Sinai Tapestry

What's to be done, Joe?

A sip. Sips across the room. The king cleared his throat, they did the same. Now was the moment.

What's to be done? I'll tell you what's to be done. In two years time there'll be an Easter rebellion, a rising of the nation, and I'll have a son in that rebellion, one son fighting for Ireland, a mere lad it's true but he'll be there. So that's the full truth on this June 14th in 1914. I've had thirty-three sons in my time and I saved my name for the last of them, and what will happen will be and that lad will do as he has to and I know what it is, and after that he's going to go on and become the King of Jerusalem for some reason.

The last words startled everyone in the room. Even the king's head jerked back in surprise.

Don't blaspheme, cautioned a voice.

And none intended. I have no idea why I said that. And now what's your name? he shouted suddenly to hide his embarrassment, staring between the shoulders of his friends who crowded the room.

Everyone turned. They hadn't noticed the small dark boy huddled in a corner at the back, struck dumb as always by his father's oracular sessions. With all eyes upon him he was afraid to speak, but with his father's eyes upon him he was even more afraid not to speak.

Joseph, he whispered.

Joseph what?

Joseph Enda Columbkille Kieran Kevin Brendan O'Sullivan Beare.

Saints of this island, answered his father, and that's my name too, saved for you so you can fight for Ireland as I once did, two years hence in the rising. Now there's no need to swear by those saints, lad, but we're going to raise a mug to you for what's to come, that much we can do. And the evil eye be off you and the little people be with you, and as your mother has taught you to say, If you haven't a shilling a ha'penny will do, and if you haven't a ha'penny God bless you.

Solemnly the men in the room raised their mugs and emptied them. In the corner young Joe, fourteen years old, stood perfectly straight and terrified.

On Easter Monday in 1916 the rising came as predicted and the Irish revolutionaries managed to hold the Dublin post office for several days. One of the few to escape from the post office was young Joe, who then walked two hundred miles south to the mountains of County Cork, thereby reversing the route of his famous ancestor.

What's to be done? he wondered as he walked. A man fighting alone needed distance from the enemy, so he decided to teach himself to use his rifle at long range.

The rifle itself was a curious antique, a modified 1851 U.S. cavalry musketoon that had last seen service with czarist dragoons in the Crimean War. But Joe soon discovered that with its short thick barrel, its heavy stock and enormous bullets, the musketoon could be used with extraordinary accuracy when fired in the manner of a howitzer, aimed in the air rather than at the target so the bullets traversed a high arc and struck from above.

For the next three years Joe practiced with his musketoon in the mountains mastering the trajectories of a howitzer, careful to let himself be seen only from far away. He moved at night and never slept in the same place twice, a phantom figure in a bright green jacket and buckled shoes and a flat red hat whom the farmers of Cork, with their sure knowledge of pookas and banshees and trooping sly fairies, quite naturally came to refer to among themselves as the biggest of the little people.

Then too he had to scavenge for food at night and that added to the legend. In the morning a farmer would find a chair in an outbuilding out of place and four or five potatoes missing.

He was here last night, the farmer would whisper to his neighbors, and of course no one had to be reminded who he was. The neighbors would nod gravely, perhaps recalling a soft crack of thunder they had heard in the distance at dawn.

In 1919 guerrilla warfare broke out and the English later sent in the Black and Tans, who roamed the countryside looting and beating and spreading terror. Until he manifested himself and the terror in southern Ireland was suddenly on the other side.

The pattern was always the same. A band of Black and Tans galloping down a road, a lone farmer running across his fields trying to dodge their bullets. From far away a soft crack of thunder. Another and another. Two or three Black and Tans tumbling to the ground, each with a bullet wound in the top of his head.

One day in western Cork, the next in eastern Cork. The third day near a fishing village. The fourth day far inland.

And the bullets always striking from directly above as if fired from heaven. All at once the Black and Tans found themselves facing divine intervention or at least a division of elusive sharpshooters armed with some secret new weapon. They refused to leave their barracks and he seemed to have won.

But the private war waged by the biggest of the little people couldn't last forever. When ballistic tests proved the enemy was only one agile man armed with an old modified U.S. cavalry musketoon, the Black and Tans began ravaging the countryside with renewed vengeance. And the informers informed and young Joe's hiding places in the mountains disappeared.

Gone now were the bright green jacket and the flat red hat and the buckled shoes, gone the reassuring soft cracks of thunder in the distance, gone the mysterious presence in southern Ireland, gone even the old cavalry musketoon, buried now in the ruins of an abandoned churchyard along with the tiny hope that someday he might return to reclaim it.

It was Easter Monday again, four years to the day since the rising, and young Joe sat in a vacant lot in a slum of the city of Cork passing his last afternoon in Ireland. His trousers were worn with holes, his bare feet were blistered and what served as his shirt was a lacework of rags tied together with string. Sea gulls screeched overhead. He blinked at the sky and sadly gazed back at the turf fire on the little island in the Atlantic where his father sat surrounded by the crowd of poor fishermen.

Jaysus, he whispered, I just hate to disappoint but I have to give it up now. I can't run and I can't hide and people are clubbed because of me and I can't help them, I only make it worse. You know what they're saying now? They're saying he's gone and it's true, I'm lost to them.

The roomful of men solemnly raised their mugs to him.

I know, he whispered, Jaysus I do know and I'd do anything rather than disappoint, I'd stay and stay if it could do any good but it can't. I tried and it worked for a while but the while's up and what I told you just now, Jaysus it's the truth and I'm done, they've done me in, he's gone.

He raised his hand in farewell and limped away from the vacant lot across a bridge and crawled down a coalbin into a cellar. There an elderly carter told him the plan for his escape was ready, adding that the Black and Tans had tortured someone on the west coast and discovered their old enemy of the musketoon was in Cork. By noon the next day they would arrive in force, seal the city and begin the search.

The Black and Tans arrived well before noon but still too late. Early that morning a small freighter had sailed from the harbor with a cargo of whiskey and potatoes for the English garrison in Palestine. In addition the freighter carried a dozen nuns bound on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

The journey the nuns were about to make was exceptional, for they were Poor Clares who ordinarily would never have been allowed out of their convent, let alone out of the country. The cause of their going was a request for a pilgrimage made by a reverend mother from a less strict order who had been in charge of the convent at the end of the eighteenth century, before the Poor Clares had acquired it. But the Napoleonic wars had intervened and after that the convent changed hands.

Just what had happened to the request during the nineteenth century was uncertain. In any case it reappeared when the Vatican's files were reorganized at the end of the First World War, and thus one hundred and twenty-five years later a decree suddenly arrived at the convent directing the reverend mother to take eleven of her nuns on the pilgrimage.

The reverend mother was stunned. She wrote to her bishop, who was equally stunned, but he could only reply that an order from the Holy See was an order to be obeyed. Although it was incomprehensible, the Holy Father must have had his reasons for sending Poor Clares on this fearful voyage.

The nuns were chosen on the basis of age and ranged from seventy to ninety years old. All were unusually tall save for one who was small and dark with a shadow of what might have been newly shaved hair above the lip.

The Poor Clares weren't allowed to speak and the formalities on the wharf were handled by the bishop, the nuns rustling their beads and fluttering in circles so that it was even difficult to count them. But their excitement over visiting the Holy Land after waiting a century and a quarter seemed reasonable enough to the English officials, so their documents were processed quickly and they disappeared on board the freighter in a flurry of swirling black habits.

The nuns were not seen again until the freighter docked in Jaffa. The dusty journey up through the hills was made. The carriages approached New Gate and were soon surrounded by the usual crowds of thieves and mastic-sellers and pilgrims spitting and cursing and praying as they squeezed into the narrow alleys of commerce and paradise. Just outside the gate a small dark man in a shabby Arab cloak and Arab headgear was seen to cringe on one of the running boards, hand outstretched to beg.

But the policeman on duty at the gate was quick to give the beggar a solid blow on the head with his baton, thereby reducing the Poor Clares to an even dozen and sending the biggest of the little people sprawling across the cobblestones of Jerusalem.

Joe squatted outside the entrance to the Franciscan enclave in the Old City still dressed as an Arab beggar, whispering furtively in Gaelic when a priest came by, assuming a priest from any country other than Ireland would mistake his words for some garbled Arab dialect He spent a day at the main entrance and successive days outside the wine cellar and the olive-oil press.

Famished by nightfall, he dragged himself to the entrance of the bakery.

No one appeared at the door in the morning. Soon the sun was overhead. With the heat overcoming him he slipped lower, into the gutter. Sometime during the afternoon he had a dream the door was opening.

We ourselves, he whispered in Gaelic into the dirt, repeating the name of the Irish revolutionary party. In his dream a shadow fell across him.

What's that? said a soft voice, also in Gaelic.

Love, the forgiving hand to victory, whispered Joe, repeating the legend of the O'Sullivan Beare clan.

Is that so? Is that who you are, lad? But what ails you lying in a Jerusalem gutter dressed like that? Inside with you before a policeman comes by.

The old priest pulled him out of the alley into the cool depths of the bakery. He locked the door and poured water over Joe, then stuffed his mouth with bread and watched him eat. When Joe was able to talk he told his story, the old priest nodding his head vehemently at each new turn in the account.

Was your father in the Fenian movement? he said at the end.

That he was, Father.

Well so was I but the Church made me leave it. Of the seven men in my cell six were O'Sullivan Beares named Joseph. Your father might have been one of them. Anything special for me to go on?

Prophecy.

Ah that one, I knew him all right. He used to say he was going to have twenty or thirty sons and I admonished him to be happy with what God gave him. Happy I will be, he said, it's just that I already know. Well that's fine for seventy years ago but what are we going to do now? Here you are a former terror of the Black and Tans wanted for patriotism and other heinous crimes, in English territory without papers. Drop our lovely mother tongue and repeat after me. Yes I am English actually but I was born with faulty vocal cords and multiple speech impediments.

Joe did so.

Atrocious, said the priest. That wouldn't even begin to fool an Arab.

We ourselves? whispered Joe hopefully.

Not this time, it's just not enough. We'll need some help if you're not to be caught. Now sit there while I stoke up the oven. I've been the baker here for sixty years and I do my best thinking at the oven, so you sit and I'll bake.

The old priest began kneading dough and baking loaves of bread that came out in various irregular shapes. One was clearly a cross and another had roughly the shape of Ireland. The third might have been meant to represent the shape of the walls of the Old City, but the fourth was an unrecognizable oval slightly angular at the top and more so at the ends. Before long the corners of the bakery were heaped with bread.

What's that loaf? asked Joe.

Which one?

That corner there.

The Crimea of course.

The priest turned back to the oven but all at once his cassock twirled and his sandals slapped the stones.

He had broken into a dance.

But that's the answer, lad, why didn't I think of it? You're the reason why I wasted that time in the army, old Joe's son on the run's the reason.

The priest, dripping with sweat, renewed his little dance in front of the open oven door. Right there, thought Joe, and at it sixty years no less. Been doing it so long the brains have melted. Out of the gutter but as finished as ever.

Which army was that, Father?

Her Majesty's own, what else. Before you jigs a former officer of light cavalry with several medals from the allies not to mention the Victoria Cross from herself.

He was bouncing back and forth now dropping a loaf in the oven, now plucking one out. Hopeless, thought Joe, totally melted. Sixty years of that could turn anyone's brains to bread.

The Victoria Cross you say?

The very same, lad. Before I found my vocation I was so stupid I joined the army and off we went to the Crimea, where some deluded ward of God ordered a suicidal charge. My mount fell and broke its leg and I couldn't keep up on foot, so it turned out I was one of the few survivors. That's right my boy, 1854

was the year in question and the English public was furious. The army had to find some heroes who were still alive, that was me and in came the medals.

Joe shifted on his buttocks. His bottom hurt. Maybe that charge had been a disaster but sitting here was a disaster too. The old priest danced across the room and dropped a ribbon over his head. Joe stared dumbly at the cross. Once he had seen one on an English officer before the Easter Rebellion.

That's it and there you are, young Joe, an official hero of Her Majesty's forces and one of the few to survive the charge of the Light Brigade. Two years after that piece of madness in the Crimea, you see, Her Reigning Presence decided to honor God and herself by creating a new and highest honor for Britannic valor on the battlefield, named for herself, this Victoria Cross we now see around your neck.

Her advisors naturally agreed with that and suggested the first VC ever to be go to the most decorated man presently in the forces. Who's that? asked Victoria R. Right here on the rolls, said the advisors, checking, it appears to be none other than the illustrious hero who was loaded with Sardinian and Turkish and French medals only two years ago, our very own MacMael n mBo of Crimean fame. MacMael what? asked the queen, suddenly weary with the tasks of empire.

The old priest smiled.

No matter. Presently she recovered and they were able to find the last sober Irishman in the islands to teach her how to pronounce the name and the ceremony was held and there I stood, first recipient of the famous Victoria Cross. Well then a few years after that some worthy people established a retirement charity in Jerusalem for veterans, the Home for Crimean War Heroes it's called, and since there aren't many of those veterans around by now as you'd imagine, heroic or not, the quarters are more than spacious. In fact you'll have it practically to yourself. Commands a decent view of part of the Old City and the bread's excellent, I bake it myself. So, lad, I'll give you my old documents and that's that.

That's what? thought Joe. Were the old priest's brains melted or not? He was twenty and the Franciscan must have been at least eighty-five.

Won't apparent age be a problem then?

Not here, not in Jerusalem, answered the old priest merrily. Here young or old is about the same. Our Holy City, everyone's Holy City, is an odd place as you'll come to see, not an everyday commonplace matter.

We ourselves, said Joe.

Exactly, and just the three of us in on the trick, you and me and God. And some trick it was, choosing those Poor Clares.

How's that, Father?

The trip. This dreadful journey the Poor Clares had to make over here seeing and being seen by all manner of creatures and smelling all smells known to the species. That's not their usual business is it? Not what they signed up for is it? No, direct intervention, that's what it was.

What?

Oh you wore a bright green jacket and buckled shoes and you set your flat red hat at a properly jaunty angle, and you kept on the move as best you could but He knew trouble was coming and He said to Himself, The lad's going to have to get out of, Ireland and how's he going to do it?

Well naturally He took a look in the files of the Vatican, which is where He goes when dealing with historical matters, and what does He find but an old request for some nuns to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Right you are, He says to Himself, that's the job. Who's ever going to suspect the terror of the Black and Tans sneaking out of the country disguised as a Poor Clare when everybody knows Poor Clares aren't even allowed out of their convents? Who would even conceive of such a thing? So after He has His little laugh He arranges for the document to be found and processed, and after one hundred and twenty-five years the frightened Poor Clares do their duty and you're saved.

Father, I didn't realize any of it.

It's true you didn't but there you have it, said the old priest, who went dancing off into the corners of the bakery collecting a loaf in each of the four shapes and proceeded to pile them in the fugitive's lap.

-9-

Haj Harun

They simply didn't have time to believe a man who had been born a thousand years before Christ.

Whose mind, moreover, teemed with facts no one else had ever heard.

One afternoon after he had gone to live in the Home for Crimean War Heroes, O'Sullivan Beare was wandering in the Moslem Quarter when he found himself facing a blank wall at the end of an alley. Near him a wizened old Arab stood forlornly in a doorway. The Arab wore a faded yellow cloak and a rusting helmet tied in place with green ribbons. Unaware that anyone was there, the old man raised his cloak and pissed weakly into the alley.

O'Sullivan Beare jumped out of the way. The man's legs seemed too spindly to support him. The heavy helmet rolled when he moved and crashed down on his nose. After dropping his cloak he sighed, readjusted the helmet and once more stared sadly ahead at nothing.

Just as the baking priest said, thought Joe. He was right as right about Jerusalem and here's another one off in a different bog. He stepped back and saluted.

Beg pardon sir, could you tell me what campaign the helmet's from?

The old man was puzzled. He stirred and the decomposing metal released a shower of rust in his eyes.

He wiped away his tears and the helmet went awry again.

What's that?

The helmet. Which campaign might it be?

The First Crusade.

Jaysus and that must have been a hard one . . .

The old Arab lowered his head as if expecting a blow. He wept quietly.

Ridicule and defeat, abuse and humiliation, I've never expected anything else.

Oh no sir, no insult intended.

The eyes drifted in the direction of O'Sullivan Beare, the voice less far away now.

What? You don't mean you believe me when I say I fought in the Crusades?

No reason not to.

There isn't? But no one has believed anything I've said for a very long time.

Sorry to hear that sir.

Not for over two thousand years.

Dreadfully sorry sir.

And I wasn't on the Crusaders' side, I have to tell you that. I was defending my city against the invader.

I know how that is.

So naturally I was on the losing side. When you're defending Jerusalem you're always on the losing side.

I know how that is too. Terrible position to be in sir.

The old Arab tried to focus his eyes more closely.

See here, why do you keep calling me sir? No one's shown me any respect for centuries.

Because you're nobility and it's only proper.

The Arab made an effort to stand more erect, which he did for a few moments despite the arthritis crippling his back. His face showed surprise and confusion and a tiny hint of pride.

That was at least as far back as the reign of Ashurnasirpal. How did you guess?

Your eyes sir.

It's still there?

As clear as the last muezzin.

The Arab looked even more surprised and also embarrassed.

Don't call me sir, my name's Haj Harun. Now please tell me why you believe what I say instead of beating me when I say it?

What else would I be doing? Do you recognize this uniform?

No, I've never been too good with uniforms.

Well it's genuine Her Majesty's Forces, 1854, and I'm only twenty years old but I'm a hero of that war, here you behold the medals. And this special one was given to me by Victoria R herself although I was only a year old when she died. So there we are and that's Jerusalem for you in 1920, me back from the Crimea and you back from the Crusades, and as one veteran of the wars to another I thought I'd look you up.

The Arab studied the Victoria Cross. He smiled.

You're Prester John, aren't you. I was sure you'd get to Jerusalem sooner or later and I've been waiting for you. Please come right in so we can talk.

He disappeared through the doorway. For a moment Joe lingered in the alley undecided, but the sun was hot and his uniform heavy, so he followed. The first thing he saw was what appeared to be a bronze sundial set into the wall, a large ornately-cast piece. Attached to it near the ceiling was a set of chimes.

From Baghdad, said Haj Harun, noticing him eyeing the sundial. The fifth Abbasid caliphate. I used to deal in antiquities before I dedicated myself to defending the Holy City and lost everything I owned.

I see.

It was a portable sundial once.

I see.

Monstrously heavy but somehow it didn't seem to bother him. He wore it on his hip.

Did he now. And who might that have been?

I can't remember his name. He rented my back room one afternoon to do some writing and gave me that in appreciation.

Rented it for just one afternoon? I think that's all it was but he got a good deal done anyway. Then he packed up all his papers and sent them by camel caravan down to Jaffa where there was a ship waiting to transport the caravan to Venice.

And why not, I say. In good weather Venice would be a natural destination for a camel caravan.

Suddenly the chimes began to strike. They pealed twenty-four times, paused, pealed twenty-four times again and once more. Joe fingered his Victoria Cross uneasily.

Jaysus they shouldn't be doing that now.

Doing what?

Striking off three days just like that.

Why not?

They just shouldn't that's all, time's time. Time is, said Haj Harun airily. But the sun doesn't fall on the dial every day, sometimes it's cloudy and then the dial has to make up.

Haj Harun went over and sat in a decrepit barber's chair. Near the door was a small press for squeezing fruit with a rotting pomegranate beside it. Next to the barber's chair was a stand holding a bottle of murky water, a pan for spitting in, an old toothbrush with flattened bristles and an empty tube of Czech toothpaste. He picked at the moldy chair as he gloomily surveyed the room.

I went into the toothbrushing business at exactly the wrong time. Very few people find their way to the end of this alley and anyway, brushing teeth hasn't been the same since the war. Before the war you might have done well in it, the Turkish soldiers had awful teeth. But since they left and the English soldiers came it's been hopeless. Their teeth are certainly just as bad but they won't let an Arab brush them.

Bloody imperialists.

They also won't have them brushed in public. The Turks never minded but the English aren't the same.

Bloody hypocrites.

A wail rose down the alley. Haj Harun pulled his helmet down and braced himself. A moment later a crowd of shrieking men and women burst into the shop and raced back and forth clawing at the air. The Arab stared fixedly over their heads trying to maintain his dignity, and in a few seconds the looters had snatched up every movable object in the room and swept out the door. Gone were the pomegranate and press and barber's chair with its equipment, even the empty tube of Czech toothpaste. Haj Harun moaned softly and shrank back against the wall, yellow and emaciated and half dead from hunger.

Jaysus, who was that mob?

The Arab shuddered. He managed to wave his hand in resignation.

Mercantile elements of the citizenry, it's better to take no notice of them. They come to raid me sometimes. They want things to sell.

Bloody outrage.

There are worse. Look here.

He opened his mouth. Most of his teeth were gone and those that were left were broken off near the gums.

Rocks. They throw them at me.

Bloody shameful.

And these scars from their fingernails. They have very sharp fingernails.

Bloody terrible.

All true, but I suppose we have to accept certain troubles when going from Ceca to Mecca. All the women I ever married were dreadful.

Do you tell me that. Why did you marry them then?

That's so, but of course they didn't have an easy time of it either. You know that don't you?

O'Sullivan Beare nodded and walked into the back room of the shop. After the assault by the mob of Jerusalem mercantilists only two objects were left there, both far too heavy to move. He gazed at them thoughtfully.

An antique Turkish safe about four feet high, narrow, shaped like a filing cabinet or an impregnable sentry box.

A giant stone scarab about four feet long, a sly smile carved into its flat face.

You know that don't you?

So much rust had fallen into Haj Harun's eyes his cheeks were running with tears.

I mean of course they didn't have an easy time of it. Take my wife who was a Bulgarian Greek. The Greeks up there were educated and they also had to serve as moneylenders because there were no banks. The Bulgars could only sign their names with Xs, so every now and then they came around and massacred the Greeks to cancel their debts and cheer themselves up. My wife's family escaped during the massacre of 1910 and when they finally arrived in Jerusalem they were destitute, so you can't blame her for taking all my plates and cups and pots when she left me.

Joe studied the iron safe more closely. Why was it so tall and thin?

Then another of my wives was born in the deserted city of Golconda which used to be famous for its diamond trade, but it's been deserted since the seventeenth century and that's not a pleasant memory to have either, to come from a totally deserted city I mean. So look here, no wonder she wanted to have the security of some furniture and carpets and took all of mine when she left. You can see that can't you?

Joe rapped the antique safe. The muffled echoes were out of all proportion to the size of the safe. Haj Harun was roaming around and around the bare walls.

Still another wife was the daughter of a twelfth-century Persian poet whose song told of a pilgrimage made by a flock of birds in search of their king. Since the pilgrimage was over water most of the birds died, and when the survivors finally reached the palace behind the seven seas what did they discover but that each of them was actually the king. So see here, given a father who saw things that way it's not surprising she took all my vases and lamps. Naturally she wanted to surround herself with flowers and light.

Joe got down on his knees and rapped the safe more loudly. The reverberations were uncanny. Deep hollow echoes boomed up into the room. Something was going on here that he didn't understand.

Why do you wear a yellow cloak?

It was bright yellow when it was new but that was seven hundred years ago and since then it's faded.

Do you tell me so. But why yellow?

There must have been a reason but I can't recall it at the moment. Can you?

Joe shook his head. He still needed time to think.

What's that cord in the corner?

I had an electric light once but a dog was always sneaking in behind my back and biting the wire. He liked the shocks. Finally it was so full of holes I had to go back to using a candle. Did you know I discovered a comet no one else has ever heard of?

Did I? No I didn't. Tell me about it.

Well I knew it had to exist because of certain events in the lives of Moses and Nebuchadnezzar and Christ and Mohammed. I knew there had to be an explanation for all those odd things happening in the sky so I went to my copy of the Thousand and One Nights and was able to date it from some of the episodes.

Good, very sound. What's the cycle of your comet then?

Six hundred and sixteen years. It's been over five times since I've been in Jerusalem although the first four times I didn't know it, and I still don't know what happened in 1228 that was so important. Do you?

No, but I haven't studied the records for that year closely.

Nor have I as far as I know. Anyway the last time I saw it was in the desert on my annual haj. I met a dervish in a place where no man should have been and the strange light thrown by the comet's tail made him look seven and a half feet tall. It plays tricks, that comet.

Comet tricks, muttered Joe, as he continued noisily sounding the safe. Now he was sure of it. The echoes rose from deep in the ground.

He left the safe and went over to examine the giant stone scarab in another corner of the back room.

Why was it smiling in such a cunning way? He thumped its broad nose. He rapped his way down its back.

Yes he was sure of that too. The massive stone beetle was hollow. He sat down with the flat nose between his legs and began beating the nose with his fists, rapping out a rhythm. Haj Harun had stopped in front of a bare wall to adjust his helmet in a nonexistent mirror. The noise startled him and he peered toward the alley.

What's that out there?

Not out there, in here. I'm riding the scarab. It's hollow isn't it?

Oh just the scarab. Yes it is.

There's a secret latch hidden somewhere?

In the nostrils. A combination of latches, very clever. Built for smuggling.

What?

Mummies and bones. The Romans had strict sanitation codes and wouldn't allow dead bodies to be transported from one province to another. But the Egyptian traders here would pay well to have their mummies smuggled home when they died and the Jewish traders in Alexandria would also pay well to have their bones brought back here. An Armenian made quite a bit of money out of that trade. I must have bought it from him when he retired.

Ever use it yourself?

Not for smuggling but for something else. What was it?

Haj Harun backed away from the empty wall and gazed at the crumbling plaster.

I seem to remember taking naps in it. Is that possible? Why would I have done that? Age. My memory's going, all the years slide together. Now when were those naps, under the Mamelukes? I had the falling sickness then, at least I think it was then, and that might have been a reason for crawling inside the scarab and curling up there. But no, it must have been earlier. I also seem to recall bumping my head so that I was paralyzed from the neck up for a while. When? Under the Crusaders?

His voice was doubtful, then suddenly he smiled.

Yes that's it exactly. Those knights were always clanking around in their armor so I used the scarab for my siestas. It was the only quiet place I could find.

Still as still as stone, said Joe, who climbed off the scarab and went over to examine the mysterious safe once more.

Noisy days, said Haj Harun, his memory suddenly jarred into place by the prospect of a pageant of Crusaders banging their swords on the cobblestones.

Noisy but not the worst. When the Assyrians took the city they put rings through the lips of the survivors and led them away as slaves, everyone except our leaders, who were blinded and left behind in the deserted ruins to starve.

The Romans thought the people in the city were swallowing jewels, so they cut open stomachs and slit intestines but all they found was worn leather. The famine was so bad during the siege we had been eating our sandals.

The Crusaders killed about a hundred thousand and the Romans almost five hundred thousand. The Babylonians murdered less than the Assyrians but blinded more. The Ptolemies and the Seleucids also murdered on a smaller scale, as did the Byzantines and Mamelukes and Turks, generally speaking just the religious leaders and anyone who was educated. Naturally the people were made to change the churches into mosques and destroy the synagogues, or change the mosques into churches and destroy the synagogues, depending on the new conqueror. What came after that? Where was I? Oh yes, my last wife came after that.

Joe drummed loudly on the safe. The swelling echoes shook the walls of the empty shop.

She was the one who took what I had left, my books. She was a failure in life you see, and being an Arab the only explanation was that someone had betrayed her. There had to be a traitor in the house and who else was in the house but me?

Haj Harun sighed and straightened his helmet, which fell forward with a new rain of rust. The tears began running again.

But you have to remember I still wore socks in those days and the socks were always wet because my feet were always wet, and wet feet aren't pleasant in bed. She put up with it for a time and I don't deny it.

Where does it lead? asked Joe quietly.

Always having wet feet?

No, the shaft below the safe. It is a bottomless safe, isn't it?

Well not really. Deep but not bottomless.

How deep?

Right here about fifty feet

And there's a ladder?

Yes.

To where?

A tunnel that leads to the caverns.

How deep are the caverns?

Hundreds of feet? Thousands of feet?

Joe whistled softly. He sat down beside the safe and pressed his ear to the iron door. Far away a wind hummed. Haj Harun was retying the green ribbons under his chin.

What's down there?

Jerusalem. The Old City I mean.

Joe looked out at the alley. A lean cat was sneaking in front of the shop with some kind of wire clamped between its teeth.

Isn't that Jerusalem out there? The Old City I mean?

One of them.

And down below?

The other Old Cities.

O'Sullivan Beare whistled very softly.

How's that now?

Well Jerusalem has been continually destroyed, hasn't it. I mean it's been more or less destroyed several hundred times and utterly destroyed at least a few dozen times, say a dozen times that we know of since Nebuchadnezzar and before that another dozen times that we don't know of. And being on top of a mountain no one ever bothered to dig away the ruins when it was rebuilt, so the mountain has grown. Do you see?

So I do. And down there where your ladder goes?

What's always been there. A dozen Old Cities. Two dozen Old Cities.

With some of their treasures and monuments still?

Some. Things that are buried tend to be overlooked, and then in time they're forgotten altogether. Look here, in my lifetime I've seen a great many things forgotten, the dents in my helmet for example. Does anyone remember how I got those dents?

The wizened Arab paced aimlessly around the room.

Jaysus, thought Joe. Haj Harun's ladder. We are descending.

Being a native of the city, which had always been thronged with conquerors or pilgrims, Haj Harun had quite naturally spent most of his life in the service trades. During the Hebrew era he had begun his career by raising calves and later lambs. Under the Assyrians he was a stonecarver specializing in winged lions.

He was a landscape gardener under the Babylonians and a tentmaker under the Persians.

When the Greeks were in power he ran an all-night grocery store and when the Maccabees were in power he poured candles. During the Roman occupation he was a waiter.

For the Byzantines he painted ikons, for the Arabs he sewed cushions, for the Egyptians he cut stones again but this time with emphasis on square blocks. He was a masseur for rheumatic ailments during the Crusader occupations, shoed horses for the Mamelukes and distributed hashish and goats for the Ottoman Turks. In the beginning he had also spent intervals as a sorcerer and prophet and in the less demanding field of general medicine.

To succeed in sorcery he had shaved his head and had his credentials engraved on his skull with a stylus, so that in moments of crisis he could ask that his head be shaved and thereby prove his authenticity.

As a prophet he didn't wear a collar and have himself led around on a rope from customer to customer as was the common practice, preferring instead to sit in the bazaar shouting unsolicited warnings to passersby.

In medicine he dealt entirely with the pasty residue of a plant with star-shaped flowers known as Jerusalem cherry, a form of nightshade. These mixtures he prepared by mashing them on the filthy cobblestones around Damascus Gate, where he was frequently seen down on his hands and knees, doing a land of dance to escape the feet of the crowds.

He also used a more potent juice from the wilted leaves of deadly nightshade, an effective narcotic which also caused severe vomiting. This left Haj Harun weak most of the time, since by necessity he had to take his own cures several times a day. To give some substance to his vomit he consumed large bowls of mush made from Jerusalem artichokes.

During that period he still had the ability to address all men in their own tongues even when he himself didn't understand the language, a great advantage in Jerusalem. In this manner he soon acquired a reputation for being able to transform a loquat or a jackass or even the unintelligible cries of hawkers into astonishing portents of grandiose events.

In the course of time he had been known by many names he couldn't now remember, but after his first haj in the eighth century he had permanently taken the name Aaron, or Harun as the Arabs pronounced it, in honor of Harun al-Rashid who figured so prominently in the tales he loved above all others, the Thousand and One Nights. It was also after his first haj that he had dedicated himself to defending Jerusalem and its past and future inhabitants against all enemies. Yet despite his good intentions he had to admit his accomplishments remained vague.

Perhaps, as he said, because such a task is both immense and perpetual. Am I making myself clear?

Not quite, replied Joe dizzily. Could you be just a little more specific?

Haj Harun looked embarrassed.

I doubt it but I'll try. What about?

Oh I don't know. How about that time when you were practicing medicine. That's a good profession, why did you give it up?

Had to. The market for deadly nightshade disappeared overnight.

Why?

Someone started a rumor that wiped out the business. You see most of it was bought by women to enlarge the pupils of their eyes, to make them more beautiful. Well a young man whose wife was a customer of mine came to confide in me. They'd only been married a short time and it seems she wouldn't take him in the mouth. She thought it was unnatural or unsanitary or both. So I advised him.

What advice for such a problem?

I told him to tell her it was perfectly natural and sanitary and furthermore there was no better substance in the world for instantly enlarging the pupils of the eyes. For best results, I said, the dosage should be repeated every few hours. It was only a little lie to help their marriage you see, or maybe it wasn't a lie at all. Maybe it works, who knows. Do you know?

It is true that I do not. What subsequent developments in the matter?

Well he told her all that and she asked me, as her physician, if it was true and I said it was, and after that her husband went around looking so happily exhausted his friends began to wonder what was going on and asked him.

And?

And he told them, and they told their friends, and overnight all the men in Jerusalem were looking happily exhausted and I couldn't sell any more deadly nightshade because the women were getting too much of the other substance.

So the rumor that drove you out of business was started by yourself?

Haj Harun moved his feet uneasily.

It seems so.

Not exactly the way to maintain yourself in a profession is it, would you say?

No I guess not but look at it the other way. Didn't I help to make a lot of marriages happier?

Agreed, that help you must have been. Well what else?

What else what?

What else can you be specific about?

Let's see. Did you know that when the bedouin are starving they cut open the vein of a horse, drink a little and close the vein? I learned that on a haj.

I did not know it. And if they're horseless?

They make the camel vomit and drink that.

I see. I won't ask about camel-less days.

And that bedouin girls wear clusters of cloves in their noses? That they paint the whites of their eyes blue? That the hills around Kheybar are of volcanic origin? I learned all that on different hajes.

I see. Where's that?

A haj? Where does it lead you mean?

No, the place with the surrounding hills and so forth.

Oh that's near the great divide of the wadis of northern Arabia.

Good. What else?

Well once I supplied an Armenian antiquities dealer with some parchment that was fifteen hundred years old.

Had some left over did you?

I did. In the caverns. In a grave down there. I don't know why, do you?

Could you have been thinking of writing your memoirs fifteen hundred years ago and laid in a burial stash just in case?

It's possible, anything is. Anyway he was very desperate to get his hands on it. But you know, he wasn't really an antiquities dealer at all.

No, not at all. He spent all his time practicing penmanship, learning to write with both hands, I used to go and talk with him sometimes. And you know he wasn't really Armenian either. We spoke Aramaic together.

What's that?

The language that was used in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. And now that I think of it, that's probably the only time I've used it since then.

And very sensible too, taking advantage of the opportunity I mean. Probably non-Armenians who write with both hands and speak Aramaic don't turn up that often, not even in Jerusalem.

Haj Harun stirred. He frowned.

That's true. You know I didn't see him for seven years after that, not until he wandered into my shop one morning looking like a ghost. You've never seen a man so dusty. And his nose gone and one ear falling off and a bundle under his arm.

Hard times in the desert, you think?

It would seem so. He said something about having been in the Sinai and talking to a blind mole down there but it wasn't clear at all, I couldn't make any sense out of it. He was lost, poor man, he couldn't even find his way around Jerusalem. He begged me to lead him to the Armenian Quarter, to the basement hole where he used to live there, so I did.

Excellent. What event occurring thereby?

None really. He began digging in the basement and dug down a few feet until he came to an old unused cistern. Then he put the bundle he'd been carrying in the cistern and filled up the hole. Why did he do that? Do you know?

Not at the moment but fresh ideas are always coming to me.

You see he didn't realize I was there, he seemed to have lost hold by then. He was muttering all the time and passing his hand over his eyes as if he were trying to wipe something away.

Muttering, losing hold, do you tell me so. Well that's a good one too. Is there anything else now?

Only those two discoveries I made as a child.

Only two you say?

The first had to do with balls.

Playing kind?

Well, my own.

Oh I see.

Yes. When I was a little fellow I always thought they were for storing piss. Looking at them it seemed reasonable enough, but then when I was a little older it turned out to be not that way at all.

That's true, it didn't. What second and final discovery?

That women and even emperors took shits just like I did. Once a day more or less with the same explosions and gases.

A curious proposition.

Yes. Very. It took me at least a year to get used to the idea and you know how long a year can be when you're a child. Doesn't it often seem like forever?

Forever, true. Often.

You know how I made those two discoveries?

Not precisely I believe.

Well it was from a blind storyteller who was chanting beside the road while an imbecile wrote down what he said. They were adult stories and I shouldn't have been listening but I was. I was very young then.

I see.

Yes, added Haj Harun wanly. But isn't it true we were all young and innocent once?

By far the most striking influence on Haj Harun's early years was his birthmark, an impressive phenomenon that had long been dormant and now appeared only on rare occasions.

This birthmark was an irregular shade of faded purple that began above his left eye, gathered momentum around his nose, cascaded down his neck and swirled intermittently over his entire body in a restless proclamation of stops and starts, tentative here and emphatic there, now lashing out boldly and now retreating, lapsing and flowing by turns as it swung across his loins and drifted down one leg or the other to vanish near an ankle in the manner of a map of some fabulous land of antiquity, Atlantis perhaps or the unknown empire of the Chaldeans, or the known but constantly shifting empire of the Medes.

When the purple pattern had still been largely visible there were those who professed to see in it a general layout of the streets of Ur before that city had been silted over by the primordial flood. To others it offered indistinct clues to the essential military strongpoints throughout the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, while still others claimed it was an accurate diagram of the oases in the Sinai.

In any case the birthmark drew attention to Haj Harun early in his career. By the time of the first Isaiah he was a well-known figure in Jerusalem, variously respected or held in awe by men of many races and creeds.

But during the Persian occupation a change set in.

He was no longer considered totally reliable by either natives or foreigners, and when Alexander stopped off on his way to India, Haj Harun was already viewed as an obscure oddity, despite the fact that he had lived in the city much longer than anyone else. Certain disreputable soothsayers still sought his advice in private, but even they had to be mindful of public opinion and ignore him in the street.

Once begun the erosion was rapid. Haj Harun's confidence in himself steadily declined. He lost his forthright habits of speech and with them his fearless presentations. Well before the Roman era no one in Jerusalem took him seriously. By then he had already seen too many peoples come and go and witnessed too many eras erupting and ending. He had a muddled way of lumping all events together as if they had occurred yesterday, and when strangers happened to make the mistake of listening to him they were sent reeling in all directions, reality changing before their eyes as swiftly as the borders of the purple landscape that curled around his frail body.

Therefore from about the time of Christ there was a total eclipse in Haj Harun's credibility. The inhabitants of Jerusalem were forever piling new walls and gates and temples and churches and mosques on the ruins of the past, forever covering the old rubble with new bazaars and gardens and courtyards, forever massing and rearing new structures.

They were busy and they simply didn't have time to believe a man who had been born a thousand years before Christ. Whose mind, moreover, teemed with facts no one else had ever heard.

-10-

The Scarab

An Egyptian stone beetle and great secret scarab stuffed with the first arms for the future Jewish underground army.

Nearly three thousand years later in 1920, young O'Sullivan Beare was far from being ready to retire. As soon as he entered the Home for Crimean War Heroes he began to scheme, looking for ways to make money, hinting in various Arab coffee shops that he had extensive experience in illegal affairs. Before long a man of indeterminate nationality approached him.

Smuggling arms? He nodded. He described his four years on the run in southern Ireland and the man seemed impressed. From where to where? Constantinople to here. For whom? The Haganah. What's that? The future Jewish underground army. Who's it going to fight, the English? If necessary. Good, bloody English.

You'll have the honor of bringing them their first weapons, added the man. If the money is right, thought Joe.

Money. He remembered Haj Harun's lost treasure map, which he was sure existed. The old Arab had referred to it only in passing as the story of my life, but Joe had been too intrigued to let the matter rest there.

You wrote it down? he'd asked Haj Harun.

The old Arab had waved his arms in circles. He couldn't remember whether he had or not but to Joe the implication was that he had and later lost or misplaced it, this real or secret history of the riches he'd discovered in the caverns beneath Jerusalem, in the Old Cities he'd explored down there and then mixed up in his mind with tales from the Thousand and One Nights and the other fancies that obsessed him, a detailed guide to the incalculable wealth brought to Jerusalem over the millennia by conquerors and pious fanatics.

He'd pressed Haj Harun about it.

Are you sure you don't have any idea what you could have done with it?

With what?

The story of your life.

Haj Harun had shrugged helplessly and wrung his hands, certainly wanting to please his new friend by recalling this or anything else yet simply unable to, his memory slipping as he said and the years all sliding together, pumping his arms in circles and sadly admitting he just couldn't be sure, just couldn't say, the past was too confusing.

Was he forgiven? Were he and Prester John still friends?

That they were, Joe had answered, nothing changed that. But the treasure map had never left his mind and now he wondered whether to mention it to his new employer, who seemed to know a good deal about Jerusalem. Why not chance it? Carefully, without enthusiasm, he asked the man if he had ever heard of a document that supposedly included three thousand years of Jerusalem's history, written by a madman and worthless, thought to have disappeared not too long ago.

The man studied him curiously. Was he referring to the myth of an original Sinai Bible? An original version totally unlike the forgery later bought by the czar?

The czar. Even the czar had been after it. So eager to get his hands on the map he'd been going around snapping up forgeries.

That's it. What do they say happened to it?

Supposedly it was buried. But no one has ever seen it and of course it's all nonsense, the fabrication of a demented mind.

Demented certainly, nonsense of course, buried assuredly. Haj Harun unlocking his antique safe one evening and putting a foot on the ladder, a short time later padding steathily away down a tunnel fifty feet below the ground for a long private night in the caverns.

What do they say was in it exactly?

The man smiled. That's the point. Supposedly everything is in it Everything. Persian palaces and Babylonian tiaras and Crusader caches, Mameluke plunder and Seleucid gold. A map so valuable the czar had been willing to trade his empire for it When do they say it was buried?

In the last century.

Yes that would be right, Haj Harun would still have had his wits about him then. He'd have written it and hidden it and then forgotten where he'd hidden it when he was seized by the idea of his holy mission. He saw the old man stumbling around the walls of his empty shop staring into corners. Mission to where?

The moon. Residence? Lunacy. Occupation? Lunatic.

Jaysus that was his Haj Harun all right. Explorer of secret caverns and discoverer of two dozen Old Cities, mapmaker of the centuries, the former King of Jerusalem now reduced to peering at blank walls and absentmindedly adjusting his helmet, which released a shower of rust to fill his eyes with tears and blur the figure he'd hoped to see in his nonexistent mirror.

The man on the other side of the table was talking about routes from Constantinople. Trails, roads, paths, English border posts and sentries, defiles to be crossed at night. Joe held up his hand.

Here now, aren't we talking about the first arms ever to be smuggled to the Haganah? What's an everyday wagon with a false bottom doing on such an occasion? Figs for cover? I have a better idea.

There's a giant stone scarab I happen to know about, hollow inside so that it could hold a lot. A scarab, I said. A giant Egyptian stone scarab.

The man gazed at him. Joe lowered his voice.

Picture it now. From the heart of the enemy's camp a huge beetle inches across an ancient parched homeland one day to be fertile again. A relentless scarab creeping forward, an Egyptian scarab as patient and hard as stone because it is stone as still stone. A scarab as old as the pyramids, as determined as the people who will now escape those pyramids, a giant stone scarab scaling the slopes of the mountain to reach Jerusalem at last in the first light of a new day, an Egyptian stone beetle and great secret scarab stuffed with the first arms for the future Jewish underground army.

O'Sullivan Beare leaned back and smiled, suspecting this man Stern might pay him well.

He had the baking priest's papers and Stern's instructions, now all he had to do was get Haj Harun to agree to the trip, since there was no hope of parting him from the scarab. This morning, he said, I overheard someone mention a man named Sinbad. Who is he anyway? A local trader?

Haj Harun abruptly stopped pacing along the walls.

A local trader? Do you mean you've never heard of Sinbad's mighty adventures?

No. What were they then?

Haj Harun took a deep breath and launched into a headlong account. Twenty minutes passed before the sundial chimes struck, causing him to pause.

Midnight though the sun's out, said Joe. When was the last time you went to sea?

Haj Harun's hands hung in midair.

What?

To sea.

Who?

You yourself.

Me?

Yes.

Haj Harun lowered his head in embarrassment

But I've never been to sea. I've never left Jerusalem except to make my annual haj.

The hell you say. Sinbad did all that and you've never been to sea even once?

Haj Harun covered his face, overwhelmed by the pathetic failure of his life. His hands shook, his voice quivered.

It's true. How can I ever make up for it?

Why we'll make a trip of course. We'll follow resolutely in the wake of Sinbad.

I can't. I can't leave my treasures unprotected.

No need to. No one can make off with the safe, it's too heavy or too deeply rooted or both. Your helmet you can wear, Sinbad probably wore one himself. And the scarab we'll take with us.

We will? Would a ship captain allow it?

We'll tell him it's cargo. We'll say we're in the antiquities business and we're lugging it to Constantinople to sell for some lighter pieces. He'll understand. Who wants to own something that heavy? Then when we come back we'll say we couldn't get a proper price for it, all neat and tidy and no one suspecting a thing.

What do you say?

Haj Harun smiled dreamily.

Resolutely in the wake of Sinbad? After all these years?

The same afternoon the sea voyage was proposed Haj Harun noticed something that bewildered him. All at once his new friend had begun to refer to his past as a Bible. More specifically he called it the Sinai Bible.

What did it mean? Why was his past a Bible to his friend and what did it have to do with the Sinai? Was he being accepted as Moses' spiritual companion and brother in the wilderness because his name was Aaron?

He pondered the problem as best he could and kept returning to Moses. After forty years of wandering Moses had arrived somewhere, and although he had been wandering about seventy-five times that long he hadn't gotten anywhere at all yet. But in the near future? Did his friend have faith in the eventual success of his mission? Was that what he was saying?

Haj Harun peeked shyly at the crumbling plaster in his nonexistent mirror. He straightened his helmet.

Was it blasphemous? Should he accept this new information as he had accepted so many apparently incomprehensible truths over the centuries?

Humbly he agreed it was his duty. His friend was insistent and he couldn't turn away from facts just because they seemed unlikely. Facts had to be believed. Although he had never suspected it until this moment, he, Haj Harun, was the secret author of the Sinai Bible.

And once having accepted it as fact he easily fitted it into his background. That very evening he was referring to the Sinai Bible as his diary, an account of adventures recorded in the course of a Jerusalem winter during some earlier epoch of his life.

By epoch you mean the last century? asked O'Sullivan Beare.

Haj Harun smiled, he nodded. He couldn't quite recall why he had written down what he had, but probably it had been to pass the time and forget the icy drafts in the caverns where it was likely he had been living then.

Why this likelihood? asked O'Sullivan Beare.

Haj Harun looked doubtful, then laughed.

Because the caverns have been my winter residence as far back as I can remember.

They have? Then you admit the Sinai Bible deals solely with what you found in the caverns?

Oh yes indeed, answered the old man grandly. Didn't you know that's been my routine for some time now? Wandering around the Judean hills in the summer enjoying the sunshine, back to my shop and the streets of the Old City for the brisk clear air of autumn, the caverns of the past in winter and a haj in the spring? I've kept to that schedule for millennia and why not? What could be more exhilarating?

The morning they were due to leave O'Sullivan Beare was locking up the safe when he noticed a small piece of paper caught in a crevice at the back. He pulled it out and passed it to Haj Harun.

A reminder you wrote yourself before the Crusaders arrived?

Not mine. It's a letter in French.

Can you read it?

Of course.

Well who's it to then?

Someone named Strongbow.

Bloody myth, muttered O'Sullivan Beare, who had heard stories about the nineteenth-century explorer in the Home for Crimean War Heroes. Never existed. Couldn't. No Englishman was ever that daft. What's it say?

It thanks this man Strongbow for a present he sent across the Sahara in honor of a special occasion.

What's the present?

A pipe of Calvados.

All that way and only a pint?

No, pipe, a kind of measurement I believe. About one hundred and fifty gallons. Say about seven hundred bottles.

And why not, might as well say that as anything else. What's the special occasion?

The birth of his nine hundredth child.

Do you say so. Whose nine hundredth child?

The man who wrote the letter.

How's he sign himself?

Father Yakouba.

Oh I see, a priest. Where's he writing from?

Timbuktu.

What?

That's all there is except the number on the letter. They must have had a large correspondence.

Why this opinion?

The number is four thousand and something. The script is faded there.

Well Jaysus it should be. A priest fathering nine hundred children? Seven hundred bottles of Calvados marching to Timbuktu? Four thousand letters each way? What's the date on it?

Midsummer night, 1840.

What were you doing then?

Haj Harun looked puzzled.

Never mind. At least you weren't tramping around the Sahara boiling your brains in the sun. Come on, here comes the cart for the scarab.

Sinbad's hour arrived. In Jaffa they boarded a Greek caïque and a course was set for southern Turkey.

Haj Harun was sick from the beginning, unable to go below decks because of the engine fumes and unable to keep his balance topside because he was so weak from vomiting. He was afraid the waves would wash him overboard and eventually O'Sullivan Beare had to lash him to the gunwale beside the scarab to keep him from tumbling around and hurting himself.

The Irishman crouched astride the scarab holding its ropes like reins, riding it backward to Constantinople. The boat pitched violently. As each new wave broke over the bow Haj Harun clenched his jaw and closed his eyes. The waves smashed down, his body writhed, a stream of water shot out of his mouth.

How many? shouted O'Sullivan Beare.

How many what? groaned Haj Harun. Like I said, how many others know about the Sinai Bible?

The bow of the boat sank out of sight, a wall of water loomed in the sky. Haj Harun pressed himself against the gunwale in terror. The sea swept over them with a roar and the boat began to climb.

What did you say?

Two or three.

That's all?

At any given moment, but after all we're talking about three thousand years of moments.

Jaysus.

Haj Harun screamed. A new wave rose majestically. Haj Harun turned his head.

How many does that add up to all together then?

Twelve?

Only twelve?

More or less.

But that's nothing at all.

I know it's nothing. Could the number have something to do with the moon or the tribes of Israel?

Are you sure only twelve more or less?

Haj Harun wanted to be brave. If he had been standing on solid ground in Jerusalem he would have straightened his shoulders at least a little and pushed back his helmet and fixed his gaze on the domes and towers and minarets of his beloved city. But here he was helpless.

Yes, he whispered, trembling and ashamed. Then once again he tried to be hopeful as he had by invoking and aligning himself with the twelve tribes and the moon.

There's an old saying that there are only forty people in the world and we get to know only a dozen of them in our lifetime. Might that explain it?

O'Sullivan Beare nodded solemnly as if weighing this information. It might explain the moon and lunacy but not much else.

I've heard that saying, he shouted, but does it apply to a life as long as yours? I mean if you've lived three thousand years how can so few people have known you?

Not quite three thousand, whispered Haj Harun. I'm sixteen years short of that.

All right, not quite three thousand. Now who are these dozen people? Emirs and patriarchs? Chief rabbis? Princes of the church? People like that?

Oh no, whispered Haj Harun.

Well who?

Do you remember that man who walks back and forth on the top of the steps that lead down to the crypt in the church?

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre? The one who never stops? The one who's always muttering to himself? The man you said has been doing that for the last two thousand years?

Yes that's him. Well he believes me. Or at least he didn't beat me when I told him about it.

Did he stop walking back and forth?

No.

Stop muttering to himself?

No.

Did he even look at you?

Haj Harun sighed. No.

All right, who else then?

There was a cobbler once. I went into his cubbyhole and told him about it and he didn't beat me either.

Where was that?

Somewhere in the Old City.

Where?

I can't quite recall.

When?

I don't remember.

Who else?

I can't think of anyone else but it may come to me.

Beautiful, thought the Irishman, just no competition at all. The map's there for the taking.

By Jaysus is that the truth? he shouted.

Oh God the truth, moaned Haj Harun as the boat shot down and down, as a monstrous wave leapt into the sky and he turned his head to receive the vicious blow on his other cheek.

The day they docked in Constantinople the stomach of the stone scarab was tightly packed with dismantled Czech rifles. The return voyage was just as rough and by the time they arrived Haj Harun had gone without food for three weeks. In Jaffa the heavy scarab was lowered off the boat into a cart. There was little traffic on the pier and the English customs official seemed to want to pass the time.

Couldn't make a sale up there?

Not offered enough this trip but next time we'll make it.

The official was staring at Haj Harun, at the rusting helmet that kept crashing down on his nose. The old man was walking in circles, anxious to finish the last stage of the journey.

Who is he? whispered the official. I mean who does he think he is?

He doesn't think, he knows. He's the last King of Jerusalem.

The what?

That's right.

And the scarab's his?

Yes.

Where'd he get it?

From the former king.

And when was that?

The twelfth century I think. He's not too good on dates, uniforms either.

The official smiled and picked up his pen.

Name?

MacMael n mBo, baking priest.

Permanent place of residence, Mr. Priest?

The Home for Crimean War Heroes, Jerusalem.

Nationality?

Crimean.

Status of traveler?

Retired war hero.

Present occupation?

Keeper of the royal scarab, second class.

The customs official smiled but O'Sullivan Beare's face was serious. He was having difficulty holding Haj Harun, who seemed ready to walk off the side of the pier at any moment.

Expect you'll be seeing a promotion soon?

Within the decade probably.

Fine. Now just point the old man in this direction so I can ask him a question or two.

I wouldn't, not if you want to keep your sanity.

The official laughed.

Name? Residence? Profession?

Haj Harun muttered his name, then repeated Jerusalem three or four times.

How's that? Profession?

Jerusalem, said Haj Harun,

That's a profession?

For him it is.

Now listen, just have him tell me something he's done in his life. Anything at all, I don't care, I just want to fill out this form.

Go ahead and tell him then, said Joe.

Indeed I will, answered Haj Harun. Once I wrote the Sinai Bible.

The what?

The Bible. I'm sure you've heard of it.

Well that's just lovely. And what, my friend, is the Sinai Bible?

The original Bible, whispered Joe. I mean it's the oldest one that's ever been found only now it's lost again. He misplaced it.

The customs official swore.

Who misplaced it?

This Arab here called Aaron. The man who wrote it.

Get your arses off my pier, shouted the official.

O'Sullivan Beare nodded pleasantly. He bent and heaved, Haj Harun broke into a wheezing cough.

Pushing and pulling they wheeled the heavy cart with its secret load of weapons down the quay, gathered momentum midway and had to run to keep up as the giant stone beetle went hurtling into the Holy Land.

The next day they were trudging up the heights toward Jerusalem in a cloudbank. They climbed in silence beside the cart, Joe prodding the donkey and Haj Harun struggling along behind. Toward the end of the afternoon Haj Harun spoke for the first time.

It's my last trip.

Why this sentiment?

No food in three weeks. I'm sick.

And Sinbad and all the voyages he made? You can't forget that can you and just give up?

No I guess I can't. It's true there's much to bear and we have to keep trying.

His chin fell to his chest, slamming the helmet into his nose. There was little light from the overcast sky and his eyes were watering as usual so he was having trouble finding the path. For several hours he had been straying off into the wastes stumbling over rocks and bushes. His hands were scratched and cut, he limped from a bruised knee on one leg and a sprained ankle on the other. Blood oozed out of a jagged gash in his cheek.

The cold wind ripped at them. Joe plodded along with his head down. All at once there was a loud crash. The donkey stopped, Joe went back down the path to see what had happened.

Haj Harun lay stretched on the ground on his face next to a tall narrow boulder. He had walked over it blindly, one foot on each side, or rather he would have walked over it if the boulder hadn't been waist-high. The rock had smashed into his groin tearing muscles and cracking bones. He had lost his balance and fallen on his head twisting a leg as he went down. Only his helmet, newly dented down the middle, had saved him from crushing his skull.

Joe rolled him over. One leg looked broken and the entire pelvic region was soaked in blood. He groaned and lay still.

That's it, I can't take any more, you might as well go on without me.

The leg?

Numb, it won't move, I can't move, my insides are all torn apart. For centuries I've been trying to do it, trying to go on, but this time it's over, I'm finished and I know it. I'm too old and tired, just a miserable sack of pains, nothing but aches and more aches, no I can never move again. Oh I know you thought you could help and you did but I'm beyond helping now, I've reached the very end. There's a limit after all, sadly there is. So take the kingdom, Prester John, it's yours, and take the scarab and the safe and the sundial, they're yours too. You know, I used to think I'd have no regrets when the end came but now I know I'm no match for Sinbad and all those other people I dreamed about, no match for anyone at all.

Once I thought I could do something but it never worked out. That cobbler and that man on the top of the steps who doesn't even know I'm there, they're the only ones who will listen to me, you're right about that. Other people just beat me, they always have. They beat me because I'm foolish. They call me a fool and I know I am. Just an old fool who has never done anything, never accomplished one thing, nothing at all.

Stop this now, said Joe. Stop it right here. The city depends on you, it's survived because of you. Where would it be without you to defend it? Who would rebuild it? How would it keep growing higher? What would happen to the caverns?

Haj Harun sobbed quietly.

No, I wanted to think all those things but they're not true. You know my wives were probably right after all, I should have been content to live like other people. I was comfortable, there was more than enough to eat and I was never cold, and since then I've done nothing but starve and shiver and never sleep, never get any rest at all because my gums hurt so much when I lie down. And they warned me, I don't deny it.

Don't be a fool, they said. Why give up everything for this hopeless mission? Do you want to be cold all the time? Do you want to starve? You must be mad.

Haj Harun's crumpled figure was all but lifeless. He lay on the stony ground gasping painfully for breath, his face smeared with blood. Blood and rust filled his eyes. The circle of blood below his waist was spreading. The broken leg was bent awkwardly to one side.

Joe knelt holding the old man's hands, which were so cold it frightened him. His pulse was uneven and growing weaker.

It couldn't be. Was the old warrior really dying?

A sudden warmth fell on his shoulders. He looked up. The sky had opened and a fierce wind was peeling the clouds back over the hills. Directly above them, lit by the sun, was Jerusalem.

Look, he shouted.

Haj Harun's lips moved. There was a gurgle deep in his throat.

It's no use, I can't see. I tried and failed and it's over.

No, look.

He gathered Haj Harun up in his arms and wiped the blood and rust out of his eyes. The old man's head rolled back. He gasped.

Jerusalem.

Yes.

Right there.

Yes.

Haj Harun struggled out of his arms. He crawled to his knees and planted one foot. He grasped the boulder and pulled himself up never taking his eyes off the mirage above him. Wildly he lurched away from the boulder, slipped and nearly fell but somehow kept going, staggering and coughing and spitting, cackling and stumbling, half naked on his spindly crooked legs tottering up the hillside, laughing and trailing blood and no longer caring whether he was on the path or not, waving his arms frantically as he yelled.

I'm coming, wait I'm coming.

-11-

Maud

Once more a dream and a place to dream.

The bleak first memories better to be forgotten as they had been for forty years.

A farm in Pennsylvania where she was born toward the end of the century, her poker-playing father gone before she knew him, abandoning his wife and child to go west. Her mother managing a few years before she swallowed a dose of Paris green in despair and when that didn't work went out to the barn and hanged herself.

Maud hungry and thinking it was time for supper, calling her mother and going to look, stepping through the open barn doorway with a little skip.

A taut stiff rope. A straight stiff body hanging in the shadows.

Screaming and running, too young to understand everything could be taken away by a footstep through a doorway. Running and screaming, Why have they left me?

The desolate mining town where her silent grandmother lived alone, an old Cheyenne woman whose husband had been a murderer, sent away. The old Indian woman not saying a word for days at a time, her face flat and dead behind the counter of the small saloon she ran, a dark filthy place where little Maud poured beer at ten o'clock in the morning and stared at the tense blackened faces of the miners as they whispered about another broken lift cable and mangled bodies three hundred feet below the ground, learning arithmetic by adding up what the exhausted miners drank.

An ugly world and she was frightened. People left you, why? What had you done? Everyone always went away and there was no one to trust, so she dreamed. At home alone she took off her clothes and danced in front of a mirror, dreaming because dreams alone were safe and beautiful.

All else was grime and coal dust and dangling ropes, old women who never spoke and murderers who never came back and haggard worn-out faces, hopeless whispers and the terror of doors and footsteps.

She worked hard to escape, to become the best skater in the world, it was her whole life as a child. The clean white ice sparkled as she flew across it on the glittering hard surface of her dream, a still silent surface so white and yet so thin above the swirling currents of life that could spin ever deeper into blackness and a blind world of twisting creatures unknown in a young girl's dreams.

She won competitions and more competitions and when she was only sixteen she was chosen to join the future American Olympic team that was going on an exhibition tour in Europe. The year was 1906 and the first exhibition was in the resort town of Bled, which was where she met a man with the curious name of Catherine and where it all began.

A strange name for a strange man, a rich Albanian who was the head of one of the leading Albanian clans, whose native tongues were Tosk and Gheg, who lived in a seventeenth-century castle.

Tosk and Gheg, a castle in a mysterious land. Within a week she left for Albania with Catherine Wallenstein to become his wife.

Almost at once she discovered she was pregnant and at the same time Catherine ceased to take any notice of her. Increasingly he was away on what were called his hunting trips. Toward the end of her pregnancy Maud learned the horrible truth about these forays from an elderly woman named Sophia who had a peculiar hold over the castle, a woman referred to by everyone for some reason as Sophia the Unspoken.

Her mysterious position in the castle was beyond explanation. Sometimes Maud had the impression she might once have had some intimate connection with Catherine's dead father, yet she also hinted her mother had been no more than a lowly servant in the place, a cleaning woman attached to the stables. In any case she had been born in the castle and passed her whole life there, and now she seemed to be its real master while Catherine was little more than a stranger who came and went. The old woman completely ignored him and he did the same to her, even to the point where they never addressed one another. To both of them it was as if the other didn't exist Yet she was kind to Maud and often talked to her, especially about Catherine's father, who had died insane. The old woman was obsessed by his memory and whenever she mentioned him she became a little mad herself. Her voice was hushed and childlike with a peasant's awe for superstition and she told preposterous tales about the last of the Skanderbeg Wallensteins almost as if he were still alive, although from what the other servants said he must have died at least three decades ago, long before any of them had come to the castle. Of Catherine's mother, who apparently had died in childbirth, Sophia the Unspoken never said a word.

And then having mentioned Catherine's birth, the old woman suddenly went into a rage. She clenched her fists and muttered wildly, spewing out the monstrous visions of a demented mind.

A vicious child, she hissed. At first he killed only wild animals. He trapped the females in the mountains and ripped them open to roast the embryo. But later he began going into the mountains disguised as a holy man, just as he does today, hunting for stray boys. When he finds one he carries him off and ties him up and uses him, uses him and cuts him until the boy's nearly dead, then hacks off the head and eats the mouth. Do you understand? The peasants suspect it's him but they can't do anything about it because he's a Wallenstein. All they can do is never let their little boys out of their sight for an instant, but that makes no difference to him because there are always gypsies wandering through the mountains to provide new victims for his ecstasies, more sacrifices for his rites.

Thus Sophia raved in her boundless hatred for Catherine until finally Maud had to lock her door and refuse to see her.

A few weeks before Maud was to give birth, Sophia broke into her room one night. Maud had never seen the old woman so crazed. She screamed at her to leave but Sophia seized her by the arm and pulled her to the door with an unnatural strength.

Tonight you must see it all, she hissed, dragging her down the hall to Catherine's room where she worked a concealed lever in a desk. Inside the secret compartment was a thick book in a pale covering.

His life, she said, bound in human skin. Touch it.

Maud pulled away in terror but Sophia still held her tightly. She dragged her down a corridor to the back of the castle and lifted a tiny shutter in the darkness. They were looking down on a small windowless courtyard Maud had never seen before and there in the moonlight crouched Catherine, naked and thrusting, the hindquarters of a ram between his legs, his strong hands wrapped around the animal's neck.

To break it at exactly the moment, hissed Sophia. Now do you believe me?

Sophia had a carriage waiting and Maud left at once. By noon the following day she had gone into labor.

Catherine, in pursuit with forty horsemen, found the farmhouse where she lay and slaughtered all the inhabitants before ordering some of his party to carry his newborn son back to the castle. His left eyelid was drooping in the familiar Wallenstein manner of past generations and to Maud he said nothing. His only interest now was to return to the castle and murder Sophia before she escaped.

But as it happened Sophia hadn't tried to escape. She was waiting for him, standing rigidly in a window of the old tower room where her lover had first learned to play Bach's Mass in B Minor nearly a hundred years ago. As Catherine neared the castle he caught sight of her. She glared at him, slowly making the sign of the cross and at that moment his furious gallop came to an end. His horse reared, a convulsion seized him and he was thrown to the ground.

His men propped him against a tree. His arms twitched violently, his mouth frothed, his knees jerked against his chest in successive spasms. Blood trickled over his lips and the veins in his face began to rupture.

In a few seconds it was over and the once powerful body of Catherine Wallenstein lay dead, not struck down by some primitive paroxysm of rage as it appeared, rather felled by the terminal onslaught of a massive and incurable disorder that had been ravaging him for years with a fever resembling paratyphoid, noncommunicable among humans, a condition visited upon him during the onset of puberty when he had first contracted a rare and largely extinct mountain strain of Albanian hoof and mouth disease.

Maud meanwhile, dazed and sickly and understanding none of it, crept on toward Greece with her two gifts from Sophia the Unspoken, a purse of Wallenstein gold and the secret of the Sinai Bible.

In Athens she eventually found work as a governess and came to know a Cretan visitor to the bouse, a fiery nationalist and soldier whose father had been one of the leaders of the Greek war for independence.

Although raised in the wealthy Greek community in Smyrna, Yanni had run away when he was sixteen to join the Cretan insurrection against the Turks in 1896.

He had the tall powerful frame and deep blue eyes common to the remote mountain area in southwestern Crete where he and his father had been born, an isolated enclave of shepherds who were said to be direct descendants of the Dorians, their harsh region notorious for both the savage bloodshed of its vendettas and the fierce independence of its people, so unyielding the Turks had never fully subdued them in their two-hundred-year occupation.

Yanni was proud of this heritage and always wore the costume of his native mountains, high black boots and black jodhpurs and a black scarf tied around his head, in his waistband a long pistol with a white grip and a knife with a white handle split at the end in the Minoan symbol of a bull's horns, a wild and dashing sight on the quiet streets of Athens where he looked like a ferocious corsair from another era, eyes alert and quick in his step, mouth set in such a way men often crossed the street to avoid him.

Yet there was another, softer side to him when he was with Maud. Then the powerful man who bristled with weapons and honor and courage fell into moods so awkward his direct and tender feelings were almost childlike in their simplicity. Suddenly he would look bewildered and fumble for words, lose them and end up staring at the floor helplessly gripping his huge hands.

It was flattering but she didn't prolong it. My eagle, she called him as she asked him to tell her about his mountains in Crete, and then all at once his awkwardness was gone and he was off soaring on the heroic words that had brought his people sweeping out of their mountain retreat again and again to fire yet another revolution in Crete down through the long nineteenth century, every ten years freedom or death, just as soon as a new generation of young men was old enough to fight and be slaughtered.

After a courtship that lasted a year his friend came to her with Yanni's formal proposal of marriage in which he stated that since she was an American, where the custom didn't prevail, he didn't expect a dowry, Maud smiling when the man gravely emphasized the depths of Yanni's love by pointing out that for a man of his name and reputation even a dowry of two hundred healthy olive trees would have been modest in Crete.

After they were married he took her to Smyrna to meet his half-brother, a man then almost sixty, nearly thirty years older than himself.

Not at all like me, he said with a smile, but family's important in Greece so that doesn't matter. And he's a kind man who means no harm, I think you'll like him.

Maud did like him immediately, fascinated by the strangeness of it all as they sat having tea in the garden of his beautiful villa overlooking the Aegean, Yanni nodding respectfully in his fierce costume and trying not to crush the delicate teacup in his hands, his worldly half-brother Sivi immaculate in one of the elegant dressing gowns he always seemed to wear until sundown, languidly passing pastries and discoursing on the opera he was to see that evening or relating the latest gossip of Smyrna's sophisticated international society.

When they returned to Athens, Yanni left her almost at once to enlist in the Greek army that was preparing defenses in the north. He came back a few times during her pregnancy but was away in 1912

fighting the Turks in Macedonia when their daughter was born, and away again a year later fighting the Bulgarians when the baby died. Maud tried not to be bitter but the resentment was there deep within her.

After the Balkan wars came the fighting on the Salonika front and in 1916 she received a telegram saying Yanni had died in a malaria epidemic. Maud cried but it also seemed she had been alone almost from the beginning, a young woman in a foreign land whose childhood dreams had briefly come to life only to slip away again after her first few months with Yanni, still not admitting to herself that once more she felt someone she loved had left her.

Sivi came to see her and helped her with money, He offered to pay her fare back to America if she wanted to go but she said she wasn't ready yet, she wanted to be alone and study, languages she thought so she could earn a living doing translations. Over the next few years they wrote to each other and she saw him several times in Athens and Smyrna, always enjoying the visits yet always puzzled how the brothers could have been so unalike.

He was away so much, she said, sometimes I have the feeling I never really knew him.

Oh you knew him all right, said Sivi. What you saw was what he was, mountain men like that take their freedom or death in an uncomplicated manner.

And as for us being so different, he added mischievously, one of us was obviously an anachronism, either Yanni in his guise as an eighteenth-century brigand or me with my tastes that run farther back in history, several thousand years shall we say.

She met several men who weren't important to her, summers she went to the islands. When the war had been over two years she turned thirty and then she decided the time had come, she was ready to go but where? It couldn't be far, she had saved only a little money.

She looked at a map of the Eastern Mediterranean and put her finger on it. She laughed. Of course.

Where else but that unparalleled theater of bazaars and races and faiths above the deserts and wastes, for so long the hope of wandering and lost and searching peoples, once more a dream and a place to dream.

So Maud made her way to Jerusalem.

-12-

Aqaba

Whispering do it again right now.

One afternoon when she was treading slowly up the steep steps from the crypt beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a figure suddenly emerged from the shadows and began whispering to her. He was a small dark man with a thin beard and burning eyes but she hardly noticed that. It was his voice that held her.

Beneath the city, that's where I've just been and that's where I've just come from, down there exploring places lost for millennia, Solomon's quarries I've seen and Roman circuses and Crusader chapels and the cognac is eight hundred years old and the lances are two thousand years old and the carved stones are three thousand years old will you believe me.

On down through the past rushed the hushed Irish voice tracing caverns and corridors, spiraling through pageants and spectacles and the innumerable triumphs and devastations of Jerusalem over time, finally after three days and two nights to emerge by chance on this very spot, so astonished by what he had seen he had to describe it all to the first person he met.

And you're the first person, whispered the soft Irish voice, and what would your name be then?

But Maud said nothing, not wanting to break the magic between two strangers suddenly brought together in the holy crypt. Instead she smiled and silently slipped to her knees and took him in her mouth, leaving him afterward leaning dizzily against the stones in the shadows.

She lingered in the magic a day or two before going back and of course he was there waiting. And on top of the steps that led down to the crypt, as before, was the same muttering man pacing back and forth in the darkness, privately pursuing the secret duties of his unfathomable vocation. As before they took no notice of him, and he of course took no notice of anyone.

Maud led him from the church to the immense and quiet esplanade beside the Dome of the Rock, and there sitting in the shade of a cedar she touched the collar of his patched and ragged uniform and spoke to him for the first time.

What in the world is it?

Officer of light cavalry, Her Majesty's expeditionary force in the Crimea, 1854. Ragged because old, patched because of a fall suffered in a renowned suicidal charge.

And how did you survive that charge?

Two are the reasons. With God's blessings and also because my father said I had other things to do in the future. Do you see these medals and especially this cross? They indicate I'm an established hero from the middle of the nineteenth century, when I foolishly aided the cause of the British Empire in a substantial and dangerous manner.

Maud held the cross and laughed.

How old does that make you now?

Twenty, just. Although sometimes I feel older, even as aged as my father. He was a fisherman and a poor man like myself.

And all those things you told me the other day were true?

Jaysus and yes they were true, each and every one of them more than the last and as much as the next.

True to the end as only the end can be. I know. My father had the gift.

What gift?

Seeing the future as the past, seeing it as it is. The seventh son of a seventh son he was and in my land that means you have the gift.

Maud laughed again.

And what did your father see about your future that allowed you to survive the suicidal charge?

Fighting for Ireland he saw, not rowing over to Florida as good St Brendan had the sense to do some thirteen hundred years ago. That's one of my names too you see. I come from an island of saints and I would have been glad to row to Florida for the sake of the Church from all I hear of the climate there but that wasn't for me, fighting in the mountains of Cork was for me lugging around a monstrous old weapon, a modified musketoon it was, U.S. cavalry issue 1851 and sixty-nine caliber, me firing it like a howitzer to keep my distance, but after a while they caught onto my faraway game and I had to escape so God allowed me to join an order of nuns known as the Poor Clares, temporarily of course, because some of these Poor Clares were going on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land that had been requested at the end of the eighteenth century, God waiting to grant permission until the moment was opportune, and that's how I happened to come to Jerusalem as a nun but now I'm not a nun anymore, now I'm a retired veteran living in the Home for Crimean War Heroes because the baking priest decided to award me this Victoria Cross for general valor because the bread was getting to his brains, only natural after sixty years at the oven baking the same four loaves of bread, and if I seem to be rambling and this is confusing its just because I've been keeping company with a peculiar Arab, a quite elderly sorcerer, an unusual old man who is so unusually old he has that effect on you. Sorry, we'll start again. Ask me something.

Maud took his hand and smiled.

What would your father see if he were here now?

Surely the desert. We must be away from this babble of Jerusalem with its roving fanatics of every kind.

Did you see that item pacing the top of the stairs to the crypt?

Yes.

Well he's been doing that for two thousand years, just pacing and muttering and never stopping. How could we even begin to think clearly in a place where such things go on?

Who told you that?

About the man on the top of the stairs? My sorcerer friend. And he knows because he's been watching him all that time. Around the beginning of every century he drops in to compare notes and see if there's been any change in the general situation but there never is. But what do you think, will we be going to the desert then? I've never been but the old Arab says it's a wonderful place for filling your soul. He's been making a haj for the last ten hundred years or so and he says nothing compares to it in the springtime, wild flowers and all that. Shouldn't we be going?

Yes my love, it must be a wonderful place and I think we should be going.

From Aqaba they rode south along the shore of the Sinai until they found a small oasis where they camped. Through the foothills in the moonlight they circled the colors of the desert, swam at noon in the brilliant gulf and lay on the hot sand of the beach, asleep in each other's arms in early evening and awake again at dawn to slip down to the shore and embrace in the shallows, laughing over their figs and pomegranates and toasting the new sun with arak, whispering Do it again right now and spinning, sinking through the quarters of a moon.

On their last evening they sat on a rock by the water watching the sunset gather silently, passing the arak back and forth as the Sinai burst into flames behind them and the last of the light settled on the barren hills where darkness was coming to Arabia. The rustle of the waves and the fingertips of the wind, the desert cast to fire and the rush of arak in their blood, the air lapsing into blackness and inevitably on the far side of the gulf another and distant world.

He stood then and threw the empty bottle far across the water.

They held their breath and waited and a minute seemed to pass before they heard a tiny splash somewhere out there in the night, perhaps only imagining it.

-13-

Jericho

Home from the sea free as birds.

Joe was overjoyed when he found out they were going to have a child. He sang and danced all his father's songs and dances and insisted they get married that afternoon, as he had been insisting since before they went to Aqaba.

It's too hot today, September is soon enough. This heat is frightful.

Frightful it is and atrocious and terrible and just plain bad. Now just don't move, you shouldn't be moving, just sit quiet there and fan yourself while I make a cup of tea. Frightful, yes.

You know Joe, I'm really beginning to love Jerusalem.

It's a madhouse isn't it, nothing like it, just what the baking priest said. When he gave me his veteran's papers I looked at him and said, you're eighty-five and I'm twenty and how about apparent age?

Laughed, he did. No problems like that in such a place, he said. Apparent anything doesn't mean much in our Holy City, everybody's Holy City, that's what he said. Just a minute now.

I remember once I saw a man in Piraeus who looked a lot like you except he was older.

A sailor?

Yes.

How much older?

Fifteen or twenty years.

Seventeen to be exact. That was brother Eamon jumping ship on his way to join the Rumanian army. He got himself killed fighting for the bloody Rumanians, can you imagine. The father told me all about it before it happened. You saw him in 1915. April.

I'm not sure.

That's when it was. None of my brothers ever wrote home after they left but the father knew what they were up to anyway. You can't fool a prophet can you. Here's a good cup now. Rest quiet and we'll be home from the sea free as birds.

Maud laughed, the summer passed in their small apartment in Jerusalem. September came and again she made some excuse for delaying their marriage. Joe continued to make trips to Constantinople and now each time he returned he noticed changes in her mood. She was withdrawn and irritable. But that's just her state, he thought, surely such things happen, only natural that they would.

With winter coming he decided their rooms were too drafty and cold for her to be comfortable. The warm sun of the Jordan valley would be better. He found a little house on the outskirts of Jericho and rented it, a lovely house on a small plot of land, surrounded by flowers and arbors and lemon trees.

Proudly he took her down there and was astonished when she first saw it. She didn't even smile.

But don't you like it, Maudie?

No.

You don't?

I hate it. It looks like some child's idea of a doll's house.

Joe couldn't speak, he was terrified. He rushed inside and pretended to be straightening things, not daring to look at her. What was she doing, what was she saying?

When he went out again she was sitting on a bench under a tree, staring vacantly at the ground.

I'm going up to the market, won't be long. Anything special you want.

She shook her head slightly but didn't raise her eyes. Joe hurried out the gate and ran up the path, running faster and faster trying not to think.

Jaysus Joseph and Mary what's happening? Blessed mother of God what is it? Tell me what I've done please God and I'll do anything to make it up. Jaysus anything.

It became worse and worse in Jericho. Maud spent most of the day away from the house, sitting down by the river. Everything he did now seemed to enrage her, but most of all his trips to Constantinople.

I know, Maudie, but I have to make them, you see that. It's our money, there's no other way for me to make us a living.

You're a criminal.

I know you don't like the work but I've got nothing else right now, it's all I can make do with.

Better no money than that kind of money. Guns are for wounding and killing people, nothing else. You're a murderer.

What are you saying now?

In Ireland you shot people. Didn't you shoot people down?

That was different, that was the Black and Tans. You can't imagine the horrible things they were doing. It was a war we were in then only our side was just women and children and poor farmers trying to grow their crops.

Murderer.

Jaysus don't be saying it Maud, it sounds horrible and it's just not so.

Would you ever kill again?

No.

Liar.

The other thing that infuriated her was his fascination with the Sinai Bible. When he had told her about it, in Aqaba, she had laughed and laughed. Haj Harun writing his memoirs and then losing them? Three thousand years of secret Jerusalem history lying somewhere waiting to be found. Treasure maps to all the two dozen Old Cities? The old man convinced he had actually written the original Bible?

It was wonderful, she had loved it. Joe's fanciful version of the manuscript was marvelous and she had said nothing about the last of the Skanderbeg Wallensteins and his forgery. But that had been in Aqaba.

Now she reacted very differently.

Are you still dreaming of finding your stupid treasure map?

It's no dream, Maud. I'm going to find it someday.

No you won't you never will because what you're looking for doesn't exist. What exists is chaos seen through a blind man's eyes and an imbecile's brain.

You'll see, Maud, Haj Harun is going to help me look and someday I'll find it.

Someday. Look at yourself right now in that absurd uniform that's big enough for two of you. Well why don't you leave if you're going to, they must be jumping up and down in the Crimea waiting for you to get there and win the war.

Before he left he brought a present to her down by the river and she threw it in the water. She screamed at him to go away, he disgusted her, she never wanted to see him again. Two weeks later when he came back she wouldn't look at him. She wouldn't speak to him. No matter what he said she ignored him.

At night he sat drinking alone in the garden behind the little house, drinking until he fell asleep, drinking until it was time to make another trip for Stern. Not understanding any of it, having no way of knowing that Maud's fear of being left again by someone she loved was so desperate it was driving her to leave him instead.

He was away when their son was born toward the end of winter, away in Constantinople smuggling more arms for Stern and Stern's cause. He had to go to the midwife to find out it was a boy. Maud hadn't even left a note.

Joe sat down on the floor and cried. Less than a year had passed since their month together on the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba.

Someday, he promised himself, I will find it.

PART THREE

-14-

Stern

Pillars and fountains and waterways, a place where myrrh grew three thousand years ago and forever.

The tent where he was born in the Yemen stood not far from the ruins of Marib, the ancient capital of the Queendom of Sheba which had once sent apes and gold and peacocks, silver and ivory up the Incense Road to Aqaba, whence they could be transported farther north to the heights of Jerusalem. As a boy he played in the ruins of the Temple of the Moon at Marib among the former pillars and fountains and waterways where myrrh grew.

One morning he found nothing but sand where the temple had been. He ran back across the hills to their tent.

It's gone, he whispered breathlessly to his immensely tall father and his short round grandfather who were roaming back and forth as usual, talking and talking as they pretended to watch over their sheep, the one a former English aristocrat turned bedouin hakim who had been the greatest explorer of his age, the other an unlettered Yemeni Jew and shepherd who had never left the hillside that was his birthplace.

The temple's gone, repeated the boy. Where did it go?

Where? said his short grandfather.

A mystery, murmured the one. And not only gone but why?

And not only where, added the other, but when?

Right now, answered the little boy. Right where it's supposed to be. It disappeared overnight.

The two old men shook their heads thoughtfully. The sun was already high enough to be felt so they sought the shade of an almond tree to consider the problem. While they took turns asking him questions the boy hopped from one foot to the other.

We must solve this mystery. What's there in place of the temple?

Sand. Nothing.

Ah, nothing but sand, mysterious indeed. Did you stay there overnight?

No.

Were you there at dawn?

No.

Ah. Could it be then it's only happening now?

They both looked at him. He was barely four years old and the question confused him.

What's happening now? he asked.

His father tugged the sleeve of his grandfather.

Is there really a Temple of the Moon, Ya'qub?

There is certainly. Yes yes, I've seen it as long as I can remember.

But not today? asked father.

No not today but I'll see it again, answered his grandfather.

When? In a week, Ya'qub? Two months from now?

More or less then, o former hakim. Yes assuredly.

And yesterday?

No.

Six months ago?

Yes and no. But in any case one of those times without any doubt whatsoever.

But what are these yesterdays and next weeks of yours, Ya'qub? These two months from now and six months ago? This strange way you have of discussing time? More or less, you say, running days and dates past and future all together as if they were the same.

His father smiled. His grandfather laughed and clasped the small bewildered boy to his chest.

Do I? Yes I do. It must be simply that the Temple of the Moon is always there for me because I know it in every detail, exactly as I've seen it before and will see it again. And as for the sand that may cover it from time to time, well sand is no matter. We live in the desert and sand simply comes and goes.

His father turned to him.

Do you know it in every detail the way your grandfather does?

Yes, whispered the boy.

And you can see it all in your mind's eye even now?

Yes.

His father nodded solemnly, his grandfather smiled happily.

Then it must be as your grandfather says. Above the sands or beneath them is no matter. For you, as for him, the temple is always there.

The boy thought he understood and went on to another question.

Well if it's always there now, how long has it always been there? Who built it?

His grandfather pretended to frown. Again he clasped the boy in his arms.

That's history, he said, and I know nothing of such things, how could I? But fortunately for us your father's a learned man who has traveled everywhere and gathered all the knowledge in the world, so probably he has already read the inscriptions on the pillars and can answer those questions precisely.

Well, o former hakim? Who built the Temple of the Moon in Marib and how long ago would you say?

Precisely one thousand years ago and forever? Two thousand years ago and forever?

This time it was Ya'qub's turn to tug his father's sleeve and his father's turn to smile.

The people were called Sabaeans, he said, and they built it three thousand years ago and forever.

The small boy gasped at the incomprehensible figure.

Father, will you teach me to read the inscriptions on the pillars?

Yes, but first Ya'qub must tell us when they will reappear. He must teach us about the sand.

Will you do that, grandfather?

Yes yes certainly. When next the wind blows we'll go out together and sniff it and see if the incense is returning once more to the Temple of the Moon in Marib.

The short round man snorted, he laughed. His father, grave and dignified, led the way back to the tent where water was set boiling for coffee. And that night as so often the boy sat up by the fire until what seemed a very late hour, drowsily slipping in and out of sleep, never quite sure whether the wondrous words the two old men ceaselessly passed back and forth in the shadows were from the Zohar this time or the Thousand and One Nights, or perhaps written in the stones of the Temple of the Moon where he played, the mysterious myrrh of his childhood, vanishing pillars and fountains and waterways returning with inscriptions to be read one day as surely as gusts in the turning wind, a heady scent not to be forgotten no matter how deeply the strands of incense were buried beneath the sands that night and three thousand years ago and forever, as his father spoke of time in the Temple of the Moon after his long decades of wandering, or that night and the yesterday and next week of forever, as his grandfather described it on that remote hillside beyond ancient Marib which had always been his home.

His mother's teachings also flowed when they walked together in the dim cool light of dawn collecting herbs and wild grasses for their salads. Sometimes she made strange sounds out there and gazed at the ground for whole minutes holding her side, her face weary in a way he didn't understand.

What could she tell him after all, a boy of four? She was going that's all, every day the weight was heavier. When she stooped for a blade of grass it pushed her down and when she straightened again she had to press her eyes closed to hold back the pain. The blessing of a child had simply taken more than her body had to give. But he was young and one day he asked her about it when she staggered on the hillside.

What is it, Mother?

The memory of that moment would never leave him. The stiff fingers, the strained face, the tired haunted eyes. She sank to her knees and hid her face. She was crying.

Where does it hurt?

She took his hand and placed it on her heart.

Where? I can't feel anything.

Here is better, she said, putting one of his tiny fingers on a vein in her wrist.

That's your blood. Is that where the pain is?

No, in my heart where you couldn't feel it

But Father will be able to feel it. Father was a great hakim. He can cure anyone.

No. The reason you couldn't feel it is because sometimes we have pains that belong to us and no one else.

Now he began to cry and she leaned forward on her knees and kissed his eyes.

Don't do that. It's all right.

But it's not. And Father can make it better, I know he can.

No my son.

But that's not fair.

Oh yes it is, new life for old is always fair.

Whose life? What do you mean?

Whose life doesn't matter. What matters is that if a time ever comes when you have a special pain all your own you must carry it yourself, because other people have theirs too.

Everyone doesn't.

Yes I'm afraid they do.

Grandfather doesn't. He's always laughing.

So it seems. But underneath there's something else.

What?

Your grandmother. She died long ago and he has never stopped missing her.

Well Father certainly doesn't hurt.

Yes, even him. Now he has a place to rest but for many years that wasn't so. And once just before he came to our little corner of the world and your grandfather found him alone in the dust and brought him home to us, there was a terrible time when he was lost.

The little boy shook his head stubbornly.

But that's not true, Father was never lost. He walked from Timbuktu to the Hindu Kush and floated down the Tigris to Baghdad and marched through three dawns and two sunsets out of the Sinai without even noticing he had no food or water. No one has ever done the things he did.

That may be but I didn't mean he was lost in the desert. He was lost here, in his heart, where my pain is now.

The little boy looked at the ground. He had always accepted everything his mother said but it seemed impossible that his smiling grandfather could really be sad inside. And it was even more impossible to believe his father had ever been lost.

And so, she said, we mustn't tell your father about my pain because he has his own burdens from the past. He came here to find peace, he brought us happiness and he deserves it in return.

She put her hands on his shoulders.

Now promise me that.

He was crying again. I promise, he said, but I also want to help. Isn't there something I can do?

Well perhaps one day you can find our home. Your father found a home with us but your grandfather and I don't really belong here.

Why?

Because we're Jews.

Where is our home then?

I don't know but someday you may find it for us.

I will. I promise.

She smiled.

Come then, we have to pick our grasses for dinner. Those two men of ours talk and talk and never stop and they'll be hungry after spending another day settling the affairs of heaven.

When he went to Cairo for Islamic studies he used one of his father's Arabic names. When he went to Safad to study the cabala he used his grandfather's Jewish name. So when the time came for him to acquire his Western education he asked what name he should use.

A Western name, said his father.

But what? asked his grandfather. The two old men took his coffee cup and studied it. I see many Jewish and Arabic names, said Ya'qub, but I can't make out a Western one, perhaps because I don't know what a Western name is. What do you see, o former hakim?

His father raised the small cup far above their heads and peered over the rim. Stern, he announced after a moment. Yes quite clearly.

That sounds too short, said Ya'qub, isn't there more to it? Doesn't it have an ibn or a ben something after it?

No that's all there is, said his father.

Very odd, very curious. What does it mean?

Resolute, unyielding.

Unyielding?

In the face of what can't be evaded or escaped.

Ah that's better, said Ya'qub. Certainly there's no reason to evade or escape the marvels of life.

All at once he wrapped his arms around himself and rocked back and forth. He winked at his grandson.

But then, o former hakim, do I hear an echo of your own character in the coffee cup of your son?

Impossible, answered the old explorer with a smile. Coffee grounds are coffee grounds. They speak for themselves.

Ya'qub laughed happily. Yes yes they do, how could it be otherwise. Well my boy, there you have it.

And where do you go now?

Bologna. Paris.

What? Unheard-of places. How do they number the year there? What do they call it?

Nineteen hundred and nine.

Ya'qub poked his father.

Is it true what the boy says?

Of course.

Ya'qub snorted, he laughed.

Of course you say to an old man who's never been anywhere, but it makes no difference you see. These hills will still be here when the boy returns, only the sand will be different. In fact you'll never leave them.

Is that so or not?

Perhaps, said Stern, smiling.

The two of you, muttered Ya'qub, you think you can fool me but you can't. I know what year it is, certainly I do. More coffee, o former hakim? We can thank God your son is halfway between the two of us and has some of my good shepherd blood in him so he won't have to be a genie for sixty years, like you were, before he becomes a man.

The evening before he left his father took him out walking in the twilight. Too excited at first to realize his father had something he wanted to say, he talked and talked about the new century and the new world it would bring, how eager he was to get to Europe and get started, to begin, so many possibilities and so much ahead, so much to do, on and on until at last he noticed his father's silence and stopped.

What are you thinking?

About Europe. I was wondering whether you'll like it as much as you think you will.

Of course I will, why wouldn't I, it's all new. Imagine how much there is for me to see.

That's true yet Ya'qub may be right, it may be that you'll never leave these hills. That was his way, it wasn't mine, but then I wasn't born in the desert with its solitude the way he was, or you. I sought it and perhaps being born to it is different. Surely there's as much to see in the desert as anywhere else but to some it can also give rise to an abiding loneliness, I have to remind myself of that. Not all men are meant to wander alone for forty years as I did. Father Yakouba for example. He lived quite differently in Timbuktu and was a very wise man with his flocks of little children and their footprints in the sky, his journeys of two thousand miles in an afternoon while sipping Calvados in a dusty courtyard. As he said, a haj isn't measured in miles.

I know that, Father.

Yes of course you do. You have the example of the other Ya'qub, your own grandfather. Well do you know what it is you seek then?

To create something.

Yes certainly, that's the only way to begin. And what of money, does it play any part in your plans? What you want?

No none, it means nothing to me, how could it growing up with you and Ya'qub. But that's a strange question. Why do you ask it when you already know the answer?

Because there's a certain matter I should discuss with you and I've never talked about it with anyone, not even Ya'qub.

Stern laughed.

What could possibly be so mysterious you wouldn't talk about it with Ya'qub?

Oh it's not mysterious, quite mundane as a matter of fact. It's just that there never seemed any reason to mention it. You see before I left Constantinople I made certain financial arrangements, real estate and so forth. I thought I might have some use for the property someday but then I became a hakim and then I retired here, so of course as it turned out I've never had any use for it whatsoever. And if you don't think you'll need the properties, well then I thought I might return them to their former owners. Possessions are a burden and the fewer burdens one has the better when setting out on a haj.

Stern laughed again.

You're not suggesting I begin naked? Strap a bronze sundial to my hip and leap over a garden wall? But you are being mysterious, Father. Could Ya'qub be telling the truth when he says the two of you own most of this part of the world? Two secret co-emperors with me as your only heir? Why do you smile?

At Ya'qub, at his notion of real estate. To him it's all in the mind and this hillside is not only this part of the world, it's the universe as well. You know how fond he is of pointing out he has never been anywhere while it took me sixty years to arrive at the same place. Well he's right about that of course, about this hillside and what it has always meant to him and what it eventually came to mean to me. Anyway, the Ottoman Empire wouldn't be much to own these days would it, rather tattered as empires go. Something new will have to replace it soon in this new century you like to talk about. Stern smiled.

And in any case there was that first lesson the two of you ever taught me the day I couldn't find the Temple of the Moon. That the only real empire is the empire of the mind. The old explorer also smiled.

I seem to recall some such conversation when you were a small child. Well what do you think about these properties I mentioned. Are you interested in having them?

No.

Why?

Because I don't intend to become a real estate dealer.

Just so, fine, that's taken care of then. One less legacy you'll have to worry about from my old century.

All the same I don't think I'll display myself naked at a diplomatic reception in Cairo the night I sail.

An apocryphal tale, no such thing could ever have happened in the Victorian era. Now come, we've arranged your escape from the past and it's time to join Ya'qub for dinner. He has been laboring all day over his pots preparing a feast and he must be hungry for talk.

He must be?

Hm. Did I ever tell you about the time I assembled certain evidence to deduce the cycle of Strongbow's Comet?

Stern laughed. He knew his father was really as excited as he was, his leaving bringing back all the memories of that night in Cairo seven decades ago when a laughing young genie had given eyes to a blind beggar and himself set forth on his journey.

I don't think so, Father. Could it possibly involve incidents from the lives of Moses and Nebuchadnezzar and Christ and Mohammed? A few lesser known passages from the Thousand and One Nights? An obscure reference or two from the Zohar? A frightened Arab in the desert who was alarmed because the sky was unnaturally dark? Who later turned up as an antiquities dealer in Jerusalem? In whose back room you wrote an anthropological study of the Middle East? No, I don't believe you have ever told me about it.

No? That's odd, because it was quite a remarkable affair. Do you think Ya'qub would be interested in hearing about it?

I'm sure he would, he can never get enough of hearing anything. But of course he'll immediately jumble all your facts and rearrange them to his own liking.

Yes he will, an incorrigible habit. Those eternal jokes and riddles and scraps of rhymes he sees everywhere. Well we'll just have to keep our wits about us and take our chances.

In Europe Stern dreamed deeply of his future. He considered composing symphonies or dramas, painting murals and planning boulevards and writing epic cantos. Unarmed and undefeated, he threw himself fearlessly into these projects.

He haunted museums and concert halls and restlessly paced the streets until dawn, when he fell into a chair in some workingmen's cafe to smoke and drink coffee and fortify himself with cognac, totally immersed for a time in this one great achievement.

In Bologna he ignored his medical lectures and covered canvases with masses of colors. But months later when he examined what he had done he found it lifeless.

In Paris he ignored his law courses to study music. Whole scores of Mozart and Bach were memorized but when the time arrived for him to write down his own musical notations, none came.

He turned at once to marble. He pored over drawings and eventually attempted sketches, only to find his own designs for fountains and colonnades resembled Bernini's.

Poetry and plays came next. Stern provided himself with a stack of paper and a hard straight chair. He boiled coffee and filled the ashtray on the desk with cigarettes. He tore up sheets of paper, boiled more coffee and filled the ashtray again with cigarettes. He went out for a walk and came back to begin again but still there was nothing.

Nothing at all. Nothing was coming from his dreams of creation.

Looking down at the heaped ashtray he was suddenly frightened. What was he going to do in life? What could he do?

He was twenty-one. He had been in Europe three years yet there was no one to talk to now, he had no friends at all, he had been too busy dreaming alone. He had come here with ideals and enthusiasm, what had gone wrong?

He sat up unable to sleep thinking of the hillsides where he had played as a boy, recalling that Ya'qub had said he would never really leave them, remembering his father on their last evening together wondering aloud what it might mean to be born in the desert with its solitude rather than to have sought it as he had done.

He poured cognac and closed his eyes, images tumbling before him.

A blind beggar in Cairo crying out triumphantly, a march the length of the Sinai without food or water, the Arab village at Aqaba, the great divide of the wadis of northern Arabia, an antiquities dealer's shop in Jerusalem, floating down the Tigris into Baghdad, leeches and opium near Aden, a fever after swimming across the Red Sea, the holy sites of Medina and Mecca in disguise.

Disguises. Strongbow striding back and forth for forty years disguised as a poor camel driver or a rich Damascus merchant, a harmless haggler over pimpernel or a collector of sorrel, an obsessed dervish given to trances and an inscrutable hakim, a huge immobile presence in the desert speaking with his eyes.

Strongbow the genie changing and changing his size and shape.

Ya'qub the shepherd waiting patiently on his hillside.

And finally, a former hakim gently led home to rest, brought home to peace.

What was it? What was he trying to find in those three lives?

Stern threw his glass at the wall. He picked up the bottle and crashed around the room knocking over chairs and smashing lamps on the floor. He hated Europe, all at once he knew how much he hated it. He couldn't breathe here, he couldn't think, he couldn't hear with his own ears or see with his own eyes, the noise, the crowds pushing in on him, everything cluttered and unclear, so far from the quiet hillsides of his childhood, the stillness of the shifting sands in the Temple of the Moon.

He'd done nothing here but dream futile dreams and fail, dream hopelessly and fail because this wasn't his place. He had been born in the desert, he couldn't live here. The desert was his home and he had to go back to it now, he knew that.

And do what?

Again he saw the three men. Strongbow marching from the Nile to Baghdad. Ya'qub in his tent in the Yemen. The hakim at dawn deep in the desert sitting with a troubled bedouin, telling him fix his gaze on the flight of a distant eagle and saying Yes, they would find the oasis.

Why did they keep returning to him? To tell him what?

An Englishman, a Jew, an Arab, His father and his grandfather relentlessly striding on, patiently going nowhere, his land and his home and heritage.

The vision burst upon him. A homeland for all the peoples of his heritage. One nation embracing Arabs and Christians and Jews. A new world and the Fertile Crescent of antiquity reborn in the new century, one great nation stretching majestically from the Nile through Arabia and Palestine and Syria to the foothills of Anatolia, watered by the Jordan and the Tigris and the Euphrates as well, by Galilee, a vast nation honoring all of its three and twelve and forty thousand prophets, a splendid nation where the legendary cities would be raised to flourish once more, Memphis of Menes and Ecbatana of Media and Sidon and Alep of the Hittites, Kish and Lagash of Sumer and Zoar of the Edomites, Akkad of Sargon and Tyre of the purple dye and Acre of the Crusaders, Petra of the Nabataeans and Ctesiphon of the Sassanids and Basra of the Abbasids, sublime Jerusalem and the equally sublime Baghdad of the Thousand and One Nights.

Stern was delirious, the vision was overwhelming, far grander than the promise he had made to his mother as a child. He sat down at his desk and began scribbling feverishly, and when he emerged two weeks later he had not only conjured up the memories of a thousand and one ancient tribes and civilizations and fused them together, he had also written the basic laws for the new nation and designed its flag, sketched some of its impressive public buildings and considered its universities and theaters, pondered its national anthem and listed the components of its constitution.

At the age of twenty-one he had arrived at his plan for life.

Quickly then he packed his bags and left Paris. Having decided who he was, nothing remained but to become that man and work toward the common bonds that perhaps had existed in his homeland three thousand years ago, not since.

This new promise was solemn and certain and he knew he would never break it, not even if it turned in time to break him.

-15-

The Jordan

From the soft green heights of Galilee, rich in gentle fields of grain and kindly memories, a promised stream plunging down and down.

Stern drove back to the Middle East in a ten-horsepower French automobile, after being trapped briefly in Albania by the outbreak of the first Balkan war. Once there he converted the automobile into a tractor car to use in the desert. Clattering and backfiring, the tractor roared down wadis and rumbled over mountains covering distances that had taken dozens of painful camel marches in his father's day.

But the clouds of sand raised by the tractor attracted the attention of the bedouin. He needed a more surreptitious means of transport and naturally he thought of a balloon.

Stern had first experimented with balloons as a boy by suspending a basket beneath a sack sewn from tents. Above the basket was a crock holding a camel-dung fire. The hot air filled the sack and sent him bumping down a hillside.

Later he increased the heat of the fire many times by burning oil sludge from outcroppings in the desert rock. With this new buoyancy he could lift a larger sack and sail much higher. Alone as a boy dreaming on the wind above the Yemen, Stern had learned to read the stars.

Now he built a large balloon with a compact gondola that held a narrow cot, a small writing table and a shaded lamp. The balloon was fed by bottles of hydrogen which he cached in various remote ravines in the desert where he could descend at dawn and remain hidden during the hours of daylight, to sleep and plan the next leg of his trip while keeping secret the passage of his ship.

For Stern was careful to travel only at night. Sometimes he worked at his desk but more often he extinguished his shaded lamp and mused his way silently across the dark sky, invisible to those below when only the stars lit the desert, perhaps suggesting a tiny distant cloud when the moon was waxing through its quarters.

Back and forth he sailed from Aden to the Jordan, from the Dead Sea to Oman, hovering before daybreak to drop gently into a cleft in the rocks to anchor his ship. Stealthily then he made his way on foot down some narrow wadi to a village where he had arranged to meet a nationalist leader, sailing from intrigue to intrigue increasingly suffering from chronic headaches and chronic insomnia and chronic fatigue, celibate and isolated in his balloon, occasionally given to heart palpitations when he drifted too high in the starry night sky, already a victim of the incurable dreams he had known as a boy in the Temple of the Moon.

For as soon as he had his balloon equipped and set out to explore his mission, he discovered his cause had been reduced to a question of smuggling arms and nothing more. He had conceived of his great nation as healing the divisions of the past, his own role in helping to found it much like that of a hakim. But the men he talked to during those first months when he was making contacts could think about nothing but guns. If he raised other subjects they cut him short.

Idiot, yelled a man in Damascus, why do you persist in this foolishness? A constitution? Laws? There's no time for that here, you're not at the university anymore playing with theories. Guns are what we need.

When we kill enough Turks and Europeans they'll leave, that's the law, that's our constitution.

But someday, Stern began.

Of course someday. Ten years from now, twenty, thirty, who knows. Someday we may have all the time in the world to talk but not now. Now there's only one thing. Guns, brother. You want to help? Good, bring us guns. You have a balloon and can cross borders at night. Good, get on with it. Guns.

It sickened Stern and he tried to resist it because it was driving him to secret despair. He was appalled to think his splendid vision could so quickly degenerate into nothing more than smuggling arms. But he couldn't argue with those men, he knew what they said was true and if he wanted to play a part it would have to be this.

So he sadly took all the inspired notes and lists and beautiful sketches he had made during those feverish and ecstatic two weeks in Paris, carried them high up above the desert one night and burned them, lit them one by one and dropped their flaming ashes into the blackness, then floated away to the east and early the next morning, the first day of 1914 or 5674 or 1292, depending on the prophet quoted, he delivered his first secret shipment of arms for the sake of a vast peaceful new nation he hoped to help build in the new century.

Stern's most significant act during those early years was also the least known, a brief yet extraordinary encounter that took place accidentally in the desert. To Stern it meant nothing and when he met the same man again after a lapse of eight or nine years, in Smyrna in 1922 when the man saved his life, he didn't even remember having seen him before.

But for the old Arab it was the most important moment in his long life.

The chance meeting occurred in the spring while Haj Harun was on his annual pilgrimage to Mecca, as usual traveling alone far from the customary routes. And as usual at all times of the year, Stern was drifting invisibly above the desert on one of his clandestine missions. At dawn he dropped from the sky to anchor his balloon and found he had nearly landed on a wizened old Arab who had been dozing like a lizard with his head under a rock. At once the barefoot man flung out his arms and prostrated himself.

He appeared both starving and lost. Stern offered him food and water but the Arab refused to raise his face from the dust. At last he did so although nothing could induce him to rise from his knees. In that position he ate and drank sparingly as if performing some ritual.

Seeing the pathetic thinness of the man's legs and the unnatural luster of his eyes, which he took for fever or worse, Stern begged him to accept his waterskins and other supplies. He even offered to float him to the nearest oasis if he was unable to walk, as seemed likely. But the wretched man abjectly refused everything. Instead he asked in the humblest of whispers, his voice trembling, if he might have the honor of knowing his host's name.

Stern told him. The Arab thanked him reverently, whereupon he backed away still on his knees and continued doing so for the rest of the morning until he had crossed the horizon and was out of sight.

Once during the morning Stern happened to glance across the desert in the direction of the retreating Haj Harun who was now a mere dot on the crest of the dunes, still struggling backward on his knees, but Stern didn't really see him and the crazed behavior of the old man made no impression on him. Instead he was busily turning the pages of his notebook planning new routes for smuggling arms.

Initially there were some successes.

In 1914 the kaiser's government was persuaded to pay regular bribes to both the Sherif of Mecca and his chief rival Emir ibn Saud, and Stern ferried German revolutionary orders from Damascus to Jidda. But nothing came of it because the Arabs wouldn't do anything and the English were soon paying them more.

That same winter he arranged a secret meeting near Cairo with an influential English suffragette, a composer of comic operettas who had recently returned from an expedition to the Sudan where she had spent a long afternoon in the privacy of her riverboat cabin photographing a comely young hermaphrodite, a camel breeder currently known as Mohammed but formerly the wife of a tribal sheik.

The sheik had beaten his wife constantly, as the suffragette learned in the course of taking her photographs. Moved by the compassion she always felt for a woman who had suffered the prejudices of the world, she ended the afternoon by making passionate love to Mohammed. But to her great disappointment none of her photographs had turned out.

Stern took her to a Greek artist in Alexandria who was able to render exactly what she had seen, thereby gaining the suffragette's support and propaganda for his cause in her subsequent operettas.

In 1918 Zaghlul was freed from internment and returned to Egypt to demand independence. In 1919

Kemal embarrassed the British by defying the sultan and the Persians resisted their British treaty. Shortly thereafter there were Arab revolts in both Syria and Iraq.

But there were also signs of coming failure in those early years.

In Constantinople the sultan had confiscated modern textbooks because he had learned they contained the subversive formula H2O, which meant that he, Hamid II, was secretly a cipher and good for nothing.

In 1909 the Turks had massacred twenty-five thousand Armenians in Adana. In 1915, deciding there would no longer be an Armenian question if there were no Armenians, the Turks began marching them into the Syrian desert and murdering them along the way to speed the devastations wrought by starvation and epidemics.

By 1916 legions of spies had descended on Athens only to be surpassed three years later by the even greater hordes of spies congregating in Constantinople, where it was found that certain national representatives on their way to the Versailles peace conference could neither write their names nor recognize them when spoken to.

At a little-known meeting in 1918 between Weizmann and the future Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the dignified and seemingly innocent Arab revealed his profound capacity for delusion and hate by softly quoting passages from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

And worst of all for Stern, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War wiped out the investments his father had left him after the former explorer and hakim, on the eve of Stern's departure for Europe, had performed what he thought was his final act of healing by relieving his son of the burdensome legacy of that Empire he had acquired before Stern was born, an irony immense enough to divide their two centuries forever.

After 1918 Stern never had any money again. He had to sell his balloon and thereafter he became poorer and poorer, continually begging and borrowing from everyone he met in order to live, his income from smuggling, when there was any, always going for more arms because he wouldn't touch it himself.

Yet somehow as he sank deeper and deeper into debt in 1920 and 1921, so deep he knew he would never retrieve himself, he still managed to give the impression he was completely confident in what he was doing, a trait he had learned from observing his father and grandfather perhaps, although with them the confidence had been real.

In any case Stern was so convincing only a few people ever knew the truth, only the three people who were close to him over time.

Sivi, then as before the war.

O'Sullivan Beare a year later in Smyrna when he made his last trip for Stern and broke with him.

And finally Maud a decade after that when the first victims of Smyrna were beginning to fall in that small chance circle of revolving lovers and friends and relatives, all of whom eventually came to discover their lives had once irreparably crossed on a warm September day in that most beautiful of cities on the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Late one cold December afternoon in 1921 O'Sullivan Beare sat slumped in a corner of an Arab coffee shop near Damascus Gate, a glass of wretched Arab cognac empty on the table in front of him. Outside a heavy wind groaned on the rooftops and pushed through the alleys, threatening snow. Two Arabs listlessly played backgammon by the window while a third slept under a newspaper. Night was falling in the street.

Empty as empty out there, thought Joe, not a body stirring and right they are, warm and home with the family where any sane man belongs tonight. Why did the old father back in the Aran Islands have to go seeing a place like this for me? Bloody trouble, that's what prophecy is, I could have caught fish like him and maybe been content with a decent pint by the fire on bad nights sharing a song and a dance with the neighbors. Mad Arabs and Jews hustling about, a soul doesn't need the bloody ups and downs of a Jerusalem, Jaysus knows.

The door opened and a large hunched man came in rubbing his hands against the cold. He stamped his feet and smiled. Joe nodded. Moves softly for a big man, he thought. Moves as if he had some place better to go than this dead Arab excuse for a pub and maybe he has who knows.

Stern pulled back a chair. He ordered two cognacs and sat down.

You're having us take our lives in our hands with that item, said Joe, making his fingers into a pistol and firing once at both their heads. Same business they use to fill the lamps. Saw them doing it, swear I did, just before you showed up. Burns better than anything else, the man said, and is cheaper in the bargain.

Stern laughed.

I thought it might help keep the wind out.

Not likely, be nice if it did. But who'd believe it I want to know. If anybody at home had said the Holy Land could be like this I'd have thought they were waterlogged in the head, been lying out in a bog too long sleeping one off. Sun and sand and milk and honey I thought it was, but this is worse than rowing around my island in a gale. At least then you were fighting the bloody currents all the time and didn't have time to worry your mind with things but here you just sit and wait, you think and then you sit and wait some more. Bloody wonder how people in this city just sit and wait.

They take the long view, said Stern with a smile.

Seems they do, that must be it. True religion I suppose. Jerusalem the city of miracles. The other day an old Arab I know and myself took a wander in to look at the Dome of the Rock and what's he begin to do but stare and stare at a little chink on one side of the rock. Hello there, I said, is that chink something special? It is, he said, it's the footprint Mohammed's horse made when the Prophet climbed on his horse here and rode off to heaven. I was just remembering how the sparks were flying then, he said, and the horns sounding and the cymbals clanging and thunder and lightning shaking the sky.

Good, I said, that's the job all right, and then a few minutes later we'd moved on and were padding around in the gloom of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Greek priests were muttering around in their corner waving incense and the Armenian priests were muttering around in their corner waving incense, likewise all the others, everybody's eyes mostly closed, and then shortly after that we're out in the open again trying to get some fresh air up on the hill above Jaffa Gate, and who's there but the same Hassid who was there eight hours earlier when we passed before and he's still not noticing it because his eyes are mostly closed too, and he's still facing the Old City more or less oriented in the direction of the Wall but in eight hours he hasn't gotten any closer to it, just rocking and muttering and hasn't moved an inch.

What I'm trying to say is people around here seem to have all the time in the world for that, for waving incense and rocking and muttering and carrying on until twelve hundred years ago or two thousand years ago or whatever it is they're waiting for comes along again and the cymbals clang and the horns sound and everybody climbs on the horse to heaven at last and again, sparks flying and thunder shaking. Weird, that's what it is.

He emptied his glass and choked. Stern ordered two more.

Miserable stuff, said Joe, but it does clean your teeth. You know, Stern, this old article I was just telling you about, the Arab who thinks he was there watching when Mohammed made his move once upon a time, he's something like you in a way. I mean not because he was born both an Arab and a Jew, physical fact, but because he's gotten it into his head he's been living in Jerusalem since before people had such names, since before they were divided into this and that, know what I mean? So thinking the way he does he can play all kinds of tricks with reality the same as you do, pretend it doesn't exist or whatever, only his tastes don't run to politics and that kind of shit.

Joe drank and made a face.

I'm rambling too much, it's this poison seeping into my brain. Anyway there's also this Franciscan I know, the baking priest I call him because he's been spending the last sixty years here baking the same four loaves of bread. I ask him if he thinks he's following in the footsteps of our Savior with all this multiplication and if so shouldn't he be working with five loaves instead of four, and what does he do but put a twinkle in his eye and say No, nothing so grand for me, I wouldn't presume as much as that, I just bake four in order to have the parameters of life. Jaysus, know what I mean? Everybody's daft around here what with holy horses and muttering to themselves and too much incense cutting off the oxygen supply and too much rocking back and forth for sixty years baking heavenly bread. Daft, that's all.

Dreaming up crazy impossible things like you. It's in the air or lack of it. No bog gas up here to keep a man in touch with the good slippery muck under his feet.

Stern smiled in a kindly way.

You seem depressed this evening.

Me? Go on you say. Jaysus why would I be down just because I'm in a crazy city twelve hundred years or two thousand miles or four loaves of bread away from home on Christmas Eve? Why?

He gulped the cognac and coughed.

You got one of those awful cigarettes you carry?

Stern gave him one. The first wisps of snow were blowing across the windows, the darkness outside was deeper. Stern watched him fidget nervously with the Victoria Cross, then with his beard.

You know Joe, you've changed a lot in the last year.

Sure I suppose I have, why not, I'm at the changing age. Not so long ago I was a true believer like one of those items you see around here on street corners mumbling over a pile of stones. Sixteen I was at the Dublin post office and then I went into training with an old U.S. cavalry musketoon for three years waiting for the day to come and come it did, calling itself the Black and Tans, so I went on the run in the mountains and it went all right for a while, but do you know what that means being on the run up there?

Joe's voice was rising in anger. Stern watched him.

Being cold and wet every minute of the day and night, that's what, and being alone and alone. Those mountains aren't meant for running, there's nothing but rain and sinking in up to your knee every step you take but I kept running because I had to, ran all night to surprise the bloody Blacks and Tans. You can't run up there but I did, just did is all, there was no other way to be doing what I was doing and do you know where it bloody well got me?

Joe slammed his fist on the table. He was shaking. He grabbed Stern's sleeve and twisted it.

To a vacant lot in Cork that's where, barefoot in rags because the people were starving and some of them were willing to turn a pound by turning informer to keep their children from starving to death. So they informed and the mountains shrank until I had no place to hide and ended up in Cork on the banks of the River Lee listening to shrieking sea gulls, an Easter Monday it was and me exhausted leaning against a ruined tannery wall with nothing to eat in three days, knowing it was all over, the three spires of St Finnbar's up there against the sky and me not smart enough then to ask myself what that Trinity in front of me really meant.

But I'll tell you something else now. While those mountains were shrinking I was growing, I was taking those soggy heaps and putting them inside me and getting bigger, and that abandoned churchyard where I buried the old musketoon in the rain, that mud was consecrated by me and nobody else.

You talk about your kingdom come to be, Stern. Well I fought for mine, I've done that and it threw me out, just kept pushing on me until hope was gone and everything was gone in that vacant lot across from St Finnbar's beside the River Lee and I had to escape my Ireland as a Poor Clare, Jaysus, me on the run as a nun do you see it. One frightened nun quiet as a mouse on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, that's what was left of me at the age of twenty.

Joe let go of his sleeve and banged the table. Bloody motherlands and bloody causes, the hell with them all I say. I never want to see one again.

Stern sat back and waited. There's more, he said after a moment.

What's more? What are you talking about? This resentment and anger, the way you've changed. It's not really Ireland, you know that. That was over before you got here. It's something that's happened since then.

Joe's eyes softened and all at once his lips began to tremble. He quickly covered his face with his hands but not before Stern saw the tears welling up. Stern reached out and held his arm.

Joe, you don't always have to hide things in front of people, nobody's going to respect you more for that.

Sometimes it's better to let the feelings out. Why don't you tell me about it?

He kept his hands up. The quiet sobbing lasted a minute or two and then he spoke in an unsteady voice.

What's to tell? There was a woman that's all and she left me. You see I just never imagined such a thing could happen, not when you loved someone and they loved you. I thought once you were together like that you just went on loving each other and being together, that's the way it is where I come from. Sure it was dumb of me, sure it was simpleminded not to think it could be another way but I just didn't know. If I wasn't a man in the Dublin post office I damn well became one during those next four years in the mountains, but women, I didn't know anything about women. Nothing. I loved her and I thought she loved me but she just fooled me, just tricked me and did me in like the fool I was.

Stern shook his head sadly.

Don't keep telling yourself that, it only makes you bitter and it might not have been that way at all. It could have been something else altogether. Was she older than you?

Ten years, your age. How'd you know that?

Just a guess. But look Joe, ten years is a long time. Perhaps something happened to her during those ten years that separated you, something she was afraid of, still afraid of, something that had hurt her so much she didn't dare face it again. People cut off love for all kinds of reasons but generally it has to do with them, not with somebody else. So it might have had nothing to do with you at all. Some experience from the past, who knows.

Joe looked up. The anger had returned.

But I trusted her don't you see, I loved her and it never even crossed my mind not to trust her, not once, never, I was too simpleminded for that. I just trusted her and loved her and thought it would go on forever and ever because I loved her, as if that were enough reason for anything to last. Well from now on there's no bloody room in me anymore for believing in things and fooling myself about them lasting forever. The baking priest has been baking the four boundaries of his life for sixty years, laying out his map, and sure you've got to do that, sure you've got to find the four walls of your own chances and I've done that now, they include me and no one else, just me.

But Joe, where will that lead you?

To what I want, being in charge of myself. What do you mean?

Stern spread his hands on the table.

I mean being in charge, what's that?

Nothing going wrong. Nobody throwing me out of my country, because I won't have a country. Nobody leaving me, because I won't be there where they can leave me. Not giving anybody a chance to hurt me ever again.

That can still happen, Joe.

Not if I have the power it can't.

And the glory?

Never mind the sarcasm. As a matter of fact though I don't give a damn about glory, being out of sight is fine with me as long as I have power. Tell me, who's going to be the richest oil merchant in the Middle East when he comes of age?

Nubar Wallenstein, said Stern wearily.

That's him. So what are you doing about it?

Waiting for him to come of age.

The hell with the bloody sarcasm, can't you see I mean what I'm telling you? I'm serious about this. I'm making plans now and before long I'm going to be playing a winning hand in this game they call Jerusalem.

Stern shook his head. He sighed.

You haven't got it right, Joe. You just haven't.

Joe smiled and signaled for two more cognacs. He took one of Stern's cheap cigarettes and rolled it from one side of his mouth to the other.

Haven't I now, Father? Is that the judgment today from the confessional? Well all I know is I've got it the way it is around here, pretty much the way it is. Maybe not the way the good book says it's supposed to be but still the way it is. So why don't we stop being sentimental on Christmas Eve and get down to talking about guns and money?

He raised his tumbler.

Doesn't bother you does it, Stern? It shouldn't, don't worry about it. Until I find something better to do I'll run guns to your Arab and Jewish and Christian country that doesn't exist and be happy doing it, what do I care that it's never going to exist. And you'll get good value from me, you know that. Just no more shit about somewhere being someplace because it isn't, I don't have a homeland anymore. My last home was in Jericho with a woman who left me.

He grinned.

Cold in Jerusalem wouldn't you say? It seems to be snowing in the land of milk and honey, do you see it now. So here's to your kind of power and mine. Here's to you, Father Stern.

Stern slowly raised his glass.

To you, Joe.

In the spring of 1922 Stern was in Smyrna to meet with his principle contact in Turkey, a wealthy secret Greek activist. The man's chief interest was in seeing Constantinople returned to the Greeks, for which a Greek army was then fighting Kemal and the Turks in the interior. But he had been working with Stern for ten years helping him smuggle arms to nationalist movements in Syria and Iraq, ever since his and Stern's aims had come to coincide during the Balkan wars.

In fact it was Sivi who frequently provided Stern with the money he was always so desperately lacking, the same Sivi who had once befriended Maud and helped her with money after the death of her husband Yanni, his much younger half-brother.

In addition the notorious old man, now seventy, was the undisputed queen of sexual excess in Smyrna, where he always appeared at the opera dressed in flowing red gowns and a large red hat spilling with roses to be plucked off and tossed to his friends when he made his entrance into his box, his ruby rings flashing and a long unlit cigar firmly fixed between his teeth. Because of the reputation of his father as one of the founding statesmen of the modern Greek nation, because of his own eccentric manner and wealth and because of Smyrna's importance as, the most international city in the Middle East, he was an extremely effective agent with influential connections in many places, particularly in the numerous Greek communities found everywhere.

He lived alone with his secretary, a young Frenchwoman once educated in a convent but long since seduced by the sensual air of Smyrna society and the salon Sivi ran there. Stern's meeting with him, as usual, was at three o'clock in the morning since Sivi's entertainments ran late. Stern left his hotel ten minutes before that and strolled along the harbor to see that he wasn't being followed. At three he slipped into an alley and walked quickly around to the back door of the villa. He knocked quietly, saw the peephole open and heard the bolt slide. The secretary closed the door gently behind him.

Hello, Theresa.

Hello again. You look tired.

He smiled. Why not, the old sinner will never meet me at a decent hour. How's he been lately?

In bed. His gums.

What about them?

He says they hurt, he won't eat

Oh that, don't worry about it, it happens every three or four years. He gets it into his head his teeth are falling out and becomes afraid he might have to make a public appearance without his cigar in place. It only lasts a week or two. Have the cook send in soft-boiled eggs.

She laughed. Thank you, doctor. She rapped on the bedroom door and there was a soft thump on the other side. Stern raised his eyebrows.

A rubber ball, she whispered, it means come in. No unnecessary words. It seems opening his mouth to fresh air might hasten the ravaging of his gums. I'll see you before you leave.

Sivi was sitting in bed propped up by an immense pile of red satin pillows. He wore a thick red dressing gown and a swath of red flannel that entirely covered his head and was tied under his chin. The large olive wood logs crackling in the fireplace gave the only light in the room. Stern pulled aside a drape and found all the windows locked and shuttered against the mild spring night. He stripped off his jacket in the oppressive heat and sat down on the edge of the bed. He felt the old man's pulse while Sivi snifled at a pan of steaming water on the night table.

Terminal?

Surprisingly, no. In fact the flesh isn't even cold yet

Don't joke about it. I may well go within the hour.

How can you breathe in here?

I can't, it's one of my difficulties. The oxygen to my head has been cut off. Who did you say you were?

A laborer. I load tobacco on the pier in front of your villa.

The one to the left or the right?

Left.

Excellent. Keep up the good work but watch out for your back. Heavy lifting can damage the back. Is it day or night out?

Day.

I thought so. I can feel that unhealthy sunshine creeping along the shutters trying to ooze inside. Winter or summer, did you say?

Winter. It's snowing.

Preposterous, I was sure of it, I've been feverish for hours.

You know when your jaw falls off that flannel sling won't be any help.

Nonsense, all illusions are helpful.

You know something else? In your declining years you're beginning to look more and more like that portrait downstairs of your paternal grandmother.

The old man wagged his head.

I wouldn't mind that particularly, it's an admirable proposition. She was a pious and honorable and hardworking woman as well as the mother of one of the heroes of Greek independence, who was a good friend of Byron by the way, you probably know that. But what you don't know is that the last time I was in Malta, I hired as my valet none other than the grandson of Byron's Venetian gondolier, his favorite pimp and catamite. The grandfather, Tito, led an Albanian regiment in our war and then later was stranded in Malta, destitute, through a series of scandalous misadventures involving his former occupations. What, this intriguing news from a Maltese grandson doesn't interest you? Well tell me what's new in the outside world then. I've been bedridden since the Mahdi took Khartoum.

That phallus you're using as a knocker on the back door is new. It's awful.

Sivi laughed happily and sniffed his pan of steaming water.

It does add a touch, doesn't it Well naturally there's no reason to hide the general state of affairs around here and anyway, I have a certain reputation to maintain. My father had a son at the age of eighty-four and although that's not my line, virility is in our blood.

Stern handed him a piece of paper and he fixed his pincenez to study the figures.

Ah, my eyesight is deteriorating.

Degenerating.

Damascus this time.

Yes.

When?

By the middle of June if you can do it.

Easily.

And I'd like to set up a meeting here in September.

I don't blame you at all, it's a lovely place to be in September. Who is going to have the pleasure of visiting here and meeting me?

A man who works for me in Palestine.

Fine, guests from the Holy Land are always especially welcome. Is he on your Arab side or your Jewish side?

Neither.

Ah, from a more obscure region of your multiple personality. Druse perhaps?

No.

Armenian?

No.

He can't be Greek, I'd already know him.

He isn't.

Arab Christian?

No.

Not a Turk?

No.

Well we've accounted for the main non-European elements of Smyrna society so he must be some kind of European.

Some kind. Irish.

Sivi reached down beside the bed and brought up a bottle of raid and two glasses.

Doctor, I thought you might prescribe something like this so I had it ready just in case. You are aware how well the Greek army is doing in the interior?

I am.

And precisely when things are going well, along you come introducing a volatile Irish possibility? Do you have any immediate plans for China? Not that it matters, I wouldn't visit either of those outlandish places.

I'm staying right here on the beautiful shores of the Aegean until I'm cured.

Your granny, said Stern, raising his glass.

Indeed, intoned Sivi, and quite right too. Not only have I never denied it, I wouldn't have it any other way.

In the autumn of 1929 Stern went down to the Jordan, to a small house on the outskirts of Jericho to meet a man he hadn't seen in several years, an Arab from Amman who was active among the bedouin tribes in the Moabite hills. Although he was a year or two younger than Stern he looked far older. Sitting very still, no bigger than a child, his large dark eyes were flat and opaque in the feeble light thrown by the single candle.

A steady wind rattled the windows and swallowed the sounds of the rivers in the darkness. The Arab spoke in whispers, frequently halting to cover his mouth with a rag. Stern looked away when that happened or rummaged in his papers, pretending not to notice how much worse the man's lungs had become. After settling their arrangements they sat silently over coffee, listening to the wind.

You look tired, the Arab said at last.

It's just that I've been traveling and haven't had much sleep. Won't that wind ever stop?

After midnight. For a few hours. It begins again then.

The Arab's lips smiled weakly but there was no expression in his eyes.

I no longer even cough. It's not far away.

You'll have your own government soon and that's not far away either. Fifteen years you've been working for it, just imagine, and now it's really going to happen.

Stiff, thin, wasted, the tiny figure stared at him through dead eyes, the rag clutched near his mouth.

Before you came. Tonight. I wasn't thinking of Amman. It's strange. Concerns change. I was thinking how we've never known each other. Why?

I suppose it's the nature of our work. We hurry back and forth, meet for an hour, hurry on again. There's never any time to talk about other things.

For fifteen years?

It seems so.

You help us. You help the Jews too. I've known that. Who are you really working for?

Stern wasn't surprised by the question. All evening the man had talked in a disconnected dreamlike way, drifting from topic to topic. He supposed it had something to do with the Arab's illness, his awareness of it.

For us. Our people.

In my hills that means your own tribe. With suspicion, a few neighboring tribes. For you?

All of us, all the Arabs and Jews together.

It's not possible.

But it is.

The man didn't have the strength to shake his head. Jerusalem, he whispered and stopped for lack of breath. A boy, he said after a moment. A garden. A football.

Stern gazed at the wall and tried not to hear the wind. Two months before at the end of the summer a boy had accidentally kicked a football into a garden, nothing at all but the boy was a Jew and the garden an Arab's and it happened in the Old City. A mere football, it was grotesque. The Arab saw the foot of Zionism on his soil and the boy was stabbed to death on the spot. In Hebron an Arab mob used axes to butcher sixty Jews, including children. In Safad twenty more, including children. Before the riots were over a hundred and thirty Jews dead and a hundred and fifteen Arabs dead, the Jews killed by Arabs and the Arabs killed by the English police, a boy and a football and a garden.

All the Semites? whispered the man. All together? The Armenians are Christians. What has become of them? Where were their Christian brothers during those massacres?

Stern shifted in his chair. Somehow he couldn't bring himself to find the words. What was the point anyway of arguing with a man who would be dead in a week or a month? He rubbed his eyes and didn't say anything, listening to the wind.

The Arab broke the silence by changing the subject again, not really looking for answers or even hearing them, beyond that now, straying from thought to thought as they occurred to him.

The classics. You often quote from them. Why? Did you start out as a scholar too? I did.

Stern stirred. He felt uneasy. It must have been the incessant noise of the wind pushing on his mind.

No. My father was. I guess I have a habit of repeating things he used to say.

Perhaps I've heard of him. I read a lot once. What was his name?

Lost, murmured Stern. Lost. A man of the desert. Many deserts.

But the accent. You have a trace of one.

The Yemen. I grew up there.

Barren hills. Stony soil. Not like the Jordan valley.

No, not like it. Not at all.

Stern slumped lower in his chair. The overpowering wind outside made it impossible for him to keep his thoughts together. He realized he was beginning to talk in the abrupt manner of the dying man across from him. A wind blowing down the valley to the Dead Sea and Aqaba.

For no reason he saw his father striding into Aqaba eighty years ago after marching the length of the Sinai without food or water, unaware he had walked through three dawns and two sunsets until he found a dog yapping at his heels, smiling then when a shepherd boy told him so and asked him whether he was a good genie or a bad genie, as a reward relating to the boy an obscure tale from the Thousand and One Nights before striding on, Strongbow the genie, many men in many places, truly a vast and changeable spirit as his grandfather had once said.

What? No. I didn't get this from him. Not like us. No. He became a hakim in his latter years. First a scholar, then a hakim.

Better professions, whispered the Arab. Better than ours. Especially the healer. Healer of souls. I would have liked that. But today, you and I. We don't have time. Is that so? Just an excuse we give ourselves?

Stern started to reach for his cigarettes and then remembered. If only the man hadn't mentioned the Armenians. Why did that have to have come up tonight? It always had this effect on him, the memory of the afternoon in a garden in Smyrna, that night on the quay and the Armenian girl soaked in blood whispering please, her thin neck and the knife and the crowds and the screams and the shadows, the fires and the smoke and the knife.

His hands were beginning to shake, it was happening all over again. He tried to bury them in his pockets and squeeze his fists closed but it didn't help, the wind outside wouldn't stop.

The hakim, a huge presence sitting behind a trembling young man at dawn somewhere in the desert half a century ago, telling the frightened man to turn and face the emptiness in all its vastness, to fix his eye on a distant eagle swooping in the first light of day living a thousand years, tracing the journey of the Prophet, the footsteps a man takes from the day of his birth to the day of his death, suggesting the swirls of the Koran shaping and unshaping themselves as waves in the desert and saying Yes, the oasis may be small but yes, we will find it, yes.

The Arab was struggling to get to his feet. Stern jumped up to help him and led him to the door.

It was over. Hurrying back and forth and meeting for an hour, fifteen years gone, leaving again unknown to each other. The man had started as a scholar and would have liked to have ended as a healer but here was his end.

I envy your faith, whispered the man. What you want. I couldn't conceive of it on earth. We won't see each other again. Peace brother.

Peace brother, said Stern as the man limped away in the night toward his river, no more than a hundred yards away but lost now in the blackness, so small and narrow and yet so famous because of events washed by its currents over millennia, and shallow here as well as the earth began to swallow it toward the end of its brief and steeply falling course from the soft green heights of Galilee, rich in gentle fields of grain and kindly memories, a promised stream plunging down and down to the harsh glaring wilderness of the Dead Sea where God's hand had long ago laid lifeless the empty cities of salt.

A few years after that, searching for an explanation of world events, the Arabs in Palestine began to weave the first of their elaborate fantasies around Hitler. One theory was that he was in the pay of the British Secret Service, which was aiding Zionism by having him expel Jews from Europe in order to increase emigration to Palestine.

Or more incredible still, that Hitler himself was a secret Jew whose sole aim in Europe was to undermine the Arabs in Palestine by sending more Jews there.

So Stern's vision of a vast Levantine nation embracing Arabs and Christians and Jews came apart, and the effect of the cascading rumors and swirling events on his dreams might well have been shattering if he hadn't retreated to the memory of a peaceful hillside in the Yemen and begun to take morphine on the eve of his fortieth birthday.

-16-

Jerusalem 700 B.C.-1932.

The ghostly jogger of the Holy City surviving and surviving.

Early one hot July morning in 1932 O'Sullivan Beare arrived at Haj Harun's barren shop and found the old man hiding in the back room, cowering deep in the corner behind the antique Turkish safe. The rust from his helmet had fallen into his eyes, streaking his face with tears. He was trembling violently and the look he gave the Irishman was one of total despair.

Jaysus, said Joe, easy man, get ahold of yourself. What's going on here?

Haj Harun cringed pathetically and wrapped his arms around his head as if expecting a blow.

Keep your voice down, he whispered, or they'll get you too.

Joe nodded gravely. He moved in closer and gripped the old man by the shoulders to try to stop the pitiful shaking. He bent over the crouching figure and spoke in a low voice.

What is it man?

I'm dizzy. You know how I always feel dizzy first thing in the morning.

Jaysus I do and no wonder. After what you've seen but there in the last three thousand years anybody would expect you to be dizzy when you suddenly had to take another look at it. A new day is always trouble so that's all right, calm down and give me a whisper of the problem we're facing.

Them. They're still out there.

Are they now. Where exactly?

In the front room. How did you manage to get around them?

Sneaking on my tiptoes along the wall, a mere shadow of myself. How many did you say there were?

At least a dozen.

Bad odds. Armed?

Only daggers. They left their lances back at the barracks.

Well there's that at least. What sort of cutthroats?

Charioteers, the worst kind. They'll cut a man down without thinking twice about it.

O'Sullivan Beare whistled softly.

Bloody bastards all right. Which conquering army are they from then?

The Babylonian, but I don't think any of them are regular Babylonian troops except perhaps the sergeant.

He may be, he's arrogant enough.

Irregulars are they? Working for loot like the Black and Tans? There's no meaner bunch.

Yes they're mercenaries, barbarians, by the looks of them hired horsemen from the Persian steppes, Medes, I'd say from their accents.

Medes, are they? Now there's a scruffy lot. When did they break in?

Last night when I was grinding my teeth and trying to fall asleep. They took me by surprise and I didn't have a chance to defend myself. They threw me in here and they've been out front ever since drinking and gambling over their spoils and bragging about the atrocities they've committed. I'm exhausted, I haven't had any sleep at all. They brought a sack of raw liver with them and they've been gorging themselves on it.

Do you say so. Why this particular article of meat?

To arouse their lust. The Medes have always believed the liver was the seat of sexual desire. Now they're talking about loin pie and they say they won't leave until I hand them over.

After them are they. Bad, very bad. Hand what over?

The boy prostitutes.

Ah.

They're terribly confused. They think this is a barbershop.

Jaysus they are confused.

Not so loud. It's true, barbershops in Jerusalem used to be a place to procure boys but wasn't that a long time ago?

More or less I'd say but the important thing now is for me to send them packing.

You'll have to be careful. You can't count on Medes to listen to reason.

I'm not and I won't. Just keep under cover here.

O'Sullivan Beare marched to the door between the two rooms and snapped to attention. He saluted smartly.

Sergeant, emergency orders from headquarters. All liberty's canceled, charioteers to return to barracks immediately. Carnage on the southern flank, the Egyptians have just launched a surprise attack. What?

That's right, the squadrons are grouping already. To your lances man. Double-time it.

Tell them you're Prester John, whispered Haj Harun urgently from behind the Turkish safe.

No need to, whispered Joe over his shoulder, they're going anyway.

What about the drunken one who passed out in the doorway across the alley?

The sergeant's giving him some bloody sound kicks, that's what. They're leaving, its safe to come out now.

Haj Harun crept out of the corner and tiptoed timidly over to peek into the front room. He tiptoed to the front door and peered up and down the alley.

Gone, thank God. Do you think the streets are safe?

They are. I saw that whole rabble of an army racing out through Jaffa Gate on my way over here.

Haj Harun sighed and his face brightened.

Wonderful, what a relief, let's take a walk. I need some fresh air, last night was a nightmare. I've always detested the Babylonians.

With reason I'd say. Well which route will we be taking today among the many?

The bazaar perhaps? All at once I'm thirsty.

The bazaar, you're right. So am I.

They passed down several alleys, made a turn and entered the bazaar. Haj Harun's mood had changed abruptly with his release from captivity. Now he was robust and smiling and talkative, exuberantly waving his arms as he pointed out the sights.

Hundreds of sweating shoppers jostled each other and squeezed in front of the open shops where hawkers cried out their wares. Haj Harun absentmindedly picked up a handful of juicy fresh figs from a stand and pressed half of them into O'Sullivan Beare's hand. Peeling and munching, their mouths dripping, they made their way slowly through the dense crowds, edging around loaded donkeys and pushcarts, putting their heads together and shouting to be heard above the noise.

See that shop that sells loquats? yelled Haj Harun. A very grand place in its day, the best cabaret in Jerusalem. Run by a former grand vizier of the Ottoman Empire who introduced the cabaret acts and led the applause at the end. Curious how a man of his former importance could be reduced to such a shabby role in life.

Curious, yes.

What?

Always thought so, shouted Joe.

And this corner here was where I was fined for public cheiromania in Hellenistic times.

What's that?

The man on the corner now? It's hard to say. Either he's had too much hashish or he's gone into a religious ecstasy.

No, I mean that offense the Greeks pinned on you.

Oh that, shouted Haj Harun with a laugh. An obsession with the hand but not what you're thinking.

Palmistry without a license was the problem, I used to be quite a good palmist. See that old building there? I was in jail there once.

They stepped up off the cobblestones into a fruit juice stand and Joe, ordered two large glasses.

Together they stood sipping their pomegranate juice and gazing at the building, Haj Harun beaming and laughing as he reminisced.

That was during the great evil eye epidemic we had here. I don't suppose you've ever heard of it?

It strikes me that I haven't. When was that?

Early in the Assyrian era. For some reason everyone in the city was suddenly terrified of the evil eye.

People imagined they saw it everywhere and no one dared go outside. The streets were empty, the shops closed, all commerce stopped. Jerusalem without commerce? Impossible. The city was dying and I knew I had to act.

Joe wiped the sweat off his face and tried to dry his hands on his wet shirt.

Of course you did. What acts then?

Well first I tried baking bread.

Good, always useful, bread.

Yes I thought that would do it. Sexual organs are known to be one of the best defenses against the evil eye because they fascinate it and divert its attention, thereby keeping it from doing harm. Well I reasoned that if bread were baked in the shape of a phallus and eaten plentifully throughout the city, that would provide a sound internal safeguard people could have confidence in.

Joe wiped his face again. It was terribly hot. In the blur of the cloudless sky he caught a glimpse of himself sneaking around Jerusalem one dark night painting evil eyes on doors. The next morning there would be an Assyrian panic and he would suddenly appear with the miraculous loaves of bread, sell them at an enormous profit and make a fortune. But how was he going to get the baking priest to bake the special shape? Tell him it was the arm and fist of God? No good, the arm of Allah was too common an expression here. The ancient Franciscan would think he had succumbed to the heathens and refuse to fire his oven.

A total failure, laughed Haj Harun. Bread was too subtle. People needed a visible safeguard, not a digestible one, so I went around painting phalluses on walls. That helped a little, at least people began coming outside again. When they did I harangued them, urging them to paint phalluses of their own to reassure themselves and they did that, covering lamps and bowls and every other article they owned, even weaving them into their cloaks and wearing specially carved rings and bracelets and necklaces and pendants. Soon Jerusalem was a city of ten million phalluses. Of course you have to remember all this happened back in the days when I still had influence here and people not only listened to me but believed what I said.

Joe tried to pull his shirt away from his chest and let a little air in but he couldn't, it was glued there.

Are you remembering? asked Haj Harun.

I am. Keenly.

Yes. Well for the next stage of my plan I needed the assistance of menstruating women.

I see. Why this unusual convolution?

Because at that time menstruation was a very powerful agent. It was effective against hail and bad weather in general and could destroy vermin in crops, not to mention withering cucumbers and cracking nutshells.

Very good.

I thought so but then it turned out I couldn't persuade any women to expose their private parts on the street when they were menstruating. Home on their farms at night to help their own crops, of course they'd do it then, but not in Jerusalem in public even though it could have assured the safety of the city. I argued and argued with them in the squares but they remained adamant, claiming it would damage their reputations. Can you imagine? People being as vain as that when the whole city was endangered by a crisis? I tell you, people can be selfish.

True.

And ignore the public welfare.

Very true.

Even to the point of thinking only about themselves while everything around them is going to ruin.

Very very true.

Haj Harun laughed.

Well that was the case then, so obviously there was only one thing to do. One final dramatic act was needed to break the impasse, to enlist the entire citizenry in the fight against the danger we were facing.

Unquestionably I had to take an extreme religious position against the evil eye, no matter how unpopular and flamboyant it might appear to be, and through personal example show the people what was necessary to save us. There was simply no alternative. I had to do it and I did.

Of course you did. What was it?

Haj Harun grinned at the building across the way.

I took off my loincloth and went striding boldly through the streets and every time I came upon an evil eye I whipped up my cloak and gave it a flash. Ha. I flashed and I flashed and each time I did the evil eye's hold over us was weakened and Jerusalem was that much closer to total recovery.

Joe reeled back against the counter of the fruit juice stand and quickly ordered two more glasses of pomegranate juice. His head was spinning and the centuries were making him thirsty, Assyrian centuries, the sight of Haj Harun as a vigorous young man still confident and influential, still respected for his credibility in those far-off days, boldly striding through Jerusalem in 700 B.C. whipping up his cloak to defeat the evil eye at each dramatic new encounter, striking out alone through the streets to do battle with the epidemic that was threatening to lay waste to his Holy City, flamboyant and selfless, shunning vanity and undeterred by any possible damage to his reputation, marching on and doing his duty as he saw it, Haj Harun the fearless religious flasher of antiquity.

I got caught, said the old man with a chuckle.

Do you tell me that.

Yes, the Assyrian police picked me up for lascivious behavior or indecent exposure or some other indefensible charge. Anyway they locked me up in that jail over there and said I'd have to stay locked up until I promised to change my ways. But my campaign had been largely successful by then and the great evil eye epidemic was nearly over. They freed me before long.

A personal triumph, said Joe.

I thought so but of course I didn't get any particular credit for it.

Why?

Commerce. As soon as they got their commerce back they forgot about my religious sacrifice. That happens around here.

I see.

They left the fruit juice stand and once more began pushing their way through the din of the bazaar.

You know, shouted Haj Harun, sometimes it seems I was an old man early in life and had little later to unlearn. When I walk here there are memories and more memories on every side. Did you know Caesar used geese as watchdogs?

Quack, I did not, shouted Joe, but the bustling and shoving may be loosening my brains.

Or that when the Egyptians held the city they had a custom of shaving off their eyebrows when a pet cat died? The cats were then embalmed and sent home to be buried in Bubastis.

Cat city you say? Bubbling my brains quite possibly, it must be this infernal heat I seem to feel the need for some powerful sobering tonic. Or as you said once, Time is.

Haj Harun laughed.

The memories it brings back, that's why I like walking here.

But how do you manage to keep up with them? shouted Joe. These changing nonstop smells of time I mean?

By keeping on the move.

That sounds like what I used to do in the mountains of the old country. But County Cork's a place, or at least it was then. What does it mean in terms of millennia, keeping on the run?

Well take the Roman siege for example, shouted Haj Harun.

Yes let's do that.

What did you say?

I said what happened during the Roman siege?

Oh. Well the Romans bombarded us for weeks with their catapults and there were monstrous boulders falling everywhere. Most people hid in their cellars and many were killed when their houses came crashing down on them. But not me. I survived.

How?

By staying out in the open. I jogged through the streets. A moving target is always much more difficult to hit than a stationary one.

Right you are, thought Joe, and there you have the answer to it all, right there in that picture of Haj Harun jogging through Jerusalem, jogging around his eternal city. Jaysus yes, Haj Harun the moving target of the Roman Empire and every other empire that ever existed. Cloak flowing, spindly legs churning, bare feet wearing down the cobblestones, around and around for three thousand years outrunning siege machines and conquering armies. Around and around in a circle, defying the arsenals of war that were always being dragged up the mountain to defeat him. Plodding stubbornly up and down the alleys wearing down the cobblestones, puffing and wheezing on the run through the millennia, Haj Harun the ghostly jogger of the Holy City surviving and surviving.

The old man clutched Joe's arm in excitement. He laughed and shouted happily in his ear.

Do you see that tower?

Yes, shouted Joe, there it stands in its suggestive shape and I'm ready for it. Which century are we in?

-17-

The Bosporus

The other hour needed for life.

In 1933 Stern found himself walking beside the Bosporus in the rain, and to him the colors of that gray October sky were reminiscent of another afternoon there when an enormously tall gaunt man had entered a deserted olive grove and ceremoniously removed all his elegant clothes, thrown them together into the black passing waters and climbed back through the dark grove, barefoot and wearing only a tattered cloak, a hakim making his way south to the Holy Land and perhaps beyond.

Over half a century ago and now instead of an olive grove there was a hospital for incurables where he had just gone to see his old friend Sivi for the last time, or rather the body that had once been Sivi's, tied to a bed and motionless now, staring blindly at the ceiling, the spirit having finally fled its torment.

Stern walked on. By the railing he saw a woman gazing down at the water, a foreigner dressed in a shabby way, and suddenly he realized what she was thinking. He went over and stood beside her.

Not until after dark I suppose. The wind will be high then and no one will see.

She didn't move.

Do I look that desperate?

No, he lied. But remember there are always other things. Ways to help.

I've done that. I just don't have the strength anymore.

What happened?

A man went mad today after it started to rain.

Who was he?

A man. His name was Sivi.

Stern closed his eyes and saw the smoke and flames of the garden in Smyrna, an afternoon eleven years ago that had brought him and now this woman to a railing beside the Bosporus. He squeezed the iron bar as hard as he could and when he spoke again he had control of his voice.

Well if you've made the decision the only thing you have to worry about now is being sure it's a success.

Your friends won't have it any other way for two reasons.

He spoke so matter-of-factly she turned away from the water and looked at him for the first time. He was a large bulky man with hunched shoulders, his nationality difficult to place. Probably she didn't see the weariness in his eyes then, just the outline of his shapeless figure beside her in the rain.

Only two? she said bitterly.

It seems so, but they're enough. The first has to do with the guilt you make them feel. Was there something more they could have done? Of course, so they resent you for reminding them of that by still being alive. Then too you also remind them they've wasted their lives and they resent that. When they have to look at you afterward they have an uncomfortable feeling you're not willing to accept as much moral corruption as they are. They're not exactly aware of it but you'll know the minute they sit down with you. A serious face, there's something they have to say. Welcome you back from the dead? No. It's cowardice they want to talk about. It's too easy. Those are always their first words.

But it is easy, she whispered.

Of course. Real solutions always are. You just get up and leave. But most people can't do that and that's why they talk about your cowardice, because they've been trying to ignore their own for so long. It makes them uneasy. You make them uneasy.

She laughed harshly.

Is that all they say?

No, often there are special concerns depending on who they are. A mother worrying about how she brought up her children is likely to criticize you for not making it look like an accident. After all, how would your mother have felt? Touching.

Yes. Then a businessman is likely to point out you didn't even have your business affairs in order. When you commit suicide, in other words, you should be thinking about everyone but yourself. You're only losing your life. What about other people?

Dreadful to be that selfish.

Yes. But there are also a few people who never mention it and go right on with you as if nothing had happened. It's a way of finding out who's close to you, I admit, but a dangerous one.

You seem to be quite an expert.

No, just one or two experiences. But don't you want to hear the other reason why you can't fail? It's because you'll have learned a life just doesn't matter much except as a memory, even a great life. In fact I suspect that explains what Christ did after he was resurrected.

Christ?

Well we know he spent forty days on the Mount of Olives seeing his friends, then disappeared. And during those forty days he must have realized he couldn't go on doing the same things with the same people anymore. It was over. They had their memories of him and that's what they needed, not him. In the three years he'd been preaching he'd already changed a good deal and of course he would have gone on changing, everyone always does. But his friends didn't want that.

So what did he do?

Stern tapped his forehead.

Two theories, one for good days and one for bad. The theory for bad days is set in Jerusalem. Have you been there?

Yes.

Then you've seen St Helena's crypt in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?

Wait, I know what you're going to say. It's the man who paces back and forth at the top of the stairs, isn't it. Staring at the floor and muttering to himself and he's been doing it for two thousand years.

You mean you've already heard my theory?

No, but I saw that man once and somebody told me about him.

Oh, well according to my theory for bad days that man is Christ. What happened was that after his forty days with his friends he fully intended to go to heaven, but first he decided he might take a last look at that spot where he was crucified, that hilltop where the most momentous event in his life had occurred.

So he did and he was so stunned by what he saw he never left, and ever since he's been there pacing back and forth talking to himself about what he saw.

What did he see?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They'd taken down the three crosses and it was just an empty hilltop. For all anyone could tell, nothing at all had ever happened there.

She shook her head.

That's certainly for bad days. What about good days?

On good days I think he did leave. He saw what he saw all right, but then he decided to do something else anyway. So he clipped his hair or tied it up and shaved his beard or grew a longer one, put on some weight and taught himself to speak directly like other men, then went on to acquire a trade so he could pay his way.

What trade?

Cobbler, say, perhaps even carpentry again although I doubt that. After seeing the emptiness of that hilltop he'd probably have preferred to try something new. Yes, cobbler perhaps.

And where did he go?

Oh he didn't go anywhere. Theories for good and bad days have to be set in the same place. He stayed in Jerusalem and now that he'd changed his appearance he could come and go as he pleased without being recognized, perhaps disguised as an Armenian or an Arab. Which he still does of course, being immortal and having long since forgotten his former troubles, even the man he used to be. And all because a very beautiful thing happened, a strange and glorious transformation. It took more time than going to heaven, had he done that, but it happened.