Nile Shadows jq-3

by Edward Whittemore

  How it was, murmured Joe. How it was. . . .

  Joe squinted, gazing out over the river.

  Bletchley?

  Yes.

  Listen to me. Don't take so much of this on yourself. You came into this in the middle of things, just like the rest of us. Like me, like Liffy, like David and Ahmad and everybody else. You didn't start it and you did the best you could with what was in front of you, so let up on yourself a little. . . .

  Joe paused.

  Anyway, he added, I know who told you Stern's Polish story.

  Bletchley's head jerked back and he raised his hands, stopping Joe almost pleading with him.

  No names, he whispered. For God's sake, Joe, no names. We haven't spoken of this.

  Joe nodded.

  No, we haven't spoken of it and there'll be no names. I'm merely referring to persons unknown and to their haunting elegy that's half as old as time, an allusive recitation to the stars and a hymn as anonymous as the night. So no names, then, but I want you to know you're not alone here, because I know who told you, and I know why they told you.

  Bletchley sat perfectly still, unable to look at Joe. Again Joe paused, looking out at the water. He spoke in a very quiet voice.

  Yes, they loved him, and they loved him too much to see him coming apart like that. They just couldn't bear to see it happen because Stern was special for them. You could see it in his eyes, they said, and you could hear it in his laughter. . . . Hope, they said. For he was a man who stood by the river and saw great things, and his eyes shone at the splendor of the gift, like a hungry man brought to a great table.

  Precious, they said. Always to be so, they said.

  But then they saw him coming apart like the world itself, and he was too precious to them to be destroyed like that, too beautiful by far, so they took his burden from him and spoke to you. . . . We would do anything for him, they said to me. But there's nothing we can do for him now but weep, and so we do that . . . for Stern our son.

  ***

  Joe felt Bletchley move beside him. He looked down and saw that Bletchley had taken something out of his pocket and was holding it in his good hand, slowly turning it over and over.

  That looks like an old Morse-code key, said Joe. Worn and smooth with a soft sheen to it, the way things get with a lot of handling. . . . Tell me, what happens to old Menelik's crypt now?

  Nothing, said Bletchley. It will stay the way it is . . . locked. The way it was left.

  Good. That's something at least.

  Slowly, Bletchley turned the worn Morse-code key over and over in his good hand.

  I also ought to mention, he said, that someone checked through your room before the fire. All that was found were some clothes and your small valise. The valise had a faded red wool hat in it and a khaki blanket from the Crimean War. Was there anything else?

  No, that was it, said Joe. They went the way of the fire, did they?

  Bletchley nodded. Joe shook his head.

  That must be Liffy's Third Law, said Joe. I guess he didn't have time to mention it. Only the things you care about go up in smoke.

  He took another drink from the flask and they both fell silent, gazing out at the river.

  ***

  What were you thinking about just now? asked Joe.

  The front. El Alamein.

  Will it hold, the way you see it?

  I hope so. In any case it has to. The tide has to turn and it has to turn now or people will lose hope.

  Yes. And in the meantime, what will you be doing with that good-luck charm in your hand, do you think?

  I'll carry it with me for a while, said Bletchley, and someday, if things work out that way, I'll give it to someone.

  Who?

  Bletchley glanced at him and looked away.

  Did you know there was a child, Joe?

  Whose child? What do you mean?

  Eleni and Stern. Did you know they had a child?

  Joe was stunned.

  What? Is that true?

  Yes.

  Are you sure?

  Yes. Stern told me about her. She's a young woman now.

  Joe whistled softly.

  But that's just astonishing. Who is she? Where is she? Oh my God.

  She's Greek, said Bletchley. She was born in Smyrna but later on she grew up in Crete. Eleni's uncle, Sivi, had relatives in Crete. His father came from there, from a little village up in the mountains.

  I know that.

  Well that's where she grew up when Eleni could no longer manage. Stern took her there as a child.

  Joe whistled very softly.

  That's just astounding. What else do you know about her?

  Very little, that's all really. It came up in an odd way about a year ago, just after Crete fell. Stern said he had an agent there who could do certain things by posing as a collaborator with the Germans. But I thought the agent, as he described her to me, was much too young to do what he had in mind. I didn't think we could trust someone like that in such a sensitive role, and that's when Stern told me she could be trusted because she was his daughter. I was as surprised as you are. Of course, she doesn't carry his name. She uses the Greek name of Sivi's relatives.

  That's just amazing, said Joe.

  Something crossed his mind and he thought for a moment.

  Here now. Don't I recall that it was from an agent posing as a collaborator that Stern found out how Colly died in Crete? That time Stern made a special trip there, after Colly was killed?

  Yes. She was the one.

  Joe smiled.

  What a wonder of a trickster Stern was, always another surprise yet to come. Do you realize I never even knew about Eleni until that last night we were together in the bar? And now it turns out there's a child. Absolutely astonishing, that's what. Does anybody else here know about her?

  I doubt it. In fact I'm quite sure no one does. It seemed to be one thing he wanted to keep very close to himself. He asked me never to tell anyone.

  Why? Did he say?

  Not directly, but it was obvious it had to do with his work. That and the fact that he didn't want to endanger her in any way.

  Yet she could have left Crete before it fell, said Joe, or probably even after it did. Stern could have arranged that. Why didn't he?

  I had the impression she didn't want to leave.

  Oh.

  Joe shook his head.

  And despite all the things he told me that last night, he never even hinted at this. Why, I wonder? Why?

  For the same reasons he never told anyone else? Not even Maud?

  Yes, I suppose. Still, it does seem strange. . . . But don't you know anything else about her?

  No, I truly don't. He really wouldn't say much of anything, other than who she was and where she was.

  Joe was silent for some moments. All at once he touched Bletchley's arm, startling him.

  But Stern also asked you not to tell anyone about her. Why did you?

  Bletchley moved around where he was sitting. He seemed uncomfortable.

  Because you're leaving. And since no one else knows but me, and since something could always happen out here, well, I felt . . .

  Bletchley's voice trailed off. He glanced at his watch.

  The time's getting on. We should be starting for the airport soon.

  In a moment, said Joe. I think there's something we haven't quite covered yet.

  That's not so, I've told you what I can. There are certain matters . . .

  I know, but I wasn't referring to certain matters. I mean something between you and me.

  It's getting on, said Bletchley. We ought to . . .

  Bletchley moved as if to rise but Joe put his hand on Bletchley's arm, stopping him.

  It's just this. What was the real reason you picked my name out of Stern's file?

  I told you. Because you'd known Stern well in the past, and because you cared for him, and because you seemed to have the experience and the temperament that were needed for the assignmen
t.

  Yes. Go on.

  But that's all.

  Joe smiled.

  No it's not.

  It's not?

  Joe shook his head, still smiling.

  No, of course it's not. That's what got put down on paper and that's what London understood, but that's not all of it.

  I've told you the truth, said Bletchley, his voice defiant.

  Yes, and you've always done that, and I appreciate it. It's just that you've also left things out here and there, bits and pieces along the path. And we both know that's the cleverest way to hide things, from others or from ourselves. But now that I am leaving, why don't you go on for once and say those things to yourself? Not hide them anymore? . . . So then. You studied Stern's file and chose me. Why? What's the rest of it?

  Suddenly Bletchley pulled away from Joe, freeing his arm. He seemed both angry and hurt as he stared out at the river, an empty expression on his scarred face, his eye wide and bulging. When he spoke his voice was harsh with resentment.

  The rest of it? . . . I don't know what you mean.

  Oh yes, said Joe softly, and what does it matter here and now between the two of us? And why does it ever matter anyway? I'm leaving and what's more I'm disappearing, and I'll never be able to talk about any of this . . . so then. Why not the rest of it?

  Bletchley looked confused, even frightened. His resentment was gone and his voice was little more than a whisper.

  Do you mean . . . Colly?

  Yes, said Joe. . . . Colly. I mean him.

  ***

  Bletchley gripped his bad hand again, covering it.

  Well I knew him. I knew him, of course. I'd worked with him.

  Much?

  No, not really. Just since the war started, before he was killed. And I didn't know him well the way some of the others did, the Colonel at the Waterboys, say, Harry's superior. He'd worked with Colly all through the thirties, so he knew him very well. But I wasn't around here much then, I was mostly in India.

  So I never really saw that much of Colly, although I'd always known about him, by reputation.

  And admired him?

  Well naturally. Everybody admired him. He was such a talented man and he always seemed to do things with so much dash.

  And more than that, said Joe softly, you envied him, didn't you?

  Bletchley glanced at Joe and looked back at the river, his eye round and empty, confused.

  I suppose I did, he said in a low voice.

  Joe strained forward.

  Because he seemed to be everything you never could be, wasn't that it?

  In a way, perhaps. But I don't see how any of this . . .

  Just everything, said Joe. A hero in the last war and a grand one, a hero who survived it intact and all of a piece, in his body and his mind, without a ripped-up face and a crippled hand and maybe crippled other things. Who was so famous as a young man he could afford to go and enlist in the Imperial Camel Corps as just plain Private Gulbenkian. Who was so sure of himself and who he was he never had to worry about ranks and titles and positions, or even about his own name, just imagine that. Who could even be an A. O. Gulbenkian on camelback, anonymous to all appearances, and still be famous wherever it counted because beyond and beneath it all, no matter what name he used and what disguise he put on and no matter where he went, he would always be Our Colly.

  That's right. Always. The Sergeant of the Empire, Our Colly of Champagne, a legend no matter what.

  You remember what they used to say about him when we were young. There was just no stopping Our Colly, not ever. He was a class apart and a man apart and they just don't make them like that anymore, that's what they used to say. . . . Our Colly? He was the man who defied the law of averages a hundred times and got away with it. No man could ever do what he did, but Our Colly did it all the same. . . .

  That's what they used to say, wasn't it?

  Yes, whispered Bletchley. . . . Oh yes.

  Sure. Oh yes is what it was, and I remember it and so do you. But did you ever know that way back then in the beginning, when the last war started, Colly tried to enlist first in the royal marines?

  No, I've never heard that, said Bletchley. Is that true?

  Yes, they wouldn't take him. Undersized, Colly was, too scrawny altogether. So next he tried the navy and they wouldn't have anything to do with him either. Not only undersized but his English was still pretty limited then. Yes. No. Thank you. Please pass the potatoes. A stunted childhood, you see. He'd always been handy in a fishing boat as a boy, but the cold winds had kept him low to the deck and they'd also kept him from putting on any weight. Cold winds can do that. The weight goes to keeping the wind out and keeping the body halfway warm. So after that, Colly went around to the army, and they weren't about to be particular if a body was halfway warm, so they took him. One scrawny undersized kid who couldn't speak very well. That was Colly and that was how it all began for him.

  I never knew that, said Bletchley.

  No, most people don't. A hero's a hero, after all, and we like to have them in troubled times. So Colly managed to get into the army by lying about his age and by drinking a couple of quarts of water before they weighed him in, and then he took a big piss and went to France and did what he did there, and pretty soon he was known as Our Colly, everybody's, the man who could defy the law of averages and get away with it. And then later he went on to do the same kinds of things out here, on camelback, a mysterious Gulbenkian in disguise pulling off all sorts of wild tricks in Ethiopia and Palestine and Spain.

  So that was Colly's way and Colly's path, the way of the Our, and once we talked about it in Jerusalem when I was still playing poker there, just before I left. Colly came to call and we put up our feet and talked about it. And the worst part about being an Our, he said, is living up to what people expect of you. You have to keep giving more and more of yourself, he said, until . . .

  Not that he didn't like what he was doing, he did like it. In fact he loved it. But still. . . and yet . . .

  as he said. But still. And yet.

  Sure. You remember all the things they used to say about Our Colly when we were young. I heard them often enough and you must have heard them in whatever hospital you were lying around in then, feeling useless with your dreams of a career in the army as shot up as you were, as shattered as the left side of your own face. And maybe you thought about Colly more than once as those next years came along and you were still lying around in hospital beds, waiting while they performed one useless operation after another and tried to get the rest of those glass and metal fragments out of your eye socket, just waiting and waiting while they reconstructed the bridge of your nose a little and kept breaking your hand and trying things a different way so you might be able to move it a little.

  Waiting, you were. Waiting. Waiting and hoping they could put a glass eye in. But the bones and the muscles weren't there anymore, and the glass eye looked like a colored bead off in the side of your face somewhere, so you had to settle for an eye patch and wiping around it and being stared at.

  And maybe Our Colly came to mind again when more years went by and you decided to settle for this, because it was the closest you could ever come to being in the regular army, which was all you'd ever wanted in life because you came from an army family and you'd grown up thinking that someday, someday, you might even have your own regiment. Maybe even the regiment your father commanded and his father before him, because it was a career and a calling that was in your blood and just a natural part of fathers and sons, a natural part of the scheme of things. . . .

  Nothing to wonder about. Just the way it was.

  Or rather, the way it had been back then in the beginning, before it turned out otherwise. Before you went to the front as a young man and put a spyglass to your eye and a bullet shattered the spyglass and shattered your face, shattering everything in sight, all that was and all that would be, shattering every dream you ever had and leaving you with a face that terrifies children an
d terrifies just about everybody, if the truth be known.

  The evil eye, Bletchley. Anybody would be secretly frightened by it and you know why that is. We look at you and we see something that could happen to us, that is us, and it terrifies us. So we try not to look at you and we try to ignore you because we're not like you after all, of course we're not, we're nothing like you.

  Just consider it. Now, when there's a great war going on and everybody's killing everybody for the sake of . . . just consider the matter rationally for a moment. Children look at you and scream.

  Children look at you and run away. But don't the rest of us say nice things to little children? Don't we smile at them and don't they smile back? Of course, and we're not like you, we're not ugly.

  That's not why the whole human race is killing somebody or other. There's no evil in us. . . .

  And so we like to scorn you a bit because that's the easier way. Because you're not really human, because you're not like the rest of us. Because we're not ugly, you are, and we don't want to face that face of yours. Our own face . . . adjusted a little by circumstances. . . .

  Bletchley was moving around uneasily as he sat there on the end of the little pier beside Joe. He was gripping his bad hand with his good hand and staring out at the river, not sure what to make of Joe's sudden rush of words, so demanding and insistent, so unlike any side of Joe he had seen before.

  Joe, I think that . . .

  I know it. We have to be leaving and I'm almost finished, and I will be by the time that felucca comes around into the wind again. It's working its way up the river all right and it's due to come around, so just give it another few seconds tacking on its present course.

  Joe smiled. He touched Bletchley's arm.

  There's a point to all this. Could you just turn and look at me?

  Slowly, Bletchley did so. Slowly, he turned and looked at Joe, who was smiling.

  Good. It's just this, said Joe. You're not very different from Colly. You're not very different at all.

  A peculiar expression came over Bletchley's face, disbelief followed by sadness and resignation, and then by a terrible uncertainty. He was about to say something when Joe tightened his grip on Bletchley's arm.