptology. The third man from London, an observer rather than a participant, was there in the guise of a professor from Oxford.

Joe was listening intently, deep in thought.

He knits, said Joe suddenly.

Both Belle and Alice stared at him.

What's that? asked Belle, startled.

Joe looked confused, embarrassed. He had spoken as if from a trance. Now he passed his hand over the side of his face, a nervous gesture, as if he were brushing something away. Even as he made the movement with his hand, he realized it was something he had seen both Liffy and Cohen do in the last few days.

Do you know about this? asked Belle.

No, none of it, said Joe quickly. A thought just came to me, that's all. I'm sorry I interrupted you, I didn't mean to.

Who knits? asked Belle, curious all at once.

That third Englishman who was in the bunker, the one who was pretending to be a professor from Oxford. Actually he's a Scotsman.

He is?

Yes.

How do you know that?

The way he speaks.

And he knits?

Yes.

How do you know?

I've met him. He knits and listens and doesn't say much. And he smokes a strong brand of cigarettes, or rather, he inhales them without lighting them. He never lights his cigarettes. They call him Ming on the other side of the Atlantic, the American-Canadian side. He's a chief of some kind, high up, probably at the top, he has that way about him. When I saw him he was traveling with an American and a Canadian who must be equally high up, who go by the names of Big Bill and Little Bill.

How do you know it's the same man?

I don't, I just have this feeling it must be.

Belle stared at Joe, curious and more.

You're beginning to sound like Alice, she said in a quiet respectful voice. And where did you meet this Scotsman called Ming, who knits?

On top of a mesa in Arizona, said Joe. Underground, in the sky. In a kiva.

A what?

The Hopi Indians call them a kiva. It's a sacred underground chamber. At the time I met him I joked with myself that they were the Three Fates come to call on me. One Fate spins the net of life, one measures it, one cuts it. I joked with myself that he was the one who spins, because he knitted and listened in the kiva and didn't say much. He gave me a shawl then that he'd knitted, a black shawl, it was a gift. They came to visit me in Arizona to get me to come to Cairo to find out about Stern.

Before I left the mesa I gave the shawl away, added Joe for no reason. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Please go on.

But Belle didn't go on. She was still staring at him, fascinated.

You gave the shawl away before you left that place? To whom?

A little Indian girl in the village. A little Indian girl.

Yes, what happened?

Nothing really, said Joe. I was sitting on the edge of the mesa one night and the sun was going down and a little girl came out of the shadows and stood beside me. I took her hand and the air was getting chilly so I gave her the shawl and she was there with me for a while. She didn't say anything, neither of us said anything, we were watching the last of the light. After it grew dark she went home and I went to the kiva for a meeting with the tribal elders.

I gave her the shawl because it was cold, he added simply. It was my last night before I left the mesa, as it turned out. I was trying to decide whether to leave or not, whether to come to Cairo.

You were thinking of Stern, said Belle, and of the dying little girl in Smyrna twenty years ago. The one whom Stern. .

Belle stopped. She stared at her lap.

Yes, you're right, said Joe. I thought a lot about Stern that night.

Nervously, Joe passed his hand over the side of his face again.

Please, he said, I'm sorry to have interrupted. I'm terribly anxious to hear the rest of it. What happened at the secret meeting in the woods near Warsaw? The Poles agreed to turn over their Enigma to the British?

Belle looked at him. She leaned back in her chair.

Yes. Eventually the machine reached London and since then the British have been reading everything the Germans tell each other. The secret is truly priceless, and very few men in the British commands know of the existence of Enigma. But Stern knows, and the British have learned that he knows, and how can they possibly allow that to be when Stern lives the kind of life he does? The secret is far too important, the danger far too great. And then there's also the future and Stern's Zionist connections to be considered. Today, British and Zionist interests coincide, but they didn't before the war and they may not again. So with everything taken together, it's a situation the British would feel they would have to bring to an end.

A cry escaped Little Alice.

An end, she whispered, gazing out at the river.

Oh an end, an end. .

***

Joe got to his feet. He walked quickly over to the open French doors and turned, restlessly beginning to pace around the room.

It's clear enough now, he said. Bletchley's been having me trace people down to see what he has to worry about. He didn't have time himself to do the follow-up work so he had me called in to do the excavating for him, to find out which of Stern's friends might know what. A natural precaution for a professional like him. He didn't want to make his move against Stern until he was sure he could finish things once and for all. You can't afford loose ends when the secret's as big as this one, so he had me out gathering the bits and pieces, and then when he felt he had enough of the picture. .

Oh my God, cried Joe, I've been digging Stern's grave. I've been digging into Stern's past so Bletchley can get ahold of it and. .

Joe sank into a chair, appalled at what he had done. He gripped his hands together, trying to get some control over himself, and suddenly he remembered where he was. He looked up, staring wildly at one sister and then the other.

There's danger, he said. There's danger to all the people I've talked to, I can't say it strongly enough.

Obviously Bletchley's been watching me much more closely than I imagined, since that was the whole point of the thing. And there's danger to the two of you, and we've got to. .

Belle shook her head.

No.

But there is, I tell you. If Bletchley suspects. .

No, repeated Belle. We understood this situation before you came here, Joe, that's why we asked how important it was for you to learn the truth about Stern's trip to Poland. We've known all along what the implications of that were, as has Stern. So nothing has changed for him tonight, or for us, but much has changed for you and those you've been in touch with. For unfortunately we never act alone, do we? The colors and threads of the tapestry are too closely interwoven for that, so no matter what we do, we always act for others as well, although generally without their knowledge, and often without even knowing it ourselves. But that's the nature of souls and strivings, isn't it, Joe? None of them is ever separate and every act casts echoes in many places, through many lives.

Joe jumped to his feet.

But the two of you, he began. We must. .

Belle stopped him again. She shook her head.

No, not us, Joe. There's nothing for us to fear. Just look around you and you can see that for yourself.

Alice and I are from another time altogether. We've lived our lives and there's nothing anyone can do to us that matters, surely you understand that. And even if there were, I doubt Bletchley would dare to take a decision like that upon himself. In fact, I'm quite certain he wouldn't.

Belle nodded slowly and went on in her quiet voice.

But even that's not the point. Alice and I aren't really a part of any of this, don't you see that? At the beginning I told you that what we were going to say had only to do with Stern, not with the war, not with this war or any war. And I said we would tell you for his sake, Joe, because we love him and because you wanted to know the truth about him for your own reasons. Your own personal reasons. Isn't that so?

Yes. . yes it is.

And we believe in those reasons of yours, Joe, and so we went on and spoke to you.

Joe had collapsed in a chair. He looked up and found both Belle and Alice watching him.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry but I. .

It's all right, whispered Little Alice suddenly. Don't take so much on yourself, Joe, just let Belle finish.

Joe turned from one of them to the other.

Yes, I'm sorry. Please go on.

Belle nodded.

This may sound strange to you, but the truth is Stern is more important to us than the war, this war or any war. His life means more to us, quite simply, than all the clamor of all the great armies which are ravaging the world for the sake of a noble cause, bless them, and for the sake of an evil cause, damn them. And that's true even though vast numbers of innocent people are suffering and dying, and even though many more will suffer and die before it's over one way or the other, if it ever is.

A sad smile played on Belle's face.

That may sound narrow and selfish to you, Joe, and it may even offend you. But we're not philosophers, Alice and I, and that's the way it is for us. Certainly we would wish better for the world, and we know what a terrible tragedy it is when these bestial nightmares seize men. But the two of us are old, Joe.

We're old, and we've lived too long to embrace the entire earth and everyone on it. These times are a tragedy for man, but we're simply too small and our eyes are too old and dim to gather that grand sweep in. We've never been great empresses of all the somethings, or magnificent queens by the Nile. We're just two sisters who never married and never had children, who began by mopping floors and went on to find roles in an opera of life, who dreamed a few harmless dreams along the way and then ended somewhere, having done the best we could.

And in the end there's nothing more to say than that, nothing except one thing. We love Stern, our son.

We would do anything for him but there's nothing we can do for him now but weep, and so we do that.

With the darkness closing around us, in our hearts, we weep for him and we weep. For him. .

***

Joe sat with his head in his hands, listening to the words of the Sisters and thinking of many things. Of Ahmad and Liffy and David and Anna, of Bletchley and his desert fortress and his bands of anonymous Monks, of Maud and Stern and the quiet little Cairo square where the two of them had once passed evenings together. And of the young Stern years ago in this very room, standing in the open doors beside the great expanse of river and laughing, his eyes shining. . Stern laughing and feasting on the riches of life, giving joy and hope to all who knew him.

Joe felt two tiny hands on his shoulders, gestures by the Sisters in passing, the two of them stopping to touch him for a moment as they moved slowly across the room, Big Belle going stiffly on ahead, Little Alice lingering to speak to him softly.

We're in the habit of ending our evenings with music, she said. It's soothing to us and helps us to sleep, but mostly we do it because it brings back so many good memories of beautiful moments we have known. So please excuse us, Joe, and leave whenever you like. We know you have much that concerns you and much to consider. Young men always do. .

A mysterious blend of sounds then filled the shadowy sunroom in that strange houseboat anchored on the shores of the Nile, Little Alice brightly trilling on her harpsichord as Big Belle sounded the somber notes of her small bassoon, a twinkling haunting strain to their music as Joe gazed out at the river and listened to their elegy under the stars, their allusive recitation at the end of the long night.

— 16-

Two Candles

As soon as Joe left the houseboat he picked out one of the men who was following him. He waved to the man and began walking quickly.

Several buses later and he had also lost the second man. Of course it had to be obvious what he was doing and Bletchley would be getting telephone calls from the surveillance team, but that didn't matter to Joe. He was angry now, too angry to care if it showed as he worked his way deeper into the city, waiting, doubling back, looking for eyes that avoided his, a head that turned away.

Nothing. No one. Where was the third man, or was Bletchley using two-man teams to cover him?

No, not good enough. Using replacements, then? The men telephoning in and having someone take their place ahead of Joe? Waiting for him, keeping the trail alive that way?

No, Bletchley wouldn't have the manpower for that, not with all the demands there had to be on the Monastery these days. Bletchley might be willing to assign more men to him but not until he was sure Joe was really on the run. And Bletchley couldn't know that yet, despite the telephone calls coming in from his surveillance team that morning.

Monks, thought Joe. Bletchley's bloody Monks from the desert. A secret order of initiates with their own rules and their own hierarchy, looking like everybody else but not like anybody else at all. Solitaries who pursued their missions alone, silently conversing with their coreligionists through secret signs. . Even their vows had a monastic quality to them. Obedience and silence, and poverty in a way, chastity in a way. A secret brotherhood with secret goals, the anonymous Monks of war. . The bloody anonymous Monks of war.

So where was the third man then, the leader of the team?

Joe quickened his step and turned corners, angry that somewhere near a man was watching him, hunting him, one of Bletchley's anonymous Monks. And then all at once he saw him. A small man moving awkwardly on the other side of the crowded street.

Joe felt a sudden rush of blood. Now he was a hunter himself and he could strike, wound.

There was a café on the corner. He turned in and went to the back where the telephones were, slipped out the rear entrance of the café and moved behind a truck which was rolling forward to cross the street.

He walked slowly keeping pace with the truck, hidden by it. Only a minute or two had passed since he had first seen the man.

Joe was now across the street from the café, behind the small young man who had joined a group of people waiting at a bus stop. The small man had opened a newspaper and was pretending to read it as he watched the café. Joe moved up behind him and dropped his chin onto the small man's shoulder, rested his chin there, looked down at the newspaper open in front of both of them. The man's eyes flew sideways but no cry escaped him.

Too clever by half, thought Joe. I know they told you to look the enemy straight in the eye, but a lunatic resting his chin on your shoulder is something else.

Joe smiled, still looking down at the newspaper.

Gulbenkian's the name, he said. Do you mind if I sneak a quick glance at the headlines to see what Rommel had his nose into at breakfast this morning?

People at the bus stop turned to stare. The small man recovered and spoke with indignation.

Excuse me? Is there something you wanted?

Too late, little rabbit, thought Joe. Forget what they told you about showing no emotion. Madmen are disturbing to everybody.

Joe smiled more broadly.

All I wanted is the secret to Rommel's success, he said. Does it mention in the papers what he ate for breakfast?

Excuse me, said the young man forcefully, angrily. He had closed his newspaper and was trying to move away from Joe, but Joe held him tightly from behind and moved with him, his chin still on the young man's shoulder. Joe noticed for the first time that he had a limp. The people at the bus stop had formed a circle around them. Joe grinned sideways into the small man's face, only inches away.

Would you believe me, he said, if I told you I've just been up all night listening to Catherine the Great and Cleopatra explain what Rommel puts his nose into first thing in the morning? Maps or herring, most people might think, but it's not like that at all. Just shocking information, as a matter of fact.

The small man had finally pulled away from Joe and now stood facing him, his fists clenched, hatred in his eyes. A large crowd had gathered around them, pushing and pressing forward, trying to find out what was happening. Joe raised his arms and stepped back, shouting at the crowd.

O worthy Cairenes, O noble sons and daughters of the Nile. Today a great liberator moves ever closer to Cairo and oppression may soon be at an end. But what has this agent of British imperialism just whispered in my ear at this very bus stop? What manner of slander has he dared to whisper right here in broad daylight?

Silence fell over the crowds pressing in from every side. Joe waved his arms and shouted.

O worthy Cairenes. Is it right for this secret agent to say the great General Rommel puts his nose into little fellahs first thing every morning? Is it right to say such wicked things about a great generalissimo panzer liberator? Can't the great General Rommel eat what he wants for breakfast?

Angry mutterings ran through the crowd. Hisses. Groans. Again Joe waved his arms and shouted.

And verily I say unto you, a great field-marshal generalissimo panzer savior, our very own Rommel, can eat what he wants for breakfast and British imperialism be damned. And I've said it before and I'll say it again, and I'll keep on saying it no matter what they do to me.

Rommel eats what he wants for breakfast.

Eats what he wants,

Eats what he wants. .

To the hungry masses thronging the crossroads that morning, the visceral appeal of Joe's booming message was immense and immediate. In only a few words Joe had managed to express the first principle of every poor Egyptian's dream for a better future, food, the dream disguised as usual as homage for a savior, the first principle disguised as the first meal of the day, breakfast. So it was no surprise to Joe when several daring voices took up the revolutionary cry out of hunger, and in another moment the entire hungry mob had broken into a thunderous chant secretly demanding an adequate breakfast, hundreds of clenched fists raised against the clear blue morning sky.

We've said it before and we'll say it again.

Rommel eats what he wants for breakfast.

Eats what he wants,

Eats what he wants. .

Joe noticed some policemen forming across the way, getting ready to charge into the crowds before a riot broke out. Already the mobs were surging back and forth in a fierce din of shrieks and sirens and horns. Joe winked at Bletchley's small Monk, who was still trapped in front of him, and slipped away into the crowds. A block up the street, the shouts and horns behind him, Joe suddenly stopped and leaned against a building. All at once he felt dizzy, as if he had been running for hours.

A silly trick, he thought. There would only be more anonymous Monks waiting for him near the hotel, the first telephone call from the surveillance team would have seen to that. So why had he done it? Why had he lost control so quickly?

It was more than exhaustion, he knew that. The night had been filled with many things but the excitement was gone now. For the first time since leaving the houseboat, he felt he could see things clearly. And then he listened to the animal cries behind him and realized what had happened.

Joe choked and groped for the wall, violently beginning to vomit.

As he hurried along he thought of the young man he had just humiliated, a small man with a limp, with a bad leg or no leg, a false one in its place. Had he lost the leg in a tank? There wasn't much room in a tank and small men managed better, so that's where they were often assigned.

The boy hadn't done very well at the bus stop, thought Joe, but of course he was new to the game.

Probably he'd learned about tanks first, then how to walk again, then a quick course with the Monks before he was sent out to walk the streets for Bletchley. . He could imagine the boy's file being sent to Bletchley and Bletchley going through it and seeing his own life laid out in front of him. The boy patched up and out of the hospital and able to walk, an earnest young soldier who still wanted to help, could Bletchley use him? And Bletchley looking at the file and seeing his own life twenty-five years ago, everybody gets his own war. For Bletchley had also wanted to stay on in the army back then, it was just that they hadn't been keeping men with only half a face, no more than one leg would do it today. So Bletchley had known exactly how the boy felt and had taken pity and made him an offer.

God help us, thought Joe, but that's exactly how it works. Sign on as a war hero and lose a leg and if you're lucky you get promoted to streetwalker, simple as that.

And the kid was just doing his job back there, thought Joe. He doesn't know who I am and he's never heard of Stern and he's got nothing to do with any of us, but I put hatred into his eyes, I did that. And he'll pass it along all right but the worst part is I was enjoying myself, I wanted to wound, and laughing I was because I was so clever. . Clever for sure, whipping a crippled kid like that in front of a lot of people.

He stopped, exhausted again, feeling empty and ashamed. It seemed so futile sometimes. All these years and something like that could happen so quickly. It was frightening.

But he didn't have time to think about it. He had to keep moving now. There was just so little time left for anything.

***

The alleys of Old Cairo, as always, looked as if they had been gnawed by rats during the night. Joe was near the hotel. He turned a corner.

A haggard Arab figure suddenly loomed up in front of him, blocking his way, the man's hair long and matted, his filthy cloak a patchwork of faded rags. Desperately the Arab clawed at the air in front of Joe's face, his eyes burning as he ripped at the sunshine. But it was the creature's mouth that horrified Joe, snapping and gnawing at the sunlight. Joe tried to back away but a flaying claw came slashing down and hooked him, the Arab's bony fingers burning into his skin. Joe winced at the shock. The Arab's face was only inches away. . a wild vision of some hermit who had lost his way in the centuries and come staggering in from the desert to haunt the byways of the city. But then all at once the Arab's eyes seemed strangely familiar.

Liffy?

For a moment the frantic burning eyes held Joe, then the claw slipped away and the mysterious gaze was broken.

Me, gasped Liffy. . an asthma attack. . in here.

He pulled Joe sideways into an alley and dragged him along.

Are you all right?

. . better now. . can't go back to the hotel. . Here.

He pulled Joe into a dark room off the alley, separated from the alley by a shabby curtain. There were small bare tables in the room and a counter with bottles in a row, stacked chairs, a mirror behind the counter. An Egyptian faced the mirror, his back turned. The floor glistened from water splashed around to lay the dust.

The Egyptian behind the counter glanced into the mirror to see them and went on wiping glasses. The mirror was old and cracked and deeply grained with time, its edges blackened in the gloom. Joe guessed the place was some kind of cheap bar used by laborers, probably mostly at night, empty now save for its owner. Liffy wheezed and sputtered and ordered coffee.

Joe found himself gazing into the mirror, fascinated by the odd distortions floating in its hazy interiors. A peculiar thought flashed through his mind. What if Stern were to sit with him looking into that mirror?. .

Liffy dragged him along to a table at the back, away from the shabby curtain separating the room from the alley. Liffy was still pale and gasping for breath. Joe held his arm.

Are you all right? Can I do anything?

Liffy closed his eyes, chewing at the air.

. . better now. . passing. . an attack.

Joe glanced over his shoulder at the counter, where the owner of the bar was putting a tiny metal pot to boil, removing it when the froth bubbled up and letting the froth subside before returning it to the flame, boiling the mixture of coffee and sugar three times in all. The color was coming back into Liffy's face.

Finally he opened his eyes and stared at Joe.

Better?

Yes, whispered Liffy. I was beginning to think you were never going to show up.

What's this costume you're wearing?

Nothing, just something left over from last night. I was doing a job for the Waterboys and didn't have time to change. Wait.

Joe heard the movement behind him. The owner brought over the two little cups of coffee and placed them on the table, a disheveled man with puffy eyes. As soon as he had left them, Liffy leaned forward.

I was afraid I'd missed you. Something's happened.

What?

Ahmad, whispered Liffy. I came to see you late last night when I finished work. I didn't think you'd be all night and I was going to wait in your room, but I never got there. Ahmad wasn't at his desk when I walked in and there was something wrong, I could feel it. There didn't seem to be anybody there.

Joe gripped his hands together under the table.

You looked around?

Not inside, I didn't like it. Then I thought he might be out back in the courtyard and I went around and climbed up to look in.

Liffy's hands were trembling. He lowered his eyes. Joe stared.

Ahmad, whispered Liffy. He was lying there all crumpled up. It looked as if he had fallen off the roof. His spyglass was still in his hand and his trombone was beside him.

A spasm jerked in Joe's stomach.

Dead?

He was lying the wrong way. His legs and his head were all twisted around but his straw hat wasn't there.

I didn't stay, I left and came to wait for you. I've been waiting for hours, I didn't go back. I have no idea what's going on there.

What was he wearing, Liffy?

His faded lavender nightshirt. That old thing he always wears when he's on duty.

Liffy hung his head. He pulled his hands off the table and hid them, his voice trembling.

I know what you're thinking. Ahmad never went up there without putting on his suit, it was his special place after all. And where was his hat, Joe? What happened to his old straw hat?

Liffy's voice cracked. He clutched Joe's arm, begging him, imploring him.

He went up there on a whim? Just decided to do it and leaned out too far. . lost his balance?

Joe closed his hand over Liffy's.

An accident? pleaded Liffy in desperation.

No, said Joe, squeezing Liffy's hand more tightly.

No? Liffy almost shrieked. Just this one time? No?

Joe gripped Liffy's shoulder. Tears were streaming down Liffy's face.

He was pushed? shrieked Liffy in a whisper. A harmless man like Ahmad? But what's the sense of that, Joe? What's the sense of it?

Joe was on his feet. He dropped some coins on the table.

There's no time, I have to leave.

Liffy's head jerked back.

Where are you going?

I have to see someone.

Who?

There was terror in Liffy's eyes.

Who? Say it. I know anyway.

David, whispered Joe.

Liffy leapt to his feet.

I'm going with you, then. I am.

You shouldn't, Liffy, not now. It would be better if you didn't.

Better? David?. . Better?

All right but we have to hurry, whispered Joe, and started down the room toward the shabby curtain separating them from the alley, a sudden image catching Joe's eye as they rushed past the mirror, the vision of a ghostlike figure drifting through the half-light behind him, wild hair streaming and a billowing cloak and a tormented face glowing in the dimness. . Liffy in flight through time. The unworldly figure of Liffy whirling through one of the last of his mysterious incarnations. .

***

The door to Cohen's Optiks was ajar. A bell tinkled when Joe pushed it open. There was no one in the shop.

Another door, half open, led to the workshop in the back where Joe had talked to Cohen. The workshop was also empty, the door at the rear of the workshop closed. Joe knocked, waited, turned the handle.

It was a storeroom, the place where Anna had listened to Joe's conversation with her brother. There were boxes and dusty trays, discarded grinding wheels, a clock on the wall which no longer worked.

Anna sat on a box, staring at the floor. She looked up, bewildered.

I only just heard. . Were you there?

She stared at Joe blankly and he shook his head. She stared at Liffy.

You weren't there?. . Wasn't anybody with him?

No, said Joe softly. What happened?

Oh. Oh a lorry struck him. The police just told me. He was crossing a street. They said it was nobody's fault.

Her face was empty. She stared at the floor. Joe heard a muffled cry beside him and all at once Liffy was on his knees beside Anna, gathering her up in his arms, the two of them rocking back and forth and wailing and crying out. . crying and crying.

Joe looked at the motionless clock on the wall and felt himself sinking. He pressed his eyes shut, too weak to stand, his heart crushed by the eternal sound of their weeping.

***

The tiny Greek church they had sought for refuge was deserted save for the two of them, the floor of the nave bare as was the custom, the few high-backed wooden chairs pushed back against the walls like thrones at a convocation of wary medieval kings. Shouts from playing children pierced the cool darkness.

Liffy sat on his throne with his hands in his lap, the life drained out of him since they had left Anna. Beside him Joe moved uneasily on his throne, thinking how stark the tiny church was without its priest and worshipers, its canticles and incense, with only vanished chants to fill the shadows. Liffy stirred, whispered.

Joe? What are you going to do now?

Well I'm going to try to see Stern tonight, one way or another, but in the meantime I need a sanctuary. In another era this little cave would have been fine, but the concept's no longer honored, sadly. Seems holy places have a way of getting lost over time, don't they, so you always have to be seeking new ones. .

Can you think of a place, Liffy?

A refuge, you mean?

Yes.

Liffy was gazing up at the low dome, at the fresco there depicting the austere figure of Christ as Pantokrator, the Paraclete or Intercessor, the stylized face expressionless, the enormous powerful eyes staring down at them.

You could try old Menelik's mausoleum, whispered Liffy. That would probably be as safe as anywhere.

It might be at that, thought Joe.

But Ahmad kept his forgery equipment there, he whispered. Won't Bletchley think of that?

Liffy stirred.

There's no reason for him to bother with it. There's nothing but a small printing press which runs by hand, so old and battered no one but Ahmad could ever work it. I imagine they'd just leave the place locked and forget about it. It doesn't mean anything to any of them.

Seems likely, thought Joe.

But how could I get in then?

I have a key, murmured Liffy.

You do?

Yes. I had a duplicate made of Ahmad's once. He used to let me borrow his and I was always afraid of losing it.

You used to go there by yourself, you mean?

Sometimes, to get away from everything. Ahmad took pity on me and let me use it. I used to go there to read.

Joe looked at him, surprised.

What did you read down there?

Buber, mostly. It was very quiet and I could feel at peace.

Joe nodded. I've been thinking about the Waterboys, he whispered, wondering if they could help in some way.

Liffy moved on his throne, still gazing up at the dome.

Why them?

Because I doubt they know anything about this, security being what it is. And because there'd have to be some sense of rivalry between them and the Monastery, human nature being what it is. And also because Stern's done work for them in the past, which means they'd have a high opinion of him. And because Maud works there. I know she only does translations, but that still means they'd trust her. Is there any officer there you know particularly well?

The Major, murmured Liffy. He'd be the one to contact. We get along and I think he reports directly to the Colonel, Bletchley's equivalent. In fact I think he's the Colonel's personal assistant. I can give you his private phone number and you could pretend you were me, asking for an emergency meeting. I've never had to set one up in the clear over the phone, but you could do it. We have the arrangement.

I couldn't imitate your voice, whispered Joe.

You wouldn't have to. Whenever I call him I use a different voice. It's a kind of game between the two of us.

Joe nodded. Liffy's gaze was still fixed on the fresco overhead.

Joe? What will you do if Menelik's crypt doesn't work out? If you have to find another place to hide?

Where will you go?

I've been thinking about it and I suppose I might have to try the houseboat. The Sisters would take me in all right, the trouble is Bletchley would think of it. I know no harm will come to them, I'm sure they're right about that, Bletchley wouldn't dare. But the houseboat just sits there on the water and if Bletchley's men came looking, well, they'd find me soon enough.

And so?

And so I'll just have to hope old Menelik can keep me hidden down there in his five thousand years of murky history.

Liffy looked at him.

I know, whispered Joe, it's a hope that doesn't make much sense. History doesn't hide you, just the opposite. Gives away your hiding place, if anything. But what other hope is there?

Liffy didn't answer.

And when they question you, added Joe, remember, just tell them the truth. You know I talked a lot with Ahmad, and that I talked with David once, and that I went to see the Sisters last night. But you don't know anyone else I might have seen and you don't know what the Sisters might have told me, and that's the truth. You don't know, Liffy, that's all. It's not your affair. This business is between Stern and me, and Stern and me and Bletchley, and that's the way it's been from the beginning. So just tell them the truth and Bletchley's not going to give you any trouble when he understands how things are. There's nothing wrong with Bletchley, it's just that he's got his own job to do and we're sitting in different places. So just the truth, Liffy, and it'll be all right.

Liffy nodded, distracted. He opened a little leather pouch which was hanging from his neck and placed a key in Joe's hand.

Menelik's crypt?

Yes.

Liffy stared at Joe, then whispered again.

There's one thing I have to know. Is Stern. . did it turn out to be. . is it all right? Did he know in the end, Joe, did he have it right? You have to tell me the truth for Ahmad's sake, for David's. . ours.

Joe smiled.

We never doubted that, Liffy. Deep inside, neither one of us ever doubted that. Stern's on the only side there is, the right side. Life. Hope. The right side. And we knew that, Liffy, we knew it. Do you remember what you told me about Stern the first time you ever mentioned him? How the two of you used to go to poor Arab bars late at night and just sit and talk about nothing, and in particular, never about the war? And you said he liked your imitations, they made him laugh. And you said that meant a great deal to you, bringing laughter to a man like Stern, knowing the life he's had. It made you happy, you said. Do you remember?

Yes.

And then you said something else, Liffy. Do you remember?

Yes. I said it was an unusual kind of laughter. I said it was gentle, and I said his eyes were gentle.

That's right, said Joe, and so they are. And so there's nothing to be afraid about now because it's going to be all right.

Joe smiled. Liffy looked at him. And, of course, there was that last question lingering between the two of them, when would they meet again, and where? But they understood each other too well to bother with that, and instead they made their final arrangements and sat a few minutes in silence, gazing around the tiny church with its little dome and its darkened fresco of the Paraclete, the Intercessor, sharing the coolness and the quiet of the place, a moment of calm for both of them.

Finally, reluctantly, Joe squeezed Liffy's arm and slipped off his throne.

I have to be going now, he whispered.

Liffy drifted along with him toward the door. There was a small stand for prayer candles and Liffy stopped to light two of them, one for Ahmad and one for David, and they stood looking down at the candles before they embraced. And that was where they parted and where Joe left him, a frail man in a tattered cloak with his matted hair streaming around his face, a sorrowing hermit from the wilderness crouched over the flickering candles of memory, of love.

Liffy silently weeping for Ahmad and David in the somber light of that little cave. Liffy once more the haunted prophet of old, a frail man stricken with the terrible knowledge of the names of things. . his ancient dusty face running with tears that glistened like tiny rivers come to water the desert.

— 17-

Mementos

The vast bands of homeless pilgrims roaming the outer circles of the Irrigation Works seemed to keep no regular hours.

They were also all said to be in search of water. Or at least that was what they claimed whenever they were stopped and asked what they were doing, those milling bands of Slavs and Rumanians and Danes and Greeks, Belgians and Armenians and Dutch, some determined and some merely dazed, others wild-eyed or tame by turns as they chaotically croaked their messages and banged their long staves on the floor, pilgrims far from home swaying as stalks of grain in the wind, those confusing groups of Maltese and Czechs and French and Norwegians, Cypriots and Hungarians and Poles, the many stateless wanderers and the occasional homespun Albanian.

According to Liffy, they kept no regular hours in the outer offices of the Irrigation Works. But in the inner offices where Maud worked, the practice was to take an hour or two off in the afternoon, to escape the heat, before returning to work into the evening.

Thus, after taking many precautions, Joe was sitting in the living room of Maud's small apartment when the front door opened that afternoon. He heard her put down some packages and walk along the corridor, quietly singing to herself. The room where Joe sat was shuttered against the sun and the heat.

Maud stepped into the room and stopped singing. She stared.

She was smaller than he remembered, close up like this. She put her hand to her mouth, startled, wonder and astonishment playing on her face. Joe took a step forward and reached out.

It's me, Maudie. I didn't mean to scare you.

She stared, her hand at her mouth. A familiar smile came to the corners of her eyes.

Joe? It's you? It's really you?

He took another step, reaching for her hands, her green eyes brighter than he remembered. Sparkling, stunning.

I didn't want to just turn up, Maudie, but I couldn't write and there was no other way to let you know.

He smiled more broadly.

It is a surprise, isn't it. Twenty years later and here in Cairo, whoever would have thought it?

She watched him, intensely curious. He glanced around the room in his embarrassment.

It's nice, it's a nice place you have. How are you? You look fine.

She was still staring at him. At last she found some words.

But how?. . why?. . what are you doing here?

Joe nodded, smiling.

I know, it's strange, you just walking in like this and me just sitting here. It's as if we'd seen each other last month or last winter or something. How are you? You look fine.

Suddenly she laughed. He remembered her laughter but not the astonishing richness of it.

I'm fine, but what are you doing here, Joe? Are you in the army? I thought you were still in the States somewhere. You've hurt your ear. Here, let me look at you.

She pulled away and studied him, still holding his hands. She laughed and wrinkled her nose, a beautiful little movement that surprised him at first, but then he remembered that too. She used to do it when something unexpected pleased her. It was just that he hadn't seen it in such a long time.

He looked away, embarrassed. She was still studying him.

Would you know me, Maudie?

Your eyes, I'd know your eyes anywhere but I don't think I'd have recognized you on the street. Your face has changed and you have a leaner look, although you were always thin. Joe laughed.

It's the lines, he said, they cut deeper now. But you look just the same. I'd recognize you anywhere.

Oh no, she said, freeing one of her hands and pushing back her hair. I've changed completely. . But heavens, oh my, has it really been twenty years? It doesn't seem that long, I don't feel that old. . You look very distinguished though. Age becomes you.

Distinguished? Dressed like this?

Your face. I didn't notice what you were wearing.

She laughed.

Your clothes never did fit you, you know. Remember that funny old uniform you used to wear in Jerusalem? The one that had belonged to that ancient Franciscan priest, that Irish friend of yours who'd been in the Crimean War?

Yes, the baking priest. He'd worn it at Balaklava.

That's right. The one who survived the Charge of the Light Brigade because he was drunk. His horse was shot out from under him and he was too drunk to keep up on foot, so they gave him a medal for heroism because he lived. Then afterward he became a priest and was sent to Jerusalem and put in charge of the bakery in the Franciscan enclave in the Old City. And he'd been baking bread ever since, always in the four shapes of the Cross and Ireland and the Crimea and the Old City, the four concerns of his life, as he said. That uniform he gave you, that was too big for you too.

Joe nodded, smiling.

Well I guess I haven't changed all that much then, I'm still wearing hand-me-downs. This suit belongs to an Armenian dealer in Coptic artifacts, in transit, or at least that's what my papers claim he is.

The Armenians, she said abruptly, were the first people to embrace Christianity as a people. Fourth century.

Joe looked at her in surprise.

That's an obscure piece of information. How did you know that?

You told me.

Oh.

They gazed at each other.

Would you like something to drink?

That would be grand.

A glass of lemonade? I have some made.

That would be lovely.

But she didn't move. They were standing a little apart and she went on staring at him, fascinated.

No, I don't think I would have recognized you on the street, not unless I'd looked into your eyes. The rest of you is different. There's a leanness to your face that changes your whole expression.

You look like someone who's been living in the desert, she added in a quiet voice Joe smiled.

Well I guess that's only right because that's what I've been doing. Not here, over in Arizona. I finally found an Indian tribe that would take me in.

You used to say you'd do that someday.

I know I did. And I got the idea originally from hearing about your Indian grandmother. Remember how I used to ask questions about her all the time?. . Ah Maudie, where did the years go? Where did they ever go?

I don't know. But here you are again all of a sudden, and you're still asking questions the way you always did. You were always looking for answers then.

I was young, Maudie.

Yes, we both were. And you could never get enough of anything, you wanted things so much. And I suppose I did too, and maybe that's what was wrong with it. Both of us so young and wanting things so much, too much, I don't know. Are you still like that, always looking for answers?

In a way, I imagine. But in a way it's also different.

Yes, I would have guessed that. And there's a calmness you didn't have before and you're leaner, harder.

In a good way, I mean, inside. The desert must have done that for you.

Probably.

She looked down at her hands, her face thoughtful.

You've been tending your soul, haven't you? You used to talk about doing that and that's what you've done. You went away and did it.

I suppose.

Yes, it shows. It shows in your eyes and your face and I guess we all do that in our way, and I guess that's where the years go. . Oh my, but we were young then. We were, Joe, so very young, and we didn't know much of anything. . Oh my. We were children playing in the fields of the Lord and there was never a day or a night for us, never darkness or light, just love and the joy of being together and wanting to be together. .

She stared at the floor.

It was beautiful, she whispered. . It didn't last, but it was beautiful Joe moved closer. He put his arm around her shoulders.

I brought some pictures, Maudie, some photographs of Bernini. I took them before I left the States. He's playing baseball, wearing what they wear when they do that. He's called a catcher. Can you imagine your son doing that, just like any American boy? He was very excited when I told him I was going to see you.

He sends you his love. He also sent this.

Joe took a bracelet from his pocket, a thin gold-colored band without any markings on it, made from some cheap metal.

He picked it out himself, said Joe. I asked if I could help him choose something but he said this was what he wanted. He said he knew you'd like it because it's simple, and you like simple things. And then he talked a lot about the little house by the sea in Piraeus, where you used to live. He has such a good memory for some things. And he insisted on paying for the bracelet out of a little money he'd earned. He says he's already learned enough to get paid for it sometimes. Of course it must be something they do at the school to encourage them, paying them a little now and then, but he is doing well, Maudie. I went to the workshop and watched them repairing watches and he's getting on with it all right. It's not going to make the least bit of difference, the things he can't do, they're not going to hold him up at all. In other ways he's just marvelous, the way he thinks is just marvelous. Oh he's a jewel, little Bernini is.

Maud took the bracelet and held it, gazing down at it. She wondered whether Joe knew that Stern had once given her a bracelet like that in Piraeus, although one made of gold. And of course Bernini had remembered that other bracelet, and now with this simple gift he was saying to her that he too. . But of course Joe must have known all of that. . and understood it.

Joe felt a quiver pass through her shoulders as he held her. All at once she seemed smaller than ever to him, her shoulders thinner than he remembered.

Here now, Maudie, what's this you're doing?

Tears were welling up in her eyes. She shook her head, as if to send the feeling away.

I get so frightened sometimes, she whispered. He's not little anymore, not just a child, and sometimes I get so frightened when I think about it. The world's not made for people like him, it's not. It's hard enough to get by when you start with all the regular things. .

Joe held her tightly. She was crying and shaking her head, unable to shake herself free from the echoes she didn't want to hear.

Ah Maudie, I know how you feel and it's right for you to feel that way, you're his mother and nothing else would be right. But it's also true that people succeed in all kinds of ways. It's just breathtaking how they do it and Bernini's a fine lad, that's all, and he's going to do just fine. It doesn't matter that he can't read and write the way others can, or that he doesn't have a head for figures particularly. All the one means is that he'll never be an accountant hidden away in the back of some dusty office. And as for the other, well Homer was blind and he couldn't read or write, but he still saw everything there was to see and read the world much better than most of us. What I mean is, Bernini has other gifts and it's a rich world he has, just teeming with beauty. And it's going to be a rich life he finds for himself, I know it.

Maud had stopped her tears. Suddenly she looked up and smiled.

My God you're beautiful, thought Joe. Just trying so hard to take in all of life and make the best of it, and never hiding to be safe. It's the difficult way but it's also where the riches are, God bless.

She raised her hand. Joe smiled.

In the old days, he thought, you would have put your finger on my nose when you said whatever it is you're going to say. It's your way of getting close to people, the best thing God ever made.

Maud dropped her hand self-consciously. She looked confused.

The lemonade, she said. What happened to the lemonade?

I don't believe we've had the pleasure yet.

She laughed.

Poor Joe. You come to visit on a hot afternoon and you don't even get something cool to drink. I'm sorry, I'll just be a minute.

***

While she was gone he wandered around the room looking at her little treasures, the simple things that spoke of years of trying to find a place. Mementos he remembered from Jerusalem and Jericho, even a seashell from a tiny oasis on the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba. And mementos from Smyrna and Istanbul and Crete and the islands and Attica, and now from Cairo, from Egypt.

Once more, then, Joe found his thoughts slipping back through the years. To Jerusalem where they had met, and to Jericho where they had gone in the autumn when the nights had turned cold, because it was always summer in Jericho and Maud was going to have their child. A little house with flowers around it and lemon trees not far from the Jordan, a heady lemon scent near the river of promise and hope.

But it hadn't worked out for them in Jericho. Joe had been away running guns for a mythical man named Stern and Maud had grown desperate, afraid that one day he might not return and love would be taken from her again, as it always had been before. Joe too young to understand her fears and Maud too young to explain them, the two of them wrenched apart because they loved each other so deeply, until finally Maud in her anguish had abandoned Joe without even leaving a note, because words were too painful for what was being lost. . Maud overwhelmed with sadness as she trudged up the path away from the little house and its flowers, carrying the infant son she had named Bernini in the secret hope that someday he at least might build beautiful fountains and stairways in life. . Bernini at least.

And so to Smyrna, and to the islands and Istanbul and Greece, more restless years of uncertainty as her wanderings stretched on and on and seemed as if they would never end. Stern entering her life then through one of those mysterious turnings of fate so common in the ancient lands of the Eastern Mediterranean where everyone seemed to meet sooner or later, perhaps because they were all secret wanderers and it was a place for that, for seeking.

Stern and Maud meeting for the first time on a bleak afternoon beside the Bosporus where Maud had gone to stare at the swirling waters, feeling too weak to go on, too tired to pick herself up and try again, too beaten and alone for that. The darkness falling and a stranger coming out of the rain who was thinking exactly what she was thinking, who came up to the railing beside her and began talking quietly about suicide, speaking simply because he understood so well that sad solution, that haunting companion of the lonely. . So Stern had saved her life that afternoon and eventually Maud had been able to try again.

Once more there had been a little house with flowers, by the sea this time in Piraeus, where she and Bernini were happy together and Stern had come to visit.

And those had been the best years really, the happiest years for Maud when she looked back. Bernini still young enough so it didn't matter if he wasn't quite like other children, but then all too quickly that had ended. . War was coming.

Stern there to help as always, finding a job for Maud in Cairo and suggesting a school for Bernini in America, now that he was too old to sit daydreaming by the sea. A special school where Bernini could live and learn a trade, so that someday he would be able to support himself and make his way, in America where it was safe. Stern offering to pay for the school since Maud didn't have the money.

In the end she had agreed because it was the best thing for Bernini. And she had always thanked Stern, even though she had known from the beginning that the money must really have come from Joe. Because Stern didn't have money like that, despite what he told her, and Joe was the kind of man who would find it. Joe trying to make it easier for her by sending the money to Stern, and asking Stern to make the offer in his place. . And thus Bernini had come to have two fathers who cared for him, two men whose lives had been inextricably entwined with Maud's through the years. .

Echoes, thought Joe. Echoes of the sun and the sand and the sea and a glorious spring on the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba. . echoes from the brief span of a moon above the Sinai so long ago. .

Joe held the seashell to his ear, listening and listening, then replaced Maud's little treasure.

***

She was distracted when she came back from the kitchen. She sat down beside him and pushed back her hair.

What is it? she asked suddenly, looking startled.

Joe smiled.

Nothing.

Did I do something strange?

Joe laughed.

Not that I know of.

Oh the lemonade, she said. I forgot the lemonade. I must have been thinking of something else and had a glass of water and just turned around and come back. How silly of me. It's dreadful how my mind wanders.

Nonsense. What were you thinking about?

Maud's face was serious.

Bernini. What you said about him. I understand that, you know.

Of course you do, Maudie. Sometimes it seems to me that everybody always understands everything. It makes sense, after all, when you think of it, because we do have all of the past and all of the future within us, so what happens is that we just get reminded of things in life we already know, and remind others in turn. Stern taught me that, and you did, and then I learned a little more about it sitting in the desert for seven years. The sounds in a desert are small and you have to listen ever so softly to hear the whispers of the real things, even though they're already inside you.

Joe? I know Bernini's special and it's only sometimes that I feel confused, and right now the confusion has more to do with seeing you.

Yes, there are just so many feelings, aren't there, Maudie. What we had and what we lost, and what we've done since then and haven't done. . It's confusing, I know, and it's sad.

But now there's something else, she said quietly. You don't have to tell me why you're here. No one has said anything but it has to be because of Stern, it can't be anything else. And I suppose you can't talk about it and frankly I don't want to hear about it anyway. I know what Stern has meant to me and I'll always know, and nothing can change that. . But Joe? Just tell me one thing.

She turned away and shook her head. The tears had begun to well up in her eyes.

Oh what does it matter, you don't even have to tell me that. I already know the answer.

No, Maudie, go ahead and ask it anyway. It's better to say some things outright and not just hint at them, even when we know the answers.

She stared at the floor.

All right. . Last night I saw Stern. We went out to the desert and we sat up all night near the pyramids, and he talked as if it were all over and he even said it was the last night of his life. I tried to tell him we don't know things like that, but he said he knew it anyway, and then at dawn he took a photograph of me out there with my camera, so I'd have. . But Joe, is it true? Is it all over for Stern?

Joe nodded. . Yes.

You mean he's finished, just like that, and there's no way to. . no chance at all?

Not with what's happened. No.

Oh, I didn't want to believe him. It's so hard to imagine with someone like Stern who has always been there and always managed to come back. Somehow you just never think. .

Joe took her hands.

But how does he know? she asked. How does he know that?

I guess it's just always been that way with Stern. There's no explanation for it. He just knows things, that's all.

Oh my, I feel lost. .

Maudie, try to hear me, I need your help. I want to see him and there's no time. I came all this way to see him and find out about him and there's almost no time left, so can you help me do that? It may mean trouble with the people you work for, because of the Monks, serious trouble even. But can you do that for me anyway, for Stern's sake, for all of us?

Maud hung her head. Her voice was far away.

. . I can get a message to him.

Where is he now? Do you know?

Maud turned and gazed at the shuttered window. Thin lines of sunlight framed its solid darkness.

Out there, she whispered. Out there dressed as a beggar in some nameless city where he's always been.

He tried so hard to find his holy place and he never did, but he never stopped believing in it, Joe, and something terrible has happened now. He's out there alone and he thinks he's failed. He sees his life as so many ruins around him and he thinks it's come to nothing, and all the pain and suffering were for nothing.

He's wearing a beggar's rags and he's not afraid, but he's lonely and defeated and he shouldn't feel that way. . Oh Joe. Oh my.

Maud pushed away her tears.

Last night he said so many things he'd never said before. Some of them I already knew without him having to tell me, but some of them I didn't. And now he's out there thinking he's failed and there was nothing I could do to convince him it isn't so. I felt completely helpless. Stern, of all people. Stern. He's done so much for others and now he feels nothing means anything to him. .

Oh Joe, make him see. Let him see. Don't let him die feeling this way. .

Maud jumped to her feet.

Wait, I'll get the lemonade. The little things have to go on. . they have to, otherwise it's too much.

***

After he had left, Maud sat looking at the thin gold-colored bracelet on her wrist, turning it around and around and thinking how strange life was, how contradictory. For the thin bracelet reminded her of the trade Bernini was learning, repairing watches, and the time told by watches was something Bernini didn't even believe in, dwelling as he did in another kind of time where the hour of the day was only to be found in one's heart.

And she wondered as well what this gift from her son might mean now, coming when it did. Could it be that this simple little band was to be the final memento of all the many worlds she had known with Stern, with Joe?

Maud alone in the half-light turning the little bracelet and pondering the meaning of love in its long ago beginnings. . A miracle to be cherished above all others. . to be found only to be lost and lost again through the years.

— 18-

Crypt/Mirror

Old Menelik's spacious crypt from antiquity, hidden away beneath a public garden beside the Nile.

A secret and soundless vault unearthed by the great Egyptologist early in the course of his brilliant career of anonymous discovery in the nineteenth century. Later chosen by the former slave and graffiti expert as his retirement home, when he finally decided to forsake sunlight altogether and go underground once and for all, permanently on principle.

In the middle of the crypt the massive stone sarcophagus that had once belonged to Cheops' mother, its roomy cork-lined interior having served for many years as old Menelik's cozy bedroom in retirement, after he had abandoned the elegant pharaonic society he had sought in his youth and had set himself up on a heap of pillows in the evening of life, to sip tea in his sarcophagus and nibble an occasional madeleine in the comforting stillness, to ruminate and recall stray words from over the years. A soothing womb of refuge that had quite naturally evolved into old Menelik's tomb in the end, its enormous stone lid now firmly lowered into place for what might well be eternity.

On the far side of the crypt a small manual printing press, until recently the clandestine work corner of the melancholy Ahmad, former master forger and reigning night clerk of an obscure way station known as the Hotel Babylon, a run-down lodging whose Hanging Gardens had already been in an advanced state of decay at least as far back as the turn of the century, when its sordid rooms had always been available for balmy interludes in the unhurried darkness of Old Cairo, rentable by the half-hour without reservations on anyone's part.

Save for the printing press, the crypt exactly the same as it had been in old Menelik's day. In another corner a handsome harpsichord which had once been played by Little Alice.

Here and there clusters of stately Victorian garden furniture, its paint flaking away, originally Sherwood Forest green. The furniture consisting entirely of sturdy park benches, monstrously heavy and all but immovable due to the solid cast-iron slats binding their undersides in unbending Victorian decorum.

These park benches arranged so visitors could circulate with ease when Menelik had held his open tomb every Sunday, as he used to say, sitting upright and alert in his huge stone bed while entertaining friends at his famous weekly musicales.

Everywhere on the walls of the crypt the exquisite hieroglyphs and pharaonic wall paintings that testified to old Menelik's unparalleled success as a social figure in other ages.

On the park bench next to Joe lay the book Liffy had been in the habit of reading in the crypt on quiet afternoons. Buber, thought Joe. A wonderful old crank who actually believes man and God should talk together. No wonder Liffy used to like to slip away from the mayhem aboveground and have a little quiet discussion down here, why not? Never was much good for his people, that mayhem up there.

Joe looked down at the thick wad of forged foreign currency he was holding in his hand. He had picked up the money at random from the neat piles stacked along the walls of the vault, crisp counterfeit bills left over from Ahmad's last run On the printing press, uncounted sums of Bulgarian leva and Rumanian bani and Turkish paras, all of it apparently worth something somewhere.

The Balkans, thought Joe. Always was a confusing concept, as Alice says, and its money is just as confusing as the rest of it. What's one to make of leva and bani in the end? Or for that matter, of paras above all?

He studied the money, aware that something about it wasn't quite right.

Coins, he thought all at once. In real Balkan life this money was never issued in anything but coins, but here's Ahmad turning it out as paper money. Surely the old poet must have had a strong sense of private reality to be able to forge coins as bills, even if they are Balkan bills.

Joe stuffed the money into his pocket and moved uncomfortably around on the hard park bench, his attention drawn to the crude sign hanging over the iron door at the entrance to the crypt.

THE PANORAMA HAS MOVED.

It was an old sign clumsily painted, a slab of whitewashed wood with uneven block letters in green, badly faded by years of exposure to powerful sunlight. Where had the sign come from and why had old Menelik seen fit to hang it over the door of his retirement home? What memories had it held for the greatest archeologist and subterranean graffiti specialist of the nineteenth century?

Joe frowned.

There's something sad about that sign, he thought. Something ciphered too, I would imagine. Surely it's no mere slip of stray sentiment adrift in the gloom, considering what this place has meant to so many people. Of course things would tend to be cryptic in a crypt, that's only to be expected. But all the same I'll wager that sign has a hidden message to it. It would have to down here in old Menelik's mausoleum of stoned coincidences, as Ahmad used to call it, quoting his father who had lapsed into a heavy use of hashish toward the end.

THE PANORAMA HAS MOVED.

Mysterious graffiti, thought Joe, and what might its origins be? Pharaonic? Nilotic? A Biblical writing on the wall after the manner of mene, mene, tekel, upharsin?

Who knows? thought Joe. Best to ask Stern about it when he shows up. When in doubt about a sign faded by sunlight deep in a crypt underground, best to ask a master cryptographer what's really going on, as some old Cairo saying must have it.

Joe turned uneasily. A sound seemed to have come from the corner where the small printing press stood

. . metal rubbing lightly against metal. . a soft crunching noise.

Impossible, he thought, gripping the arm of his park bench. Yet a part of the machinery in the corner seemed to be moving, almost as if the manual press were preparing to crank through a cycle.

My God, he thought, of course that's impossible, and steady there, I can't go losing my bloody mind now. These antique shadows are playing tricks on me

But then he jumped, startled, unable to believe it. The small hand-driven printing press was actually beginning to turn over. Meshed parts were moving methodically in some kind of inscrutable order, up and down and sideways, backward and around and in. There was a loud groan and then the machine clattered noisily, cranking out a slip of paper. The paper fluttered and floated down to the floor.

Message from the past, thought Joe, leaping to his feet and rushing over to snatch up the slip of paper. .

a Greek banknote newly printed. One hundred drachmas. The ink was still wet.

Joe whirled where he stood, taking in the crypt at a glance. The thick iron door was still solidly locked, the massive stone lid was still on the sarcophagus and as so often in life, everything seemed still the same when it wasn't.

THE PANORAMA HAS MOVED.

Joe spun around, peering in every direction. Oh help, he shouted silently, turning over the strange banknote in his hand only to find there was a different currency printed on its other side. . Albanian money. Ten thousand leks.

Ha, he thought. Inflation in the Balkans as usual and so much for classical Greek values too. They've gone to the Albanians like everything else we once admired. Just nothing's worth what it used to be and that's a fact in this world. .

Joe jumped, became rigid. Deep laughter was booming through the crypt, great surges of rolling laughter.

A hand was reaching out of a hole in the wall behind the press, stealthily removing block after block of stone and widening the hole, methodically pushing the blocks aside and stacking them up on the floor.

After a moment a ghostly head emerged from the blackness, an apparition in the age-old rags of a mummy. Without warning the ghostly head jerked back to reveal a dusty masklike face staring directly up at Joe, fierce dark eyes glittering in the dimness, beneath them the third eye of a gun barrel pointed at Joe's head.

Joe's mouth fell open. The revolver disappeared. The ghostly figure crawled forward and then all at once there was Stern standing in front of him, laughing and dusting off his tattered Arab cloak, laughing and laughing and shaking his great dark head.

. . sorry about that, Joe. I didn't mean to scare you.

Joe hopped up and down.

How's that, Stern? Didn't mean to, you say? Well do you always go around cranking off counterfeit money when you break into a tomb? Just in case you have to pay your way in eternity?

. . a mistake, said Stern, throwing back his head, laughing. . I was groping around and my hand happened to fall on the printing press handle.

Happened to fall, you say? Well after seven years in the desert I just happened to drop in down here to say hello, so hello, you stranger.

Joe laughed too and they embraced, hugging each other.

***

They sat on a park bench near the huge stone sarcophagus. Stern sniffed the bottle of arak in his hands and passed it to Joe.

The honor's yours, you must be thirsty. There's an Arab saying that nothing quickens a man's thirst like seven years in the wilderness.

Joe smiled and took the bottle, admiring it. When Stern had begun rummaging around in the crannies of Ahmad's little printing press, poking into its recesses and finally holding up the bottle in triumph, it hadn't surprised Joe particularly. Somehow it was the kind of thing he would have expected of Stern. An unlikely act in an unlikely place.

Joe glanced sideways at Stern.

Strikes you as a scene you've come across before, does it? Two down-and-out tramps sharing a bottle on a park bench?

Stern smiled.

What happened to that wondrous thirst?

Right. It's got me in its grip.

Joe drank. He turned his head and coughed.

My God that's strong stuff, Stern. But it helps a printing press think more clearly, you say?

Stern laughed.

Ahmad was very fond of his old printing press and he always claimed arak was the best solvent for cleaning counterfeit type.

And I don't doubt it for a moment, said Joe. It's a first-rate solvent for all kinds of things, brains being one and Balkan reality another. But aren't you the tricky one now? Imagine just sneaking in here through a secret passageway like a regular tomb robber on the prowl.

Stern took a drink from the bottle. He lit a cigarette and a smoke ring floated up over the sarcophagus.

I was afraid the front entrance might be watched. It seemed wiser to come in the back way.

Tricky, all right. Has that secret passageway always been there? From the time when the tomb was built, I mean?

No, Menelik had it put in as an emergency exit. But from the looks of it, I don't think he or anyone else has ever used it.

Right, dusty as dusty and the very past itself. It's just that I didn't know there was another exit of any kind down here, and that's what scared me.

Stern moved, shifting his weight.

But isn't there always another exit, Joe, if you look for it hard enough?

Joe whistled softly. He pretended to make a face.

And there you go, Stern, starting up first thing. You are tricky, you know that? As long as I can remember you've been saying things that arrive or leave more ways than one. It's not that you're ambiguous really, it's more a matter of searching out different paths in your quiet undercover way. That and keeping your eye all the while on more than one lodestar up there in the unfathomable deep. I suppose it must be a habit you picked up in the business you keep.

Stern's dusty face softened.

And which business is that, Joe?

Right you are, and that's exactly what I meant. Which business among the many and how's a body to know which one is being referred to?

Joe laughed happily, more relaxed than he had been in weeks despite the circumstances. They drank and talked about the past, passing the bottle back and forth, recalling the years since they had seen one another in Jerusalem. There had been letters back and forth during those years, but inevitably much that had been left unsaid by both of them. On Stern's part, because so many of his concerns could never be committed to paper, and for Joe, because many of his experiences in Arizona weren't of the kind that could be readily described in letters. The conversation could have gone on much longer and Stern seemed reluctant to have it end, but there was so much Joe wanted to know he finally interrupted their talk by standing and sitting down again. He took a drink from the bottle.

Stern? Can you spare one of those awful Arab cigarettes you carry?

Stern handed him the packet. Joe lit one and coughed.

Wretched, same as always. Tears the lungs right out of a man. They always were the worst.

Stern watched him. Joe glanced at Stern's scarred thumb and looked away.

What is it? asked Stern.

I was thinking about last night at the Hotel Babylon, and this morning at Cohen's Optiks. I assume you know all about that.

Stern shifted his weight. He spoke slowly, haltingly, and there was a calmness in his manner that bothered Joe.

You mean Ahmad?. . Yes, I know about that, and I know about David. .

Stern moved again, a ponderous motion.

I wanted to see Anna, he said quietly, but I knew I couldn't. David was such a wonderful young man, so much the way his father used to be. He always reminded me of his father. And Ahmad, well, we go back a long way. Ahmad was one of the first people I met in Cairo, along with Belle and Alice and David's father. They were all Menelik's friends to begin with. .

Stern was gazing at the sarcophagus in front of them, thoughtful, somber. Joe waited for him to continue but he didn't.

Silence, thought Joe. Dead whispers as he slips. Better a roar of outrage than that, better anything than deafening quiet. He's just too cool and calm by half and I don't like it. Silence is the enemy here tonight.

Ahmad and David were Bletchley's doing, I take it, said Joe.

Stern nodded.

So what's next then? asked Joe.

Stern moved, hesitated. He looked at Joe for a long moment and when at last he spoke his voice was matter-of-fact.

Next? Well let's see. How much do you know?

Most of it, I think. About Enigma anyway.

Well that's most of it now. At least it's the part that counts.

So?

So Bletchley will do what it's right for him to do. He's fighting evil, after all, the Nazi madness in the human soul

And so?

And so I'm next, said Stern.

Joe looked at him. Too calm, he thought. Too calm by half.

And that's all? Just like that?

Stern shrugged.

Yes, I guess so. Sadly, even good purposes conflict. Good and evil just aren't as simple as we'd like them to be. We try hard to pretend otherwise, but it's never really true.

Stern smiled again, a peculiar smile that Joe remembered.

But tell me, Joe, why did you ever allow yourself to get drawn into all of this? So often I used to envy you over there in Arizona. It seemed like such a good life, exactly the kind of thing a man should do with his days, not at all what I've done with the years. And even after you did come here you could have pulled back, given Bletchley something and then. . Bletchley probably expected it, in fact. Why didn't you, Joe? You must have sensed where things were heading.

More or less, I suppose.

Well?

Well I didn't pull back, that's all.

But why?

I don't know really. How can we ever give a true answer to something like that? Because I wanted to see it through to the end. Because it seemed right to do that.

I'm afraid it doesn't surprise me, said Stern. From the time I saw you on the street near Maud's, I'm afraid it's what I thought you'd do.

Why afraid?

That's obvious, isn't it?

I guess. But did you know I was in Cairo then? Before you saw me on the street that evening?

No, I had no idea, it was a shock. But the moment I did see you I knew why you were here and who'd arranged it and what the circumstances had to be. I'd realized all along that eventually someone might find out some facts about that trip of mine to Poland and look into it, as Bletchley did, and then start something like this. I didn't imagine they'd go so far afield as to look you up, but then, it makes sense when you think about it, doesn't it?

I suppose it does, Stern, at least as much sense as anything else. And then the first time we did come face-to-face, there you were playing the beggar, sitting in the dust in those rags with your hand out, and I took pity and gave you money. And you, you shameless rascal, you even took my money.

Stern laughed.

I was hungry. I just don't have much pride anymore.

Well that's not true but we'll let it pass, the same way I passed you by then. But why didn't you get in touch with me after that?

I thought about it but I was hoping you'd find out enough to give Bletchley some satisfaction, and then quit before you got in all the way. I didn't expect it to happen, but there was always a chance.

Joe reached for the bottle.

So where does that leave us now, Stern? Just a couple of losers having a last glass together on a park bench underground? Just mulling it over and trying to get a grip on before we go topside and get run down by a lorry or take a tumble off a roof?

Stern opened his hands and looked at them.

Maybe. Probably. It's the danger in living among people, isn't it? In the desert you can run out of food or water but it's not all that easy to do, really. You can get by on very little and it takes longer to die. Men, civilization, speed things up.

Stern smiled.

But I still wouldn't say this is our last drink.

No? Well I'm glad to hear that, I never did like the idea of closing time. And how many carefree hours might we have ahead of us then?

Oh I don't know, said Stern. We could probably even manage a day or two if we stayed down here.

But how could we do that? Isn't this one place Bletchley's bound to look if we don't show up elsewhere?

I imagine, so I guess we only have hours. But we do have some time, so we might as well relax.

Well it may sound strange, Stern, but the fact is I am relaxed. I didn't get a nod of sleep last night but I feel as if I've been doing nothing else.

You stayed up all night with Belle and Alice?

Almost all night, but how did you know I was there? You haven't been following me too, have you?

No, but I have friends in the city who keep an eye out for me. . beggars. . fellow beggars. It's an occupation that allows a good deal of time for observation.

Joe nodded. . Stern's secret army, he thought. Some people have tanks, some have Monks, he has beggars. Must depend on which dusty byway you choose to sit in at the end of the day.

Beggars, are they? said Joe. And do you know what happened then on my way back from the houseboat this morning?

Stern laughed.

A dreadful commotion. You nearly caused a riot, shouting about Rommel's breakfast.

There was that as well, said Joe, but it wasn't the important thing. What happened was that I made a fool out of one of Bletchley's young Monks who was following me. Lost my head and humiliated him for no reason at all. I was terribly ashamed.

Stern looked at him.

Well you should forget that now, Joe. It's over and done with.

I know it is, and there's something else I wanted to mention. That letter you wrote to me about Colly's death. That was a beautiful letter, Stern, and I'll never forget it.

Well I'll never forget Colly. Along with many other people who knew him.

Joe nodded.

He was his own man all right, said Joe, and an unusual one. But you know, I did a little quiet asking into his death after I got here, and Bletchley gave me the impression you might have made a special trip to Crete, using an operation as an excuse, just to find out what happened to Colly. Any truth to that?

Stern moved awkwardly on the bench.

There could be.

Could be, yes. Could be, surely. But did you or didn't you? I don't think I caught your answer.

I did make the trip, said Stern.

I see. And naturally that was just a little thing. But what about Bletchley himself in all this?

I like him. He's a decent man.

Do you trust him?

To do his job, yes.

And his job is us, now?

In answer, Stern reached out and touched Joe's arm.

And more silence, thought Joe, just more and more of that shadowy shape that won't be. But he's got to start somewhere.

Well even if that's how it is, said Joe, there's still one thing that's been bothering me this evening in this cozy vault. That sign over the door! I know it's suggestive, but of what? And where'd it come from?

Stern turned and gazed across the crypt. After a moment he began to speak in a faraway voice.

The Panorama used to be a restaurant, he said. It was right on the river, a cheap place, mostly a refuge for off-duty dragomen. A dirty open-air restaurant with trellises and vines and banks of flowers, and a pool where ducks paddled and a cage with squawking peacocks, and strong dark wine by the flagon and huge platters of spicy lamb. A century ago three young men got into the habit of spending long Sunday afternoons there, eating and drinking and talking and talking, and they liked it so much they always went back when they could later in life.

Ah, said Joe, so that's the Panorama being referred to. I've heard of that restaurant all right, but I never knew its proper name. And the three young men in question would have been your father, once called Strongbow, and Menelik and the Cohen of the day, the one who was later known as Crazy, before they all set out on their journeys. And they kept going back to that restaurant for a full four decades, as I understand it, and that was the legendary forty-year conversation on the banks of the Nile that Ahmad used to talk about. That I also heard about years ago in Jerusalem, for that matter.

Yes, mused Stern, it did last on and off for forty years, right up until my father became an Arab holy man and disappeared into the desert. But then toward the end of his long life he decided he wanted to see Menelik one last time, Cohen being dead by then, and he traveled up from the Yemen to Cairo and he and Menelik returned to their same old restaurant one Sunday afternoon, not long before the First World War.

And they found that sign waiting for them?

Yes, said Stern. That sign and an empty lot.

Joe whistled softly.

So how did they celebrate then? Did they go look for the restaurant?

Stern shook his head, his voice far away.

No, they didn't do that, they didn't go anywhere. They were too old to drink by then and too old to have any particular interest in food, and they knew each other so well there wasn't much point in even talking anymore. So what they did was sit down in that empty lot and rest their backs on that sign and spend the afternoon enjoying the view. Now and then one of them would chuckle over some memory that came to mind, first one of them and then the other, and that was how the afternoon passed. Then when the sun began to sink they got up and left the place, Menelik to return here to his sarcophagus, my father to return to his tent in the Yemen. And for them, that was the end of the nineteenth century.

Joe whistled very softly.

And there we have it straight out, he said. And after forty years of honest raucous talk beside the Nile, there hangs the sign of a tale in time, deep underground and out of sight. And it is amazing when you think of it, how such an immensity of swirling moments can reside in a legend as brief in the telling as that one.

And sure the Panorama did move. . and sure it has and does.

***

Suddenly Stern's manner changed. A dark mood seized him, some violent memory from over the years.

He lurched heavily to his feet and began pacing around the crypt, oblivious to Joe and everything else, his eyes working feverishly in the gloom, his thoughts fixed on some distant landscape.

Joe watched him in fascination. It's strange, he thought, how much Stern can look like a beggar when he wants to, how easy it is for him to become the very poorest of the poor or anything else. . And it was frightening as well, for there had always been something profoundly disturbing to Joe in Stern's sudden transformations.

Joe sat quietly watching, waiting, as Stern moved restlessly through the shadows. . A gaunt face hollowed to the bone, so lean no more could be dug from it. Hard slender hands and scarred feet and a faded cloak made threadbare by innumerable beatings on stone, weathered by a relentless sun until it was as soft and pale as the sands of the desert. But for Joe, there was more to Stern than just his striking appearance. There had always been a hunger haunting the man that knew no bounds, a fierce and pitiless hunger that could never be satisfied.

Here, now, Stern was a beggar in a crypt. And he is that beggar, thought Joe. With Stern it's never just a disguise. As he limps there in his rags, he is that wretchedly poor man with nothing.

Yet, as Joe also knew, Stern was truly many men in many places, truly a vast and changeable spirit who had ventured so deeply into the byways of the human soul that every sound he heard there had long ago become but an echo from his own heart. A strange and mystifying presence who had touched many lives, yet there were so few of them that Joe knew anything about. Years ago in Jerusalem there had been one or two, and again in Smyrna, and now in Cairo there were a few others, friends of Stern whose lives had always been involved with his wanderings, some even for a lifetime.

And Maud.

No one had been closer to Stern during these last years than she had, and yet it was only within the last twenty-four hours that Stern had sat down with her and told her about the massacres in Smyrna two decades ago, when Stern had picked up a knife and pulled back a little girl's head and made the sudden awful slash that had cut through his entire life, a terrible and merciful act but also just one among tens of thousands in Stern's turbulent life with its wrenching changes. . these few people in Cairo and Jerusalem and Smyrna the only ones Joe happened to know about. How many others had there been in other places? How many people helped in some small way by his devotion and love? How many lives marked through the years. . how many hearts touched by Stern?

A strange and restless soul, thought Joe, as he watched Stern pacing in the shadowy dimness of the vault.

Perhaps even a soul lingering on the stormbeaten threshold of sanctity.

For as the poet said, hadn't that threshold always been terrible?. . Even crime-haunted?

***

Suddenly Stern whirled.

I've got to get out of here. I can't stand it down here any longer.

Joe got to his feet.

Fine. Where do we go?

Stern thought for a moment.

There's a place I used to go to years ago when I was a student, a cheap Arab bar, I've been back there once or twice. It's small and out of the way and as safe as anywhere else. In fact it's not far from the Hotel Babylon, which is good. Bletchley won't be looking for us that close to home.

Fine. It doesn't have an old cracked mirror behind the counter, does it?

Yes, don't all bars? How else could we ponder that mysterious stranger who enters our lives whenever we sit alone and brood?

True. And by any chance, did you ever take Liffy to this bar?

I may have. Why?

Because if it's the same place, I was there with him this morning.

Stern stopped. He gazed at Joe and smiled.

That's curious.

You're right, it is, said Joe, also smiling. Well then, is it time to leave old Menelik's mausoleum on a clear Cairo night in 1942? Time, is it, as we used to say?

Yes. Just give me a minute.

Sure, said Joe, I'll just wander over and give Ahmad's miraculous printing press a last inspection. Who knows? After you and I leave here no one may ever see that magical machine again. This crypt may just stay locked forever and that may be the end of Greek leks and Albanian drachmas and Balkan reality in general, who can say. Odd money in any case, Ahmad's private tender. .

Joe kept talking as he walked away, talking and scraping his feet and shuffling, making noise. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Stern moving quickly in the other direction, his face to the side, not so much avoiding Joe as making it easier for Joe to avoid him. Joe stopped in front of the printing press and began turning a handle, turning and turning it, making noise.

He glanced over his shoulder. Stern was crouching by a table near the door, beside a candle, hunched over and intent as he worked on something in his hands. A small black case lay open in front of him.

God have mercy, thought Joe. . Morphine to steady the blood, oh God.

Joe squeezed his eyes shut and turned the handle of the printing press around and around, methodically making noise and cranking out counterfeit banknotes, spewing out more and more of the ridiculous money onto the floor.

THE PANORAMA HAS MOVED.

Oh have mercy, whispered Joe silently. He's tried so hard and he's given and given but he's finished now and he just has no more to give. And when the time comes let a whirlwind descend on the desert at night and let the blessed stillness of dawn be on the sands where he's walked. And let a moment of peace be on him before then, just one small moment of peace before the wind howls an end to him in the darkness

. . an end to all he was and wanted. .

***

It was the same poor Arab bar where Joe had gone with Liffy that morning. A narrow barren place where laborers slumped along the walls in stony silence, somberly smoking and drinking in the half-light, stirring only to nod at their uselessness within the passing hours.

The two of them sat at the counter, facing the cracked grainy mirror on the wall. Now I have to get this right the first time, thought Joe. There are opposing points of the compass to be touched and not much time to do it in, so how to get things started with Stern? One way or another we've just got to break through that silence of his, damn it to the end of the world. He's just got to know and believe in what he's done, but how to help him go where he needs to go this one last time?

The mirror, thought Joe, recalling the visit that morning with Liffy. The mirror will have to tell him. . the mirror. See all, hear all, speak what?

Joe laughed and spread his arms, gathering in the room with the gesture.

So this is your secret world, Stern? This is where you dreamed away the wee hours of your youth? Well it's a murky place for sure, and certainly a place for dreaming. Certainly there'd be no other direction you'd want your fancy to take in the late hours here, in an alley as sordid as this one, in a rat-infested slum in Cairo or anywhere else.

And speaking of murkiness, Stern, there's something that's been weighing more and more on me since I arrived in Cairo. It has to do with the tiny glimpses we're given of people, and the fact that everyone seems to be a secret agent in life in a way. With their own private betrayals and their own private loyalties that we don't know anything about, and their own secret code copied down from a private onetime pad, which we both know is all but unbreakable. And with their status in this world not unlike my own in Cairo, in transit, as the good document describes it ever so nicely.

Ahmad, for example. When you looked at him you saw only a silent melancholy man endlessly playing solitaire and nodding over newspapers that were absurdly out of date, like all newspapers. But when he opened the secret panel to his clandestine little cave, hidden away behind the wall in the shabby corridor that passes for a lobby in the Hotel Babylon, with all the treasures he'd stored up over the years in that private little closet. . well, a whole world of experiences suddenly came to life right in front of your eyes.

I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of that private world, Joe went on, but it would have been just as easy to have missed it altogether, as I'm sure many people did. And to them Ahmad will always be merely what he appeared to be, a taciturn man without any feelings particularly, some kind of large and immobile oddity not worth knowing.

Even the implements of the clandestine trade are there, continued Joe, cast in their own unique shapes as is only proper. An old dented trombone, say, that served as the unlikely key to Ahmad's secret code, because it provided the notes to the tunes that others had forgotten, but not him. Or an old cardboard suitcase, empty save for a few sheaves of paper with some poems on them, the black bag of Ahmad's particular escape and evasion operation over the years, its very emptiness bulging with voluminous secret memories that only Ahmad could decipher.

So it strikes me there are no commonplace people in the crowd, said Joe, and no innocents in the game of life really. We all seem to be double and triple agents with unknown sources and unsuspected lines of control, reporting a little here and a little there as we try to manage our secret networks of feeling and doing, our own little complex networks of life. .

Ahmad? An immobile taciturn man without any feelings particularly? Ahmad? That eloquent and gentle poet? That shy swaying poet of stately lost dreams and elegant lost causes? A man who so heroically defended his mythical lost city of the soul?

No, Ahmad wasn't what he appeared to be at all. And don't we all use covers in a way, Stern? Don't we all use our own secret codes? And don't we all protect the secret sources of our strength and keep them separate one from another because they're so dear to us, while all the while we secretly plan the little clandestine operations of our lives, our daring forays up the street to the greengrocer's? And isn't betrayal, as Ahmad also said, still the most painful wound of all, and self-betrayal the very worst kind there can be? So devastating to us it forever remains incomprehensible in our hearts? The one sin we can never forgive in ourselves, therefore the one sin we can never accept from anyone?

Well it does strike me that this secret-agent way of doing things is true for all of us in some fashion, said Joe, and part of it often comes from fear, I know, the fear that others may discover who we really are.

But all of it isn't fear, not generally, and in your case none of it is. So what's the other part of it, Stern, the part that isn't greengrocery espionage? The part that takes us beyond the obvious similarities in people and gets us closer to that figure you were talking about earlier. That mysterious stranger who manifests himself in the mirror behind the bar and just plonks himself down to stare at us when we're brooding alone. Who is that stranger and why is it so difficult to know anyone in the end? Even ourselves.

Stern moved, sipping his drink. He smiled.

Answers, Joe? Pulling my cover as a greengrocer in order to find answers? Well I suppose the other part must come from that very mirror behind the bar, from the images there and the voices. When you look at this mirror in front of us, you see me and you see yourself. But since this is a place I once knew, when I look at this mirror, inevitably I see many people.

Now it's beginning, thought Joe. And slowly, easy now, if we're to hear the first whisper through the silence. .

I wouldn't doubt that for a moment, Stern. So tell me, of the many people in that mirror for you, can you see the first woman you ever loved? Is she still there?

Stern lowered his eyes.

Yes, he whispered.

And there it is, thought Joe, and now he's listening to the echoes and straining to hear their beginnings, now when everything seems to be coming to an end. So slowly then, from the deepness of the silence. .

.

You can see her, Stern? What was her name, I wonder?

Stern was still gazing down at the counter.

Eleni, he whispered.

Ahh, and that's a beautiful name, Stern. A name from ancient times that has always meant beauty to everyone and especially to Homer, who launched a thousand ships in his mind because of her. And where did you fall in love with her, and who might she have been?

Awkwardly Stern shifted his weight, his eyes fixed on the counter.

It was in Smyrna. She was from one of the leading Greek families there, back when it was still a Greek city. We were married. It was before you and I met.

Joe was astounded. He had never known that Stern had been married.

What happened?

It was when I first returned from studying in Europe, whispered Stern, when I was just setting out and beginning to learn about revolutionary work. We fell in love and we were married and for a while it was wonderful. But my life didn't seem to allow for a marriage, at least not for two people as young as we were. There was trouble between us and she left me and came back, then finally she left for good.

Where is she now?

Dead. She's been dead for years.

She must have been young.

She was, whispered Stern. Much too young.

What was it?

Stern turned uneasily and looked at Joe.

I'm not sure, I've never been sure. Footprints in the sky that I couldn't see? The sound of perfect sunlight? Laughter and joy and the eternal tragedy of the Aegean?

Abruptly Stern turned away from Joe and stared hard into the shadowy interiors of the mirror. He raised his hand and reached out, as if he were groping for something there.

It seems everybody doesn't make it, he whispered. It seems everybody can't. .

***

He had been in Athens when he finally heard the end was coming for Eleni. She had left him during the First World War, left him and Smyrna and gone to live in Italy. She hated war and she hated killing and she had learned to hate Stern's work, even though it was her uncle, Sivi, who had taken Stern in as a young student returning from Europe and had first trained him in that very work.

In Athens, years later, Stern chanced to meet a man who had seen Eleni recently, an acquaintance who had known them both in Smyrna before the war.

I'm afraid it's all over for her, said the man. The drinking just gets worse and you can't really talk to her anymore. But it can't last this way. She's killing herself.

They talked awhile longer and then Stern said good-bye to the man and walked back to the small hotel where he was staying in Athens. Only a year earlier he had become a morphine addict although he hadn't admitted it to himself yet, although he was still pretending he could face the grayness in the window at dawn, the coming of a new day, alone.

But that night he did admit it to himself as he sat up in the little hotel room in Athens, thinking of Eleni. That night he admitted many things to himself while thinking of her, because he had to.

A kind of prayer. That's what he'd had in mind.

He wanted to remember how beautiful Eleni had been when they had first met in Sivi's lovely villa by the sea. And he wanted to remember the long nights of love they had known that first spring and summer and autumn, and winter. The closeness and the tenderness, the excitement, all of it.

A kind of prayer to send to her to bring the good times back to life, by remembering them. So perhaps that one night at least Eleni might also be able to remember the good times, for it had been a wonderful love they had known.

And so Stern had recalled it all and been drawn back to the very beginning of their love, back to a spring day in Smyrna before the First World War. .

***

A brilliant afternoon. The two of them young and laughing and falling in love, wandering through the empty alleys near the harbor and coming to a little café, deserted at that siesta hour. And sitting down at a small table in the shade of a narrow old building, quietly laughing in the stillness of the little square, a breeze off the water and the warm colors of sunlit stones against the blue sky.

A sudden thud. Eleni and Stern turning with smiles on their faces.

Two cats, still coupled, had slipped off the roof of the building above them and fallen, fallen, and come crashing down into the cobblestones no more than ten feet away. One of the cats was unmoving. The other cat was trying to raise itself on its front paws, its hind quarters crushed in the sudden fall from sunlight to shadow, quietly screeching and trying to raise its head and sinking back, trying to sniff for life as its eyes closed. The one cat dead and the other dying.

Stern staggering to his feet and stumbling away, sick to his stomach and sick in his heart and utterly bewildered in the small shaded square. Eleni running after him and taking him by the arm and holding him tightly, pressing herself to him as he wandered lost by the sparkling sea. .

***

Yes, Stern had remembered it all and left nothing out in the darkness of the bare little hotel room in Athens. And once he had even imagined reaching out and touching Eleni in the stillness, and she had looked at him the way she used to and they were young again and in love and the world was made for them, and they would go on forever doing all the wonderful things they had known on the shores of the Aegean, with wine and love and soft whispers in the shadows, and little boats in the harbor. .

A kind of prayer, then, down through the hours of that long night in Athens. And he hoped his whispers had reached Eleni and helped her in some small way as the darkness closed in and the end drew near. Nothing left out of his prayer, all the bright dark moments of love, the exquisite joy and the infinite sadness. .

It wasn't much but he hoped it had helped a little, for soon after that Eleni had slipped and lost her way, and the end had come for her.

***

Joe shook his head, stunned by this revelation from Stern's past.

Somehow it's all hard to take in, he said at last. I've just never thought of you as having had a wife. The way you've moved about and forever uprooted yourself, always traveling. . I don't know.

Stern groped for his glass, a clumsy motion, his other hand edging back and forth on the counter.

Well it was a long time ago and you never lose what you had together, but you go on as best you can, if you can. Everybody doesn't seem to be able to, and it's not a matter of courage or worth that decides it, or of being more or less of a person. I don't know what decides things like that. People come up with all sorts of answers but I've never found one that works for me. Eleni was a beautiful human being, that's all.

She had so much to give the world and she was no weaker than the rest of us, so why did it happen to her?

Yes, said Joe, it's always the same Why.

And what is that feeling anyway? asked Stern. The belief that there's a purpose to it all, or should be?

Stern moved his hand on the counter, edging it back and forth.

I've always envied people who have it, but I've never been able to see things that clearly myself. It all seems chaotic to me, and only in retrospect does life take on any kind of purpose or design. Of course that could mean I've just never been able to fathom it. Or it could mean the purpose and design aren't there, and it's only our need for them as dreaming creatures that casts some kind of coherency over life when we look back.

Stern shrugged.

When we do look back, he said, we always know there were certain moments that determined our lives, and certain things that did become inevitable for us, eventually that. . But when did it become so?

When did it begin, I wonder. .

***

Stern took out the worn Morse-code key he always carried and held it in his hand, feeling its balance.

Joe smiled.

Bit of the past still traveling with you?

What's that?

The Morse-code key. I see you still carry it.

Stern gazed down at the smooth slip of metal shining from years of being rubbed between his fingers, gently polished by the oils of his skin. His eyes were thoughtful, far away.

I didn't realize I'd taken it out. I seem to have become distracted lately, or maybe relaxed is a better word. There's been little chance for that since the war started.

Joe nodded. Sign both good and bad, he thought. Good, because it means he's leaning back and taking a look at things. Bad, because he feels none of it matters anymore.

Stern studied the key as if listening to something, then put it away.

There are no inanimate objects, murmured Stern. Everything around us whispers continually, it's just that we don't have time to listen. In the desert it's different. In the desert you have the time and you listen long and hard because your life depends on it.

Joe watched him.

Why these thoughts, Stern?

Stern frowned, moving awkwardly around on his stool.

I'm not sure. I guess I was thinking about home, the idea of a home, what it means for all the people who have lost theirs in the war and will never have one again. . I chose my life and I knew what I was doing, but it's still true you never get used to being homeless. You can get used to being away from home, whatever home happens to mean to you, that's easy enough. You can even do it forever, if you have to. But there's a difference between that and not having a home at all.

Well I can see what you're saying, Stern, but I'd never have thought you could consider yourself an alien out here. Not when you can pass yourself off as a native no matter where you go. What's more, as a native of just about any background or standing.

Joe smiled.

After all, you haven't always been a beggar in rags the way you are tonight. As I recall, some other incarnations of yours have been quite grand.

I guess.

Well?

It's what you just said. I can pass myself off as a native. But being one, feeling that you belong in a place, is different.

That it is, and that brings us back to a stranger in the bazaars and deserts, aloneness amidst the clamor and the silence. What's it all about, Stern? Why these thoughts tonight and what was the particular inanimate object you had in mind?

Stern frowned, moved.

A rug. I was thinking about a rug.

Joe watched him.

A rug, you say. Simply that.

Yes. Rugs always remind me of someone's home because that's where I've always seen them, in someone's home. Most of my life has been spent in places like this, bare rooms with bare floors and almost no furniture, not places for living. It's just a little thing, one of those innumerable details we almost never think about. One of those tiny physical details that define us eventually, strangely.

That old faded red wool hat of yours, Joe, that's a physical detail. The one you used to wear in Jerusalem when you were living alone in that odd little room on a roof in the Armenian Quarter. Do you still have that hat?

Yes.

With you here in Cairo?

Yes.

And you wear it?

Well I did all right, back when I was taking my ease in the Hotel Babylon and seeing the world with the help of Liffy's miraculous gift of faces and gift of tongues. Or when I was out back in the courtyard with Ahmad late at night, sitting in our tiny oasis and listening with him to the stars.

Why did you wear it, Joe?

Habit, I suppose. Reminded me of things, I suppose. Must make me feel comfortable wearing it.

And uncomfortable too sometimes?

Oh yes. The incarnations come and go and it's not always easy to recall where those other people in your body have been, and what they did and what seemed so crucial at the time. Of course some of it was crucial, all of it in its way, but is that what you meant about physical details? That my red wool hat is a way of reminding myself that a kid on the run in the hills of southern Ireland, and an obsessed young man playing longterm poker in Jerusalem, and the medicine man of the Hopi Indians, and an Armenian agent known as Gulbenkian in wartime Cairo, that these odd types are all related in some obscure way?

Moreover, that they all grew out of a boy who passed his childhood tossing around in a fishing boat on the tides off the Aran Islands? Tides and more, despite all? Despite even adverse winds and the peculiar sunspots of time? That all these boys and men and notions I've just mentioned, despite the years, still have something in common? Namely me, because they are me? Is that what you meant?

Stern laughed.

You have a way of putting it, Joe. But yes, something like that.

Sure, thought Joe, something like that, but what exactly? Which rug are you thinking of, and why? All of Europe has lost the rug it's standing on, but you've got one specific one in mind. .

Well sure then, said Joe. In that sense nothing would be inanimate and there'd be no such thing as just plain furniture in life. An old wool hat or a shiny Morse-code key, they'd have their changing tales locked inside of them all right. But it was a bare floor you were talking about, a rug and a bare floor and homelessness. And it would seem to me that someone who grew up in the desert the way you did, in a tent made of goats' skins, wouldn't have any serious interest in floors, bare or otherwise. So how did that get into your thinking tonight, and just where was that bare floor? You must have looked at it hard and more than once. Where was it, Stern?

In Smyrna.

Then it must have to do with Eleni, thought Joe. Or with her uncle, Sivi, who got you started in this business.

Where in Smyrna, Stern?

Stern moved.

In Sivi's villa, he said, in the bedroom I always used when I stayed with him. A long room with a high ceiling and tall French doors and a small balcony overlooking the harbor. At one point, after Eleni left me, I used to spend a great deal of time sitting out on that balcony in the early mornings when the harbor was coming to life, and then again late at night after everything had closed and there was only an occasional wanderer poking along the waterfront. I liked the quiet, the peace, the new light of the morning and the old light of the stars. Harbors have always fascinated me with their ships from far and wide and no end to where they might go. Any journey under the sun conceivable, every destination in the world a possibility.

Stern smiled.

It's the ancient Greek in me, he said, that fascination with what lies beyond the horizon. Or what may lie out there, if you dare to look for it.

Greek too, Stern? Being English and Arab and a Yemeni Jew isn't enough of a heritage for you? You want to take on the Greeks too?

Yes, why not, said Stern. And anyway, everybody in this part of the world has a bit of the ancient Greeks in them. The Greeks were the ones who went everywhere after all, who couldn't stop themselves from trying to go everywhere. The light and the sea, but above all that astonishing light that makes you think you can see forever. It just drew them on and on and not just across the surface of the earth. What interested them was what lay beyond things, behind things, beneath things. The soul was their sea and the voyage never ended. Returning home to Ithaca was only an excuse for the Odyssey, the voyage itself was what counted. Homer, with his blind eyes, couldn't help but see that.

Homer, Stern? He's said to have been born in Smyrna. And what of that little balcony in Sivi's villa where you sat in the late and early hours, listening to Homer's seascape and keeping watch in your mind's eye?

Stern frowned.

A peaceful place on the surface, he said, but I wasn't at peace then. Eleni had left me for the last time and I hadn't become used to any of it yet, particularly going back to Smyrna and not having her there. Eleni was Smyrna to me, and the whole excitement of the place and the beautiful way of life people had there then, before the massacres, was inseparable in my mind from Eleni. When I was away, traveling, it wasn't so bad. But whenever I went back to Smyrna to see Sivi, I could only think of her and all the little places where we'd been together. Every little corner held some memory and no matter where I looked it was there waiting for me. . some feeling, some sensation that brought her back to me.

I had no control over it, said Stern. It was a mood I couldn't overcome. Her loss was always in front of me in Smyrna, tearing at me and never letting up. All I wanted to do when I was there was hide. Sivi tried to help but he couldn't really. The days terrified me, especially the sunlight on bright days. . Homer's sunlight. The nights were easier in a way as they always are, less harsh and less brutal, but it was also at night when the most dangerous moments came. The truly black moments when nothing mattered and it began to seem perfectly reasonable to just end it all. . just end it. End everything. .

Stern fell silent. He touched the ragged sleeve of his cloak and leaned forward, staring intently into the shadowy mirror.

***

The end of December. One of the last nights of that dark year when Eleni had left him for the last time.

Stern had just arrived back in Smyrna to spend the holidays with Sivi, through Epiphany. Sivi was always careful to arrange some event for the evenings, so Stern wouldn't be left to sit alone in his room and brood. But that evening friends had invited Stern to dinner, so Sivi felt it safe to go off to the theater.

Stern was able to manage only a few hours at the house of his friends before his courage left him.

He gave them an excuse and returned early in the evening to Sivi's, to sit on the small balcony of his bedroom looking out at the harbor.

He was strangely calm that night and the decision came to him in a natural way as he sat there gazing at the lights on the water and listening to the sounds of the sea. There was nothing dramatic about it. On the contrary, it seemed reasonable and commonplace. A new year was coming and there was no point in facing it. No point at all.

So he went inside and emptied a bottle of pills into his hand and swallowed them one by one, without water, the way he always took pills. Then he poured himself some whiskey and sat down on the side of the bed to savor the drink, lighting a cigarette to go with it.

Suicide? A desperate act brought on by intolerable despair?

No, not at all. That wasn't the way he had felt about it then. He was calm and his feelings were commonplace, his mood reasonable. A drink and a cigarette before lying down to sleep was the same as hundreds of other nights. Exactly the same, only this time he wouldn't wake up.

He sat there on the side of the bed gazing out through the open French doors at the harbor, not particularly sad, relieved more than anything else. Soothed, at peace. The soft lights swayed on the water and the gentle night embraced him, a tranquil murmur of whispers rising from the cafés below in the darkness, anonymous and remote like the world itself.

It's so easy, he thought, as he sipped and smoked. Real decisions are always so easy, unlike the little things. And death is comforting and death is peace, only life is not. .

***

Stern remembered nothing after that until he awoke the following morning. Sivi had stopped by his room when he returned from the theater and had found Stern sitting on the side of the bed, dressed and unconscious. Sivi had immediately guessed what had happened and had made Stern vomit and called his housekeeper, and the two of them had pushed Stern into a cold shower and walked him up and down in his room for more than an hour, until the danger had passed, only then letting Stern lie down to sleep.

The housekeeper had told Stern about it the following day, when he questioned her. As for Sivi, he had never mentioned the incident and never alluded to it in any way. Instead he was his usual jovial self the next day, laughing and joking and trying to buoy Stern up as he always did, as if nothing at all had happened during the night.

But whenever Stern had returned to Smyrna and his bedroom in Sivi's villa, he had picked up the corner of the new rug beside the bed and looked at the stain on the floorboards, a permanent stain made by his vomit, by the life going out of him one night in order that he might live.

***

I used to close the door and sit there staring at it, said Stern, trying to find some design in that map of my life on the floorboards. But no matter how hard I looked it was still a shape without a shape, shadings that turned in upon themselves, a swirl of dark tones that was all suggestion, like clouds in the sky. So I tried to see something there but I never could. I could never read anything into it at all.

At first that stain was so ugly to me I hated to be in the room with it. It shamed me and frightened me and I was always aware it was there, under the rug, and always very careful to step around it. But after a while I forgot about it and I'd actually find myself standing on it, not thinking where I was. . In a way that made it better, but it also saddened me because it meant I'd learned to live with the stain. The psyche doing what it had to do in order for me to survive. Forgetting. What it always has to do when something horrible becomes an everyday companion in our lives. . But there was also another cause to the sadness. Whenever I found myself standing on that stain, I also found myself thinking of my childhood and how far I had come from a dusty little hillside in the Yemen. By a bed now in a room that wasn't my own, near some open doors overlooking a harbor. . But why this harbor and why this room?. . I used to ask myself that and a whole host of questions would follow. Where is this? Where are you? And the answers were devastating. . I was anywhere. I was standing on a map that was me, my life, and it had nothing to tell me. So I wasn't someplace, I was just anywhere. .

Stern drew back. He touched the neck of his ragged cloak and turned away from the mirror, pulling himself away from its peculiar fascination.

As for that attempt at suicide, he said, the first one, it caused me to think about many things. What I'd really done and what it meant, and what I'd learned about myself and the human condition, and maybe more than anything else, what I'd learned from Sivi.

There was so much wisdom in the old man I've often wondered whether he was actually aware of it.

Whether he did what he did out of some intuition, or whether he knew that the way he acted after that night was the only thing making it possible for me to go on. . Sivi acting as if. Acting as if nothing had happened. . How could he have known to do that unless he himself had once been where I was then?

But that's a whole other subject, said Stern, and it leads to the massacres and Sivi going mad during the massacres. Wisdom that profound is so tenuous it's often impossible for it to survive the brutality of life, the fears within us. And with Sivi it didn't and he went mad. .

Of course, that night on the balcony happened a long time ago, when I was just beginning to become a man. And looking back on it and what followed, I realized just how hard we try not to grow. How desperately we go on trying to clasp the certainties of childhood to our hearts, bravely trying to face the world with that pathetic armor. I know, we say, I may not be able to explain it but I know what I mean.

And yet if we can't explain it, said Stern, there is no understanding. Instead there are rigid dead dreams, the sand castles of our childhoods to which we add a turret or two in our youths, and a rampart or two later on before we die, passing on to our children the same outwardly dreamy shape with the same inwardly dense and incomprehensible structure.

Stern frowned. He stared down at the counter and his voice was tense, hushed.

Why is it we don't understand how destructive it is to cling to things? Why is it we don't understand that even revolutionaries do that, and that in fact there is often no one more reactionary than a revolutionary?

A man who yearns for order, often innocently, and therefore justifies violence and murder and terrible repression through his yearning for the imagined symmetry, the imagined beauty, of a sand castle in a child's mind?

Images, said Stern. . things we imagine. These hosts of ethereal wonders and horrible monstrosities born of our unfathomable imaginations. Belief in everything and in nothing is the curse of our age.

Righteously, arrogantly, we play in our minds with the zeal of pious hermits who have seen nothing of the world and refuse to do so and refuse to hear any echo of what has come before us. So enormous is our arrogance, and so pathetic, we even pretend we can jettison our own past and make ourselves into anything, just by saying it's so.

But it isn't so and we can't do it because we know so much less than we think we do about man's freedom and responsibility, and his guilt. Yet we go right on pretending in our arrogance, making terrible presumptions that demand hundreds of thousands of victims, even millions of victims. The victims our age seems to want. . and worse, seems to need.

Why? Why is our guilt so great today we have to practice human sacrifice on such a monstrous scale?

What are we sacrificing to? Why do we feel this brutal guilt so implacably it causes us to raise up a Hitler or a Stalin to work our slaughter for us? Is freedom really so terrifying in the twentieth century that we have to have concentration camps and whole political systems that are nothing but prisons? These huge grinding inhuman machines that people willingly flock to, willingly embrace and die for, calling them the future? Are we really so terrified by freedom that we have to make the world into a vast penal colony?

Are we really that desperate to recapture the order of the animal kingdom. . our lost innocence and ignorance?

Revolution, said Stern. We can't even comprehend what it is, not what it means or what it suggests. We pretend it means total change but it's so much more than that, so vastly more complex, and yes, so much simpler too. It's not just the total change from night to day as our earth spins in its revolutions around a minor star. It's also our little star revolving around its own unknowable center and so with all the stars in their billions, and so with the galaxies and the universe itself. Change revolves and truly there is nothing but revolution. All movement is revolution and so is time, and although those laws are impossibly complex and beyond us, their result is simple. For us, very simple.

We arrive at a new dawn only to see it turn to darkness, or more specifically, in order to see it turn to darkness. And we live in darkness in order to know light. . For a moment. As time spins forth opposites, with no end or beginning that we will ever perceive.

Revolution? Dedication? Belief in humanity and in gods that die and gods that fail?

Innocence is the origin of our sin, said Stern, and our hope as well as our curse. From that innocence comes all that is evil and all that is good, and living with it is our fate. For the God who is and all the gods who have ever been and will be are within us, seeing with our eyes and hearing with our hearts and speaking with our tongues. . Ours. I know. I've been as dedicated as anyone. .

***

Stern stopped. Muscles tightened in his face and his eyes moved restlessly.

He's disturbed all right, thought Joe, we're getting in deeply now. And sirens are going off in his head and flares are exploding and gunfire's rattling everywhere. A man looks like that when he's been under siege too long. Shell shock, a doctor might say. Of the soul, Liffy might say.

Joe rested his hand on Stern's arm.

You know, he said, awhile ago when I mentioned Ahmad and David, it surprised me that you passed over them so quickly. But I have to keep reminding myself that you and I have lived very different lives these last years, and you've been close to a lot of that. My times have been quiet and I don't have to tell you how hard that makes it to deal with violence. In matters of feeling, I know, we tend to think everyone's concerns are our own, a way we have of trying to bring people around to our own size and shape. Seems to be human nature to want to make people into a standard issue so we can pretend we understand them, which would be reassuring, naturally. So I have to keep reminding myself of that scorching freezing desert you've been living in, with its death and its dying and its own bloody rules. And I know it's been bad, but what's been the worst part about it for you?

The sounds people make, whispered Stern. The sounds they make when they're lying there ripped up and dying. It's something you never get used to, and once you hear it it never goes away.

No, I don't imagine it does, said Joe. At least not out in that no-man's-land where you've been living for all of your life. But you know, most people have never heard that. Most people hear whines and whimpers and excuses in the end, things you can say something about. Not that animal sound from deep down that just sits there worse than death and has nothing to do with words, ever. . Do you remember that saying, though, about abstractions being our pseudonyms? The tendency we have to project our own personal cause as the general cause at large? Which is why Marx, say, badly constipated as he was from so much sitting around and thinking, tended to feel a future explosion in the lower regions or classes was a scientific necessity? The historical movement of pent-up bowels objectively determined by the grunts of the dialectical potty, and so forth? Do you recall that saying at all?

Stern stopped moving around for a moment. He glanced at Joe and looked away.

It sounds familiar, he murmured.

Does it? Well I thought it might because you were the one who said it.

I was?

Yes. One night when we were sitting up late over lamp fuel in Jerusalem. And wretched drink it was that night, same as now. Also called Arab cognac and I'll never know how those two names got together to ease the pain in the dark hours. Talk about opposites. Arab cognac? Arab cognac? Just hearing that causes a revolution in the head, a real revolution, the kind you were talking about, not to mention ongoing turmoil in the stomach. But yes, you did say that once, and Ahmad after you more recently. As I recall, you were quoting from your father's memoirs.

Oh.

Stern moved restlessly back and forth. He made a sign to the owner of the bar, who drifted down the counter to fill their glasses. Joe touched Stern's arm, smiling.

But I can't let you off too easily, Stern, now can I? I mean this feeling you have that you've failed. It's only to be expected I'd have to worry that one a bit, Marx and the war aside. So tell me something. When you were young, did you ever think of becoming a recluse off in the desert somewhere, the way your father ended up? Something along those lines? It would have been easier, certainly, than dealing with people.

Stern looked surprised. At least I'm getting his attention again, thought Joe.

No, said Stern. Never.

Why not, I wonder.

Stern gazed down at the pool of water on the counter. And he's beginning to do more than just remember, thought Joe. It's not all sirens and bombs and flares going off.

Not enough guilt, said Stern. That wasn't my father's reason for doing what he did, but it would have had to have been mine. He sought the desert, after all. I was born there.

Right. Stands to feeling. So I guess what we're talking about here is regret, isn't it? Things haven't turned out as well as you'd hoped.

Stern shuddered violently.

As well? What in God's name do you mean, Joe?

Right. Things have turned out awful, in fact. The worst. And yet what you've done in the last few years is a hundred times what most men can do in a lifetime. Of course it's also true not many people will ever know about it. Bletchley and Belle and Alice and myself, and Maud and Liffy in a partial way, and some others that I'm not aware of. Not many surely, a handful at best, and even so they're never going to be able to say anything about it except to themselves. Whisper it to themselves maybe, when they're alone and sad and taking the long view. And doesn't that bother you a little? It'd be only natural if it did.

Stern moved his finger through a pool of water on the counter, tracing a circle.

Yes, he said. I suppose it does.

Well sure, Stern, why not. Anybody would like it known they've left something real behind, something more than just the dust of gold and real estate, something tangible to the heart. Still, another man could be puffing himself up with pride if he'd done what you have, but you don't even see yourself as having accomplished much.

Joe rested his hand on Stern's arm.

Tell me, why this talk about Sivi tonight? It's been a long time, ten years since he died, twenty since he went mad. On the face of it, those events would seem more than a little distant to be taking up so much of your thoughts tonight. Or are we looking back to the real beginnings of your Polish story?. . Ahmad used to call it that, you know, and he wasn't referring just to the actual trip to Poland. For him, your Polish story seemed to suggest a great deal more. Maybe that was because Ahmad always had a long-range way of looking at things, so although the war appeared to start in Poland, he knew its true beginnings had to be much more deeply buried in time. . But anyway, Sivi then. What keeps bringing him to mind? Or is it Smyrna we're really talking about?

***

Stern moved his finger through the pool of water, tracing circles, his restless eyes never still.

Somber and feeling useless all right, thought Joe, just as Maudie said. But telling him it isn't so won't help.

No sense telling a hungry man he isn't hungry, when did that ever mean anything? The flares and the sirens may have let up a bit in his corner of the desert, but he's still expecting the next barrage and he's weary to the soul, that's certain.

Stern?

Yes. Sivi, you said. I was thinking about it.

And?

I think it's because I started out with him and learned most of it from him. And then too, that period in Smyrna is all of a piece in my mind. Eleni and Sivi and the wonderful times we used to have before the massacres, before that whole way of life disappeared forever. And the Aegean must have something to do with it, that mysterious light that has always made men want to go farther. And living with the sea in Smyrna and just the sea itself, the closest we ever come to the sound of infinity. And I was young then, so everything was significant, and I was in love. .

Yes.

So all of it together made every sensation intense. Everything seemed clearer and surer somehow, but it's that feeling of intensity I remember the most. Experiencing every moment to the fullest, even the smallest things, the way we always should and so seldom do Everything alive, Joe.

Yes.

But then the changes began to come and the parts no longer fit and no longer made up a whole. . Eleni and I drawing apart and seeing that terrible pain in each other's eyes, and knowing full well what was slipping away but powerless to do anything about it because the past of someone else is forever beyond us, untouched by our best intentions. Helpless, the two of us, even though the ruin of the dream was unbearable. . So that ended and then the darkness came to Smyrna, the massacres, and Sivi went mad and everything ended there for me, and there was nothing to do but go on.

Yes, said Joe. And now Smyrna is the world and massacres come every day like the night, and whole ways of life are lost in the darkness. But you're no stranger to that night, Stern. You've known that darkness for a long time now.

Stern was gazing down at the counter, unmoving at last, finally at rest in the half-light of that barren room.

Are we there? thought Joe, watching Stern. He waited and a long moment seemed to pass before Stern raised his eyes.

That's true, whispered Stern. And sometimes I can look back with a measure of calm and justify most of it to myself. Life has always been pretty much the same, after all. Three thousand years ago on those same shores of Smyrna, the Greeks went through every bit of it and raged and wept and then launched their ships anyway, at least some of them did, those who hadn't blinded themselves or locked themselves away in cages because of the horror. . So this has happened countless times in the past and innumerable others have sat here like this, as you and I are, and I've tried to see with Homer's eyes and you've tried to help me see, and I know all that, Joe, I know it. It's just that sometimes. .

Slowly then, Stern turned and looked at Joe and never had Joe seen eyes that were so exhausted.

. . it's just that sometimes I can't feel the balance anymore, the balance, Joe. It's all too dark and unyielding and there seems to be no reason for anything and I just can't pretend to myself that there is.

Can't pretend anymore, Joe, do you understand? And I look back and I can't see that anything means anything at all. .

Too close, thought Joe, we're getting too close. He's got to pull back or he'll shatter right here in front of me.

Well I know it, said Joe, I can feel that in you, and we both know you've been out there living with this century too much. It's not what most people do after all. Most people spend their lives in other ages, muttering back through the past while sitting up straight in yesterday's furniture, perusing yesterday's timetable and mulling over yesterday's thoughts. Animals are conservative, as you say, and we'd always prefer to do things the way we did them the last time, given half a chance. And I know what you mean about how dangerous that's become and the paradox of violence growing out of innocence, out of these pathetic certainties we cling to, the sand castles of the race.

Joe?

Yes I know it, and I know that sad paradox whereby prophets delve into the childhood of the race and turn memories into visions of the future, imagining the lovely total order of an imagined Garden of Eden.

And we do seem to have gotten into the habit of rummaging around in our heads too much, not listening to the echoes from outside and playing with ideas as if they were toys. Try one and try another and if white doesn't work, try black, and if God won't do the job, try Hitler and Stalin.

Joe?

Words, Stern. They're just words, a child's building blocks, just names for misplaced memories because we want so desperately to believe that someone somewhere is in charge. . or might be. . or could be.

Words are our shadows in the twentieth century, as if giving something a name gave it a place and put it in that place. As if saying something took care of it. As if repeating incantations could set us free. As if we were no longer dealing with human beings. . Because that's the real trouble, isn't it, Stern? Ideas are always easier to deal with than people, because ideas are words and can be numbered and defined and reworked to our liking and assigned colors and playing stripes, and categorized and put safely away in drawers. And so we deal with ideas and pretend we're dealing with something real, and Lenin's a mummy like any of the pharaohs, and Hitler will be a mummy for the thousand years of his Third Reich if he can manage it, both of them with their own Great Pyramid of skulls so we can remember them, and meanwhile human beings are massacred along the way. . Massacred, surprise of surprises, on the way to the sand castle.

But Joe?

Right. I need another drink myself and here comes your man with the lamp fuel, time-honored. And human beings are dark and unyielding and that's the truth of it, and that's also the real code and the only one that matters. And because human beings are what they are, we take the easier way and play with these niceties we call ideas, building blocks after all, the dead weight of our pyramids and also good for raising our very own Tower of Babel. Clean and simple lines progressing logically upward in an orderly fashion, we say, according to the laws of reason. .

Reason, Stern? Logic? Touch a human soul in any spot that counts and you know how reasonable an answer you get. A scream is what you get, a cry of despair and hope. But we pretend otherwise and pretend we can build ideas one on top of another until we have a magnificent cathedral to kneel in or an imposing people's emporium to cheer in. Sand castles, as you say. Or maybe, like today, just these huge grinding machines of death, outright. And all the while human beings are being slaughtered for the sake of

… For the sake of what, Stern? What, my God? Ever?

Joe, I. .

No wait, Stern. I've come a long way to sit in this bare room tonight and savor the smells of this slum and knock back some lamp fuel with the friend I've known longest in this world. A long way in time and in space, so you can't expect me to let you off easily, now can you? Or to put it another way, I'm here now and I'm real and you've got to deal with me. With me, Stern.

Joe nodded, he smiled. He held Stern's arm and slowly, Stern smiled too.

Got him, thought Joe. There's no way he can deny himself in the end. Not him. He knows too much for that.

Right, said Joe, leaning back. And here we are and what a place to come to when in need of bucking up the soul. I mean it's not exactly bracing, is it, to be where we are in the dark hour of a dark war? The two of us sitting not far from the Nile lamenting the eternal state of affairs? Everything changing and nothing the way it used to be? The ancient Egyptians had what, thirty dynasties more or less? And every one of them an end of an age, the end of an era, with its share of gents like us sitting up with the lamp fuel and lamenting the death and the dying and pondering the permanent revolutions of the heavens, round and round? Makes you wonder if times change at all really, and if you and I haven't been in the custom of dropping in here over the ages to reflect upon the ends of all those dynasties. Makes you wonder, in fact, if this room or one like it hasn't been here for four or five thousand years, so a couple of gents like us could drop in and take stock of the latest end game not far from the river.

Joe glanced around the room. He made a face.

And there's not much of it in the end, is there? Stock, I mean This place is just plain bare. Except, that is, for what's going on in this mirror in front of us. A shadowy screen, that one, with its cracked edges and its grainy textures, surely a worn cinema of the mind with its reels of fleeting shapes and its projection lamp in need of more lamp fuel to make more light, now as always. So yes, I think I may just have one more glass even though you're not yet ready yourself. But why are you smiling, Stern? Because you know we've been sitting here for four or five thousand years? And why is that smile even giving way to a little laughter? Because that seems like a long time to you?

Joe turned sideways on his stool, facing Stern. He pointed at the mirror.

And just what have we seen on this worn reel of the mind's eye?. . Well first of all we started with a bare floor, bare like this room where we've been rambling over things for millennia, preparing a land and seascape for Homer. And that led you to a rug that was somebody else's, in a home that was never yours, and with that we saw a pair of open French doors and a small balcony overlooking a harbor that could have been anywhere, but wasn't. Smyrna, we'll call the place. And Eleni going off and killing herself over time, and the massacres coming and Sivi going mad in that place, and you acquiring a morphine habit and everything slowly dying like that second cat in the story, the one that didn't die straight off. . I mean my God, Stern, what is this tale of the century you're telling me tonight? Morphine and suicide and alcohol and madness, and despair and murder and death…. What is this? What kind of a tale, for God's sake?

Stern was very calm now. He was smiling his peculiar smile and listening to Joe, watching him, his face intent.

I'm not sure, said Stern quietly. Perhaps, you can see it more clearly than I do, Joe. The tale of a man who wanted to believe? Who tried to believe?

Did believe, Stern. Does believe. And there should be no more of this talk of trying anymore, that's all behind you. Who sent that prayer to Eleni, have you forgotten that? And who took a frightened Irish kid on the run in Palestine and gave him his first lessons in life? And what about Belle and Alice, and David and Anna and their father? And Liffy and Ahmad and Maud and Bernini, and all the others I don't know anything about? Where would they have been without you? Don't you know you're the stuff of dreams to Bernini, don't you know that? You are dreams to him, you're what can be done in this world. Forget the secret codes and what you've done in the desert, the apparent Enigma. That aside, do you have any notion what you've given to people just by being who you are? Do you remember Sivi's first words that horrible night in Smyrna? When he was raving? Do you remember?

No.

Find Stern, he said. Call Stern. That's what Sivi was saying when he was going mad that night and not coming back. That's what he was reaching for on his way down. For you, Stern, and don't you know it, man? Don't you know it by now? Don't you know it's always been like that for so many people?

Stern was staring at the counter. He frowned and moved his finger through the water, tracing circles and fighting his weariness, struggling with himself. Joe could see it. .

And somewhere outside a commotion was slowly beginning to gather in the darkness. . Shouts and curses and drunken laughter, the victorious yells of men out celebrating an escape from death, some kind of triumphant drunken brawl working its way through the night.

Men turned nervously to glance at the shabby curtain hanging in the doorway of the bar, all that separated the half-lit room from the alley outside. The owner of the bar stopped what he was doing and turned uneasily to look at the curtain. Even Joe swung around to see what was happening, but Stern didn't both to look. Stern went on staring down at the counter, tracing circles of water with his finger.

What is that out there anyway? asked Joe, irritated by the interruption.

Nothing, whispered Stern. Probably some soldiers back from the front, happy because they're alive. .

Well? said Joe. You do know how much you've done, don't you? You don't really feel it all comes down to trying to no end, do you?

Sometimes it does seem that way, whispered Stern, despite what you say. Other people and how they feel. . well you know other people can never justify our lives for us. We have to do that for ourselves.

I do know, said Joe. You taught me that a long time ago. And as for the blackness sometimes, this dark and unyielding part of us that's always inside just waiting for us to give it a name and a dominion out there, well I'd certainly agree with you now with this war around us. And I'd also agree if we were talking about great peaceful new nations that should exist and don't, in this part of the world or anywhere else.

But that's politics, Stern, and the temporal kind at that, and politics have never been more than a cover name, words, a code for systems which aren't systems at all and can never be that, because the stuff in them, of them, is us. Not an abstraction but us, and we can't be reduced to systems through words, codes, covers, any of it. . In fact if there's one part of your thinking I'll never understand, it's how you could ever have mistaken that cover for reality. You, who've spent your life with these things and know about codes and covers and disguises, and what's real and what isn't. .

The shouts and the screams and the shuffling outside were louder now and moving closer. More of the men in the bar were watching the curtain that separated the room from the night. Joe swung around to look again, saw nothing, turned back to Stern. His voice was urgent, intent.

A place on the map, Stern, a country in that sense? Is that what you really wanted? Border guards and visas and customs officials in uniforms? Is that really what your dream comes down to? You, who've spent your whole life crisscrossing every conceivable kind of border and proving they're fictitious, arbitrary, meaningless? Other people may be confused by reality, Stern, but you know. How have you gotten yourself into thinking that real estate has anything to do with anything? Is that what those ancient Greeks went in search of? Place names? Is that why they launched their ships? The soul was their sea, you said that, and your whole life testifies that it's what's inside people that's important. Not the code names or the cover jobs or the uniforms, not the colors on a map or the words in passports listing conflicting names of God. . Just look at yourself in those rags, Stern. Don't they show you haven't failed? Don't they prove the land you sought is in men's hearts? And isn't that what your beloved Jerusalem is and always has been, a dream of peace for all people? Touch a human soul and you hear despair and hope, and although this real estate may be the world to us, it's still just a speck of dust lost somewhere in an unknown corner of an unfathomable universe. So arrogance aside, there can be no certainties, and hope is what you've always given people. Always, Stern. .

More screams and laughter and muffled shouts outside, moving nearer. Drunken curses and the sound of breaking glass, a window shattering somewhere up the alley in the darkness. Stern was sitting sideways on his stool now, looking at Joe and the curtain beyond Joe's shoulder. Joe spun around again, glanced at the doorway, turned back to face Stern.

Damn that noise.

It's nothing, Joe, just the night. Men celebrating because they're alive. .

I know, I know. So the point is, even good causes conflict and oppose each other, as you've often said.

Just as love can oppose itself, even love. But don't you feel it, Stern? Don't you really know beneath and behind it all what you've done? Who you really are?

In answer Stern smiled his peculiar smile, and all at once he did seem truly at peace. There was a serenity in his gaze, a powerful enduring strength.

What a strange and paradoxical man, thought Joe. As mysterious and yearning as life itself.

And as Joe sat there looking at this elusive man whose secret he had sought for so long, he was reminded of the moment when he had passed Stern by without recognizing him at the top of the little street where Maud lived, Stern sitting in his rags at the end of the day keeping watch over one he loved, a solitary beggar who was homeless and stateless and who was yet the ultimate prize for all the great armies. .

anonymous in the end. A man alone in the dust at twilight surveying his limitless kingdom, a beggar of life from nowhere who would one day return whence he had come.

Joe held Stern's arm. There were tears in his eyes.

Ah that's good, Stern. You do know, I can see it. So it's been a clear night for us to see things after all and you've done it, Stern, and you know you have.

Stern nodded gently. He smiled his strange smile.

Maybe I have, Joe. And it's true we make our heavens and hells and spin them grandly in our hearts, sparing no extravagance or excess, no act of memory too daring and no disguise too extreme, every vista in the vast dream fashioned by us alone, out of love. .

Shouts. Screams. Men scuffling and yelling in the darkness.

Joe?

A smile on Stern's face and Stern's fist crashing into Joe.

Shouts. Laughter. Bloody wogs.

Joe stunned and reeling across the floor, not yet realizing that Stern had reared back and struck him full in the chest with all his strength, knocking the air out of Joe and sending him tumbling backward across the room, Joe knocking over chairs and glasses as he went slamming into the wall, into a corner. Joe with his back to the door, not having seen the shabby curtain pulled aside and the hand grenade that had come sailing in from the darkness, no one in the room moving except Stern. No one knowing what it was except Stern.

Bright blinding light then in the mirror behind the bar. A roar pressing Joe into the corner and glass shattering and debris falling and men screaming as they rushed to escape. Joe staggering to his feet in the smoke and staring at the spot where Stern had been a few seconds ago, before the hand grenade had exploded in his chest.

And even fiercer shrieks in the alley and yells everywhere and running feet, the barren room quickly emptying and the anonymous soldiers who had thrown the grenade disappearing in the darkness, people running and screaming and a roar ringing in Joe's head. Amidst the screams of terror, one cry higher than the others and eerily floating in the clear night, taken up again and again and passed on in the darkness A beggar's been killed, a beggar. .

The cry leaping through the alleys and piercing the stillness of midnight, haunting unlit doorways and dark stairwells and tiny rooms where people huddled against the night in the slum, listening to the sudden cry of death.

A beggar. . a beggar. .

Joe standing in the corner in the smoke, in the haze, staring at the spot where Stern had been, Stern gone now in the roar of shattering glass and blinding light and the echo of disappearing footsteps. Joe smiling and whispering to himself.

He knew in the end. It was in his eyes.

The cry outside already so distant it seemed but an echo. And dust and chaos and Joe struggling to breathe, a sudden stillness to the world as the roar in his ears crowded out all else. Joe smiling, the thin cry far away now in the darkness dying, its moment over in the night.

A beggar. . a beggar. .