Nile Shadows jq-3

by Edward Whittemore

  Yes.

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

  Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Joe?

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

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

  Joe?

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

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

  But Joe?

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

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

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

  Joe, I . . .

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

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

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

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

  Joe glanced around the room. He made a face.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  No.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Damn that noise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Stern nodded gently. He smiled his strange smile.

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

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

  Joe?

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

  Shouts. Laughter. Bloody wogs.

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

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

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

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