Ahmad stared at the dead fire.
But I refuse to believe Stern is acting this way because he knows it will get him killed. What I fear is that he may be cracking up, and that terrifies me because Stern has always been hope to me. Just knowing he's out there and will come back someday, the way he did when we were young and he went off into the desert, just that means everything to me.
In the shadows of the little courtyard, Ahmad reached out toward the dead fire.
Hope . . . hope. We can squander all of the gift of life and even more than that can be taken from us. But not hope. We must have hope or the heavens will spin silently and it will be as if we had never lived . . . a nothingness of nothing.
***
In the stillness of midnight Ahmad stirred and tipped his head, listening to a distant clock toll the long hour.
It's difficult to speak of all that is, he murmured. Silence is what I know best, whereas Stern . . .
Ahmad stopped and adjusted his flat straw hat.
What I mean is, the two of us have taken such different paths in life. Out of failure, I sought the secret adventures of order and the pale consolations of solitude, as did my father before me. But even though Stern's failures have been far greater than mine, because he dared to risk so much more, still he has never turned away from the chaos and futility of life. . . . What I have forsaken, just that has he embraced.
Ahmad looked at Joe.
I'm not used to speaking to people, that's what it comes down to. I'm not used to trying to make sense, because when we're alone with ourselves we never have to do that. But still, it is difficult to speak of all that is, even when we're trying to describe only one single moment, as I've been trying to do with you.
These long nights, Joe, these hours deep in the desert in this little oasis we've found for ourselves . . . and every single thing I've said to you since first you approached my shabby counter in the Hotel Babylon, a way station on your journey, and asked directions for a path that would lead you to old Menelik's crypt, every word I've spoken to you . . . But tell me, have you sensed by now that all of it has to do with only one single moment? One actual, specific moment in time?
Joe glimpsed a movement in Ahmad's eyes, a glitter, a play of lights. . . . It may be now, he thought.
Yes, Ahmad, I think I have sensed that. For a moment can have so very many things to it and in it and behind it, can't it, making it what it is? Just as we do, as you just said. And trying to locate all those things that go into a moment, and give them a size and a shape, while leaving nothing out . . . Well that's an immense task surely. As immense as this midnight sky above us.
Ahmad nodded solemnly.
Yes it is, and so I'm going to try again. But this time, for once, I won't begin with all the things within and behind this moment of which I have spoken again and again, which I have approached in a thousand tentative ways because it haunts me like no other. This time I'll begin with the moment itself. Just there.
Naked.
A smile came to Ahmad's face.
But first you must tell me, Joe, whether I've managed to circle it at all, for even a failed poet can have a touch of vanity hidden away somewhere. . . . So then, this moment of mine. Has there perhaps appeared a where or a when or a what to it, for you?
I think so, said Joe, I think I've begun to get a sense of that too. . . . And the where would be old Menelik's crypt, and the when might be a while ago, not last month but not too many years ago either.
And the what, well that has to be Stern, and it might be Stern together with his Polish story. But above all, the what is you. Because that's the center, the eye on the universe that we've been talking about here .
. . are talking about now. Your moment, Ahmad. You.
Ahmad gazed at Joe. After a while he turned to the fire and set his hat at some new angle. As if in a trance, his words ebbing and flowing, he began to whisper.
. . . it was just after the war started, toward the end of 1939 Stern and I were in the crypt and it was that afternoon when he tried to justify himself to me and I so cruelly shouted him down. . . . We all die alone and unjustified, I shouted, cleverly turning his own words against him, mocking the poor wounded creature with something he himself had once said. And the rest of it, everything that came before then, was just as I've described it to you. It was after that, that the moment came.
. . . he'd injured his thumb when he'd escaped from the prison in Damascus that summer, ripped it up horribly. By then, in the crypt that afternoon, the healing had gone on for some months and the dark purple streaks in his flesh were turning to scars. Ugly scars. Deep. It was the first I'd seen of Stern in quite some time, but a new wound was no surprise. Stern was always turning up with something . . . a cut and a bruise from some new battering, another part of him nicked away, a new clumsiness caused by an arm or a leg that wasn't working properly . . . always something. But he never took any particular notice of those things, nor did I. It was part of the way he lived, that's all, so there was nothing unusual about him appearing with a ripped thumb that afternoon. Not for him, not for me. It was merely another mark from his arcane travels. Simply a small memento from his latest sortie, this Polish adventure of his. An obscure footnote, perhaps, to the beginning of the Second World War.
. . . although in addition to the coincidence that Poland was where the war had started, there was also the fact of Damascus. Something profound indeed had happened to Stern since I'd seen him last, but not on the road to Damascus, rather in getting away from Damascus. Forgive a literary man his conceits, but the irony of that parallel hasn't been lost on me either. In retrospect, naturally.
. . . in any case, inexplicably at the time, Stern's small wound caught the corner of my eye that afternoon, and held it. All the time he was talking those dark purple streaks were somewhere on the edge of my vision . . . ugly, deep, hardening into scars just beyond my conscious thoughts. And he talked and I shouted my disgustingly selfish things at him, and he sagged and said no more and the encounter seemed over. Reluctantly he was gathering himself up to leave . . . broken, weary, alone. And I was raging inside and feeling terrible, already overwhelmed with regret and shame, feeling I'd damned myself by what I had done. . . . When all at once Stern stopped near the door of the crypt. Made some gesture near the door.
A little thing, I think he raised his hand toward an old sign that's hanging there.
. . . and that was the moment. Somehow that thumb of his was there in front of us, and our eyes met and we both understood. We both knew. . . .
Ahmad sat immobile before the campfire, a large somber figure utterly still. The silence around them grew and grew and Joe, suddenly, was afraid Ahmad's mood was slipping away.
You knew? he whispered.
. . . knew, I tell you. Our eyes met and we knew. And then Stern reached out and gripped my shoulder and his hand was strong upon me like the good side of his name, stern and resolute and unyielding in the face of what can't be evaded or escaped in life. Unyielding, strong, I can feel the grip of that hand on my flesh even now . . . the hand with the ripped thumb. And he looked into my eyes and smiled that smile of his, so powerful and enduring despite the wretchedness we both felt, a sad yet mysterious smile I've always known in my heart, always, and he nodded. . . . Yes, he said. . . . Just that one word. No more.
And then the moment was over and his hand dropped away and the door to the crypt opened, closed, and he was gone.
Ahmad shuddered violently, as if he had been struck by a blast of wind from the dark reaches of the desert. He bowed his head and his voice trembled, but he managed to go on.
. . . how much time was there to be after that? Would there be weeks still to come? Months? Even a year or two perhaps? . . . No matter. It was decided and the mark had been made and we both understood. . . . Stern was to die. Stern had to die. Stern had become he who must die. It was decided and we both knew it.
Once more Ahmad lapsed into silence. Joe was as afraid as before
to interrupt his mood, but he was even more afraid to let the moment pass. Urgently, he whispered.
But what gave you that sense of things, Ahmad? What happened to Stern in Poland?
Ahmad stirred and touched his nose, head bowed, still staring at the fire. His eyes flickered as he searched the flames for sensations, sounds, shapes, and this time when he spoke his voice was startlingly clear and ringing.
. . . what happened was that our world had come to an end. What happened was that we had tried to survive one war too many and we had lost. In the end, the barbarians had been too much for us. With their blackness and their forces of darkness the barbarians had come to lay siege, and they had stormed the gates of civilization and overwhelmed us, triumphing utterly. . . . Before, we had managed. Once, we had managed. But now no longer was it to be so. Stern and I, we were finished and it was over. The gates were going to burst open and we would fall there, our strength gone, our pathetic armor torn and ripped away, the life seeping out of us. And everywhere around us, vicious and unrelenting, there would echo the empty laughter of grinning barbarians, the primitive meaningless laughter of jackals, taunting us and taunting us as we lay dying.
Ahmad raised his head. He passed his hand in front of the camp-fire, as if committing his tortured revelations to the flames.
. . . a vision, then. A vision of what was and would be. A vision that seized both of us, born in that single moment when our eyes met and he said Yes and we both knew. . . . But when we knew, you understand, not anyone else, for Stern still appeared to be his old self then. He still looked the same and acted the same and there were none of those disturbing hints that have turned up more recently. In these last months the gestures of Stern's despair have become all too clear to anyone who knows him, but back then at the very beginning of the war? . . . No, certainly not. Not even the Sisters, as well as they know Stern, could have suspected so long ago that he was beginning to crack . . . come apart. . . shatter.
The fire sputtered and Ahmad stared, captivated anew by the flames. Yet again he had lapsed into silence as Joe waited restlessly, a feeling of desperation welling up inside him. At last Joe whispered, trying to be calm.
But Ahmad, what happened in Poland? What did Stern do there? What was it exactly?
Ahmad turned his gaze away from the fire, his trance broken. He rearranged his legs, his hat. With the tip of his forefinger, he touched his nose.
Exactly, you say? . . . Here now, what's this, Joe? What are the details of death, you mean, is that what you're asking me? What are the clauses and the subclauses of the pact Stern may have concluded with the Nazis? How many increments of the Black Code, or something else or whatever it is, equals how many Jewish lives on the first of every month? On the fifteenth of every month?
No, Joe, I don't know anything about these grim workmanlike orgies staged by the bookkeepers of the world, these despicable desecrations of the soul which alone seem capable of titillating the barbarians of our age, and worse, which seem to make up life in its entirety for them. This numbing banality of theirs which can delight only in a romance of the ledger and a romance of the rulebook, where abstract numbers can pile up with Germanic thoroughness, with that well-known Germanic attention to detail, with an implacable and industrious Germanic concern for categories, and for the corpses of categories . . . the mind's carrion, these things that are often called theories of history.
No no, Joe, I can't tell you anything about that. Stern and I have never talked about things like that. All I know is that he went to Poland to do something important, and he did it, and the outcome for him and for me is decided. But as for these details you seek, you'll have to go elsewhere for them. I'm not a bookkeeper who can measure human souls by using numbers, nor am I a political philosopher who can cleverly pretend to theorize into existence yet another new and nonexistent superman, or Sovietman, while logically explaining away mass murder, by the by. Stern can hold his own with these monsters of abstract theories, but I can't. There's a world I see and feel and know, but it's not that one. Stern and I, we've always opposed the barbarians in very different ways. He in many, but I in only one . . . in my soul.
In my soul. You see, Stern is truly more than I am. I've never been but one man, whereas Stern has always been many men.
Joe listened. He nodded. It was useless, he knew, to try to draw from the old poet what wasn't there.
Ahmad's knowledge was immense, but it was mostly self-knowledge and there were dimensions to Stern that simply didn't include him.
Well I understand now, said Joe, why these nights of ours have come about. And I want you to know how much it means to me that you've shared Stern here, your feelings for him, your love. But still, I . . .
Ahmad interrupted.
Yes, and I know what you're thinking now. Why is it, you wonder, that what Stern did in Poland decides my end as well as his own? That's what you want to ask, Joe, isn't it? . . . And what can I say that might satisfy you, or less, that might enlighten you just a little? Even the way I failed Stern, perhaps even that you find hard to comprehend. Because we are still brothers, Stern and I. That moment several years ago when we looked up from his thumb and our eyes met and we both knew our fate, that was after I'd shouted him down, wasn't it? In other words, even after our irreparable rupture, we were and are still brothers.
But you see, Joe, I failed him because I feel I failed him. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, it doesn't even matter what he thinks. What we feel is always true for us, it's real for us and genuine, it exists, and that's our universe.
I was always alone in the world, Joe. My father died when I was young and I never knew my mother, and there were no brothers and sisters, but then all at once there was Cohen and Ahmad and Stern, here in these byways that are my life. And the same music was in our veins and we were inseparable, and I was of them and every act and feeling of mine had a resonance in them, as did theirs in me. And then Cohen was killed and Stern went away, yet still.
Ahmad tipped his head, listening to the night. Gently, he smiled.
Joe? I'm a failed poet finally, and I'm afraid I can't explain this any better than I have. But perhaps I could add one thought that might provide a glimmer of what I feel about Stern. . . . I've spoken of the hope Stern has always given me, just by being out there somewhere and being himself, just by being. And I need that hope because it's always been a special unspoken part of my life, an intimation of the richness in man, in all human beings. And when that hope goes, life will go . . . for me.
So what is Stern's Polish story, you ask? Well I can only answer for myself, and for me the answer is simply this. Three summers ago when the war was about to begin, Stern took his life in his hands in a Damascus prison and he weighed what he found there, in his hands, and immediately he broke out of that prison and went to Poland. And in Poland he acted as he felt he had to act, as was only right for him to act, given the human being he is. Yet given who I am, and the way I feel about him and the way I feel we've been connected through the years . . . well he was also acting for me, as it turned out. And doing so, almost certainly, with never a thought for me. After all, Stern is important in this world. So important, very few people will ever know.
But Joe? I'm proud of what he did, whatever it was. I'm proud he acted for me. On my own I never could have amounted to much in life. I dreamed of giving beauty to others but that was not to be. So I failed in what I wanted to do, and there's a cave not far away whose dusty contents will testify to the multitude of any man's lost dreams and lost adventures.
But wait, listen. Even here in the darkness, even here amidst the chaos of an unspeakable war, even now God's hand may be restlessly moving within me and touching my soul. For just by knowing Stern and being a part of him, haven't I then also taken part in giving beauty to many many lives through him, through what he is? Might not that also be so? And if perhaps it is, then who can say? . . .
Slowly, Ahmad nodded. He smiled, his face at peace, and gazed around th
e little courtyard.
A thumb . . . and a moment. So small, our world, and yet so vast. From the cave we know all too well to this mysterious sky we dream under. And Stern? . . . And myself? Well to be completely honest, I have no idea whether Stern feels his life has been justified by what he has done. He alone can decide that. But listen to me now, Joe, and feel the wondrous sweep of our majestic universe with its apparent contradictions.
For in the single moment I've spoken of, a single moment in time which is also my life, Stern has justified my existence, for me. And that, that is truly the gift of gifts. For without it, we recede into dust. But with it, we take our place as dreaming creatures in the grandest of all schemes, and become one with the poetry of the universe.
***
Later that same night Ahmad turned to study the sky to the east. Not a hint of the grayness of dawn had appeared above the courtyard wall, but they both knew it couldn't be long in coming now. Then too, Ahmad must have realized that his journey into the past with Joe was nearing its end, probably with that very sunrise.
For me, said Ahmad, this hour always brings Stern to mind, but not for the reasons you may think. I know this is the hour when he turns to morphine . . . sadly. But that affliction is a burden of only the last decade or so, and I remind myself of all he has suffered, and I also recall the many other sides to Stern and how he has always been there in some obscure corner within me, whispering to me in his soft voice, or simply listening and forgiving me in his kindly way.
I have so many images of the man from over the years. From the boulevards and the cafés, from the riotous nights when he and I and Cohen drank and swaggered and raved away the hours, dreaming our way into eternity. Yet there will always be one image of Stern I cherish above all others. A startling image from long ago that speaks of man in the universe, a vision forever stunning in the simplicity of its mystery.
It's a memory of Stern as a young man going out into the desert in times of great sadness or joy, and playing his violin in the eye of the Sphinx in the last darkness before dawn, alone and soaring with his strong somber music, those awesome flights of tragedy and yearning that can only come from a human soul.
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