Nile Shadows (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 3)

by Edward Whittemore

  But why are we all whispering? whispered Big Bill.

  He squinted through the darkness and pointed.

  Isn’t that the kiva over there?

  In the center of the courtyard a mound of fitted stones rose four or five feet above the surface of the ground, what appeared to be the roof of an underground chamber. Protruding from an opening in the top of the mound was the end of a ladder. They climbed up to the ladder and lowered themselves, one by one, down through the opening into the interior of the mound.

  The underground vault they had entered was round and spacious with smooth walls of stone. In the middle of the chamber stood a low unadorned altar, and in front of the altar a lone Indian sat crosslegged on the ground, cloaked in a blanket. The chamber was roughly divided in half, the semicircle where the Indian sat having a lower floor level than the side where they had descended and now found themselves standing awkwardly, their disheveled linen suits filthy from the climb up the face of the cliff, their Panama hats bashed and askew. Here and there torches hissed on the walls, casting uneasy shadows.

  The Indian watched them impassively, his dark skin deeply etched with lines. His hair was long and greasy, what little of it showed beneath a thick wool hat squashed down to his ears, a hat that might have been bright red once but was now badly faded by time and the elements. Although crudely woven by hand, the hat didn’t seem to be of local manufacture. Instead it gave every appearance of being the product of some hovel-industry in the Old World, the meager handiwork of an aging peasant laboring in perpetual rain and twilight. In Ireland, perhaps.

  The impression given by the hat was vaguely disquieting to the three visitors. Peaked front and back and pulled down over the Indian’s head at a raffish angle, it suggested nothing so much as the shoddy costume of an itinerant frontier trickster eager to unload worthless bottles of some all-purpose health tonic, fortified with gin and laudanum, in exchange for valuable furs.

  As for the Indian’s outer garment, the threadbare khaki blanket covering him from neck to ankle, it was so worn and tattered it looked like a campaign relic from another century, and indeed, a legend stamped on its edge stated that it had originally been issued for use among Her Majesty’s forces in the Crimea, 1854. Of course the blanket was immediately recognizable to the three men, having been prominently mentioned in their intelligence files as a souvenir from the Home for Crimean War Heroes in Jerusalem.

  As soon as they were off the ladder and standing together, the Indian made a gesture commanding silence. Another gesture and the three of them were sitting in a row facing him and the altar, higher than he was both because he was such a small man and because of the lower level of the floor on his side of the chamber. They watched him as he reached under his blanket and brought out something in a closed fist. Solemnly the Indian thrust his fist in the air and muttered a guttural incantation, then dropped his fist and moved it sideways with a tossing motion.

  From up to down. From left to right. The Indian was throwing cornmeal at them, sprinkling them with cornmeal. And as he did so, strangely, he seemed to be making the sign of the cross in the air.

  His face still stern, the Indian reached under his blanket again and this time brought out a flat papery corn husk, together with a handful of rough homegrown tobacco. Deftly he rolled a thick cigarette, struck a wooden match on the sole of his bare foot and put the flame to the end of the cigarette, which flared briefly. The Indian puffed several times and handed the loose cigarette over to his three visitors, who drew on it in turn, coughing and sputtering. The Indian nodded and took the cigarette back. Abruptly he smiled, speaking in a soft Irish voice.

  … takes getting used to, I guess, like life and a lot of things. And that business you’ve probably heard about Indians using peacepipes by way of welcome, well, it’s strictly that. The business. The Hopi have always smoked their tobacco in what we’d call cigarettes. And speaking of myths, the Hopi view of creation is that the first thing ever said by anyone in the universe was simply this. Why am I here?

  The Indian laughed.

  … makes sense, you say? Well you’re right about that, questions generally do. They have just a lovely way of being straightforward and to the point, I know it. It’s only when we try to come up with answers that we lose our way and wander, like the stars overhead. For the stars do that, don’t they? Forgetting what we’ve been told, I mean, isn’t that surely the way the heavens look? Astray and incomprehensible?

  … astray, muttered the Indian, and that’s the truth of it. Well according to the Hopi myth of creation, those were the very first words ever spoken in the universe. Why am I here? And just maybe the longer we live, the more we feel the sense of them.

  Nor do I need to tell you that this first and most basic query was spoken by a woman, the ancestress, don’t you know. For the Hopi believe the first life in the void was a woman’s, which also makes sense. No strutting males for them in the beginning, because no life ever comes from us, only the living and the observing of it. Descent among the Hopi remains traditional and matrilineal, as I’m told it does in some other old societies.

  Whereas my bare feet aren’t poking out this way because I’m a savage, but only to show humility. The same reason I’m expected to sit in the lower half of the circle of life down here in the kiva. Among the Hopi, the more powerful you are the more humble. But I guess that’s always the true way anywhere.

  So to bring you rapidly up to date then, still following the Hopi view of the matter, this ancestress went on to create twins as the next step, males this time for balance, and what do you suppose were the very first words that popped into the heads of those two fellows?

  That’s right, just what you’d expect, the same as hers but with that added yearning for identity so common to our sex. Why are we here, certainly, but quickly right on top of that the other card in the main male riddle, the question that’s always there worrying us to the grave, Who are we anyway?

  So the basic human enigmas seem to dip well back in time and a sound answer on the spot has always been tricky stuff, which brings me around to us. That advance party of yours that climbed up here a couple of weeks ago didn’t really say much about who you’d be when you turned up, and moreover, why you’d be turning up in the first place. So I wonder if one of you might have some thoughts on the matter? Why we’re here together, I mean?

  The Indian reached under his blanket and scratched himself.

  Feel free to consult among yourselves, he said. I’ll just retire inside my head and you can give me a whoop whenever you’re ready.

  The Indian closed his eyes and began to snore. His three visitors exchanged glances and one of them cleared his throat. Instantly the Indian’s eyes flew open.

  How’s that? What did you say?

  We weren’t sure how to address you, answered one of the men.

  Oh is that all. Well as the wind carries you, is the answer. The Hopi are great believers in echoes. The way they hear it, everything in the universe is a sound coursing through everything else. So much so that most of my job as the resident shaman here is listening, no more. Straining to hear those echoes, don’t you know. But as for me, well … why don’t you call me Joe?

  Fine, said one of the men.

  The Indian nodded, smiling.

  Yes, simple but fine. And you needn’t bother to run out those cover names you must have packed along for yourselves, Gaspar and Balthazar and Melchior, or whatever strange ring the exotic names may have. Since we’re way out here in a desert of the West, I’ll just put you down as the Three Wise Men from the East, traditional figures that a man can comprehend and sense, if not know. So tell me, have you turned up bearing those merry gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh, as you are said to do in the traditional tales?

  We can provide gold, answered one of the men.

  And I’m sure that’s so, but unfortunately I don’t have any use for it. What a medicine man needs is medicine, the kind that helps the soul. Now then, with everybod
y’s credentials established, suppose we get down to the particulars of this era. You’ve made a long journey way out here because you must want me to do something for you. Where, I wonder?

  In the Middle East.

  Ah yes, I’ve heard of it. Said to be as dry as here but better-known to history. Where in the Middle East, I wonder?

  Cairo.

  Ah yes, I’ve heard of that too. It’s in the ancient land of the pharaohs, said to be a place for pyramids and mummies and lost secrets in general. Known far and wide for its great river of life, and also for those steamy fleshpots that always seem to pop up along any river of life. But I don’t know Cairo at all. I’ve never even been there. And that has to mean you need an outsider to poke around and look for something, either in the fleshpots or in a pyramid or two. But look for what, I wonder? A lost secret perhaps? A wandering pharaoh? A mummy who refuses to take you to his leader? … Just what might it be you want me to find, directly?

  A person. A man.

  Joe reached under his blanket and scratched. His face was thoughtful.

  The one of you is American, another British, and the third speaks somewhere in between. Canadian?

  Yes.

  Then it’s pretty much of a high-level international delegation I’m facing, which isn’t my level at all, and that means one of two things. Either I know this man and you don’t, or you know him and I don’t. Which is it?

  You know him. We’re only acquainted with him through the files, and through others.

  Joe stroked his chin.

  I could grow a beard again. Indians don’t do with beards and it hurts to pluck out your whiskers one at a time. But there’s another angle. Did any of you know that Hopi means peace? Well it does, and although there aren’t many of us left, that’s what we are, the People of Peace. Our religion forbids us to harm anyone, to molest anyone, to kill anyone. We just can’t do it and that’s the shape of our sky, and also why we’re so few. The Navajo are fierce and all around us and they’ve been plucking us off for years. So what do you say to that?

  We wouldn’t ask you to do anything that’s against your beliefs, said one of the men.

  I know it, no one ever does. It’s just that others have a way of shifting your beliefs around a bit to make themselves more comfortable with them.

  Joe pushed a forefinger into the earth at his feet.

  Well I think it’s time we had a name here. Who is it you’re looking for?

  Stern.

  Joe’s face grew serious. For several long minutes he gazed at his finger in the earth and said nothing. When he finally looked up there was a deep sadness in his eyes.

  I knew that would be it. The moment those men arrived here a couple of weeks ago, all secrecy and mystery, I knew it was the beginning of something that would lead to Stern. All they said was that I was going to have some important government visitors, but I knew. He’s not missing, though, is he? That isn’t what you meant by finding him?

  No.

  No, I didn’t think so. Your problem is that Stern knows a thing or two, and you’re not sure what.

  Something like that.

  Well what exactly? He’s working for you, I’d imagine, and he’s also working for the other side. But you always thought he was really working for you in the end, and now all at once you’re not so sure. Is that it?

  Yes.

  And naturally it’s important that you know. How important?

  Very. It’s crucial.

  Crucial? Stern? You’re not exaggerating?

  No, not at all. We can’t emphasize it strongly enough.

  Joe looked from one face to another and the three men somberly returned his gaze.

  I see, said Joe. Crucial, then. And yet Stern used to be known as a petty gunrunner with a morphine habit, so how could it be that such a nobody as him is suddenly upsetting the war in the Middle East? Or should I remind myself that almost everyone who has ever been important in history was nobody to begin with, and that maybe the most important ones of all always stay that way? … Invisible, don’t you know. Like a voice speaking the truth.

  Joe’s gaze drifted off into the distance. He stirred, scratched the side of his face.

  Of course anyone who knows Stern at all would never think of him as a petty gunrunner with a morphine habit. That’s just the way he might appear from a distance. Up close there’s a whole secret world to Stern and one way or another he’s always been in my life, just there, a big shambling bear of a man with a mysterious smile and an awkward way of moving sometimes, a bit of clumsiness about him from all the batterings through the years, and maybe even no shape to him you might say … or all shapes to him. That’s another way to put it. But just substantial and bulky and there with his soft voice and his kind touch and that gentle way he has with people. Helping them, that’s what he does. Stern has this quiet way of helping people when they don’t even know it, when they don’t even suspect what he’s doing, and he never says a word about it himself. Years can go by and maybe just by chance you happen to come across something he did once. Changed a life. Saved someone’s life. Sure…. And as often as not a stranger’s.

  I remember an incident like that from years ago. Somebody else told me about it, not him of course, not the woman involved either. It was a dreadful rainy afternoon by the Bosporus and the light was dying and a desperate woman was standing by a railing getting ready to die herself, to throw herself in the water, and along came this big awkward man shuffling out of the rain, a stranger, Stern, and he went up and stood beside the woman at the railing and gazed down at the dark swirling currents with her, and he began to talk in that honest halting way he has, just nothing but the truth, and some time went by and pretty soon he’d talked her right back into life…. One little incident a long time ago. Just one that I happen to know about.

  Yes. And I know there’s no knowledge without memory, and certainly I remember every twist and turn of my times with Stern as clearly now as when they happened. It was right after the First World War when we met, in Jerusalem naturally, Stern’s beloved myth of a Jerusalem. And I didn’t know much of anything then, and Stern took me in and taught me things and I loved him dearly in the beginning, loved him with all my heart…. He can have that effect on you easily enough. His ideals, don’t you know.

  And then some things happened and I came to hate him with all the passion of a young man who feels betrayed. Because he can have that effect on you too. Those impossible ideals of his again. They can cut you to the heart and shame you maybe.

  Stern’s ideals. No wonder you’re not sure whether he’s working for you or not, in the end. Complex, that’s what they are…. Unravel them and you just might learn a very great deal.

  Well, so some more time passed and my feelings for him changed again as feelings can do with time, as the years and the loss of them weather a man’s heart in the same way as the wind and the sun weather his face. And I understood it better by then. The trouble I’d always had with Stern was the trouble I’d always had with myself, and it’s just awful how we do that. We’re a damnably self-centered bunch, the curse of the race, it is. It’s just so hard to learn to feel others even a little bit. To let them stand there in front of you and see them as themselves, rather than as some part of you that you happen to be liking or disliking at the moment…. It was with Stern and through Stern, you see, that I was first exposed to the truly harsh and pitiless winds of life. With him that I first heard the roaring oblivion of the universe in all its terrifying silence.

  Joe poked at the earth.

  Yes. So what it comes down to is, I’ve never been able to get Stern out of my life. I’ve spent years trying to forget him, and I even came halfway around the world to this little corner of peace and nowhere, thinking I was getting away from Stern and all the rest of it. But no matter, no matter at all. He’s still right there in front of me as much as he ever was, a shuffling wreck of humanity who’s never done anything but lose, just lose is all, one thing after another year af
ter year…. Has none of you ever met him?

  No, none of us has.

  Makes sense of course, no reason why you should have. You’re successful and powerful and it’s never been that way for Stern, nor will it be, not like that. But I can tell you your files don’t begin to catch the feeling of the man, especially that gentleness of his. I used to think he was out of place in what he was doing, but maybe not and who’s to say where people belong. As Stern himself used to put it, our souls are always our own to make of what we will…. What’s that?

  Excuse me? said one of the men.

  No, pay no mind. It’s someone back in the pueblo, I’ll see to it later.

  Joe shook his head.

  So it’s Stern again, is it? Twenty years later and here I am still looking into the mirror and trying to make out the shadows, trying to decipher those whispers in the wind. Trying, something with a little clarity to it, something at least…. Stern. Sure.

  Once more there was silence in the kiva as Joe gazed at the earth, lost in thought. His three visitors waited. Before he spoke again he reached under his blanket and scattered cornmeal in front of them.

  The last time I saw him was just before I left Jerusalem, right at the end of my twelve years of poker. Winter it was and snowing, and Stern was wearing those dreadful old shoes of his that I’ve never been able to forget, the ones he had on in Smyrna when we were there during the massacres in ’22. How many hundreds of miles had he walked in those shoes to get to that hell of fires and screams and death in Smyrna? How many years and how many stumblings to get to that, God help us?

  Well it was more than a decade later when I saw him the last time, and it was in Jerusalem. He got in touch with me and we met in a filthy Arab coffee house where we used to go in the old days, in the Old City it was. A cold and empty place, bare and cheerless, a barren little cave where the two of us used to huddle over a candle late at night, talking and drinking wretched Arab cognac. And it was snowing when he came shuffling in that night, a stumbling ruin of a man even worse off than I’d remembered. And he smiled that mysterious smile of his and said how good it was to see me again, and I took one look at him and I wanted to scream, that’s all, just scream those questions that have the sad sad answers…. How does it happen, Stern? How does a man get to look like you? What kind of a hell does he live in? And for what? What?