Nile Shadows (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 3)

by Edward Whittemore

  Joe nodded.

  Headaches too, I imagine.

  Sometimes, but generally it’s just an ugly itching sensation, something gnawing at your brain that’s always there, that just won’t go away.

  Yes.

  They sat some moments in silence. Bletchley still hadn’t looked up at Joe. He was staring blankly down at the table, a frail figure in worn-out mended khakis. Then all at once he began blinking rapidly and covered his eye patch with a handkerchief, dabbing at something.

  There are effusions from the socket, he said. I wanted to have a glass eye put in but the bones around the socket are shattered and there’s nothing to hold one. They tried several times but it didn’t work. It looked like a glass bead stuck in the corner of my face at an angle. Finally there was nothing more to be done, so I had to settle for a patch.

  It covers most of it, said Joe.

  Bletchley went on wiping with his handkerchief.

  I hate the way it frightens children, especially in this part of the world where they believe in the evil eye. Children can’t stand it. One look and they begin to scream. It makes me feel like a monster.

  Have you been out here long?

  Not so long here, mostly in India. I grew up in India, we were an army family. After I’d gotten back on my feet I was offered this kind of work, and it seemed the closest I’d ever come to the army so I took it, that’s it.

  No, he added, I haven’t been in the Middle East very long, only since the war started. India is what I know.

  I’ve never been there, said Joe. I’d like to go someday.

  At last Bletchley raised his eye from the table and looked at Joe.

  Oh yes, it’s a beautiful country, the land and the people, all of it. I know the desert appeals to some, but I’ll never feel that way about it. To me, India is home and always will be. There’s just no other place like it in the world.

  Bletchley’s face lighted up and he smiled at the thought of his homeland and the memories of his early years there.

  At least it was meant to be a smile, but because of the missing bones and the severed muscles in his face, it came out differently. His good eye widened and stared grotesquely in what appeared to be a harsh cold expression, arrogant and disdainful.

  The agony it must cause him, thought Joe. He tries to be friendly and his own face mocks him. It’s no wonder children scream and run away. He looks cruel and it’s not his fault, and they think he’s sneering at them and it’s not their fault.

  But Bletchley’s thoughts were far away in his beloved India at that moment, and he was smiling and pushing back his chair and getting to his feet, humming to himself, happy with his beautiful memories of a homeland that he probably already knew would never be his home again.

  Well then, said Bletchley, shall we be on our way?

  Right, to the Monastery at last, said Joe. And you have to admit that is a curious name for an intelligence unit, even one hidden away in the Egyptian desert. Rather human, isn’t it, how we like to make things sound mysterious…. And when you finally get to the Monastery in the desert, my child….

  Bletchley laughed.

  I know, he said. No matter how dull reality is, we do try hard to make it sound exotic. A natural inclination, I suppose, to add a touch of grandeur to our drab little lives. A romantic tendency in all of us, that’s it.

  So it seems, said Joe. And whether it’s to be called romantic or not, I wouldn’t know, but surely we do have to dream. If we didn’t, where would we be? That much is evident just on the face of things. But of course there are all kinds of dreams, which is what can confuse a man.

  When he looked back on it, Joe realized he should have known something was wrong with him long before he and Bletchley left the cellar. As they climbed the stairs, Joe missed a step and nearly lost his balance. He might have fallen if Bletchley hadn’t rushed up to catch him from behind.

  Are you all right?

  I’m not sure. I feel a little out of touch.

  They stepped into the bright sunlight. Joe’s legs were heavy and he didn’t seem to have any command over them. As they walked up the alley Joe sneaked a glance at his own hand, mildly curious about its shape, not quite sure it was the way he remembered it.

  It may be exhaustion left over from the trip, he said. It’s a long way from Arizona to Cairo and I don’t know that I’ve caught up yet.

  Your stopovers were short? asked Bletchley.

  Yes, after the training camp near Toronto. I crawled into the ball turret of a bomber and crawled out again in Scotland…. Fetal position. I don’t know how those gunners can manage for any length of time. Then London was just one briefing after another and it was straight over here.

  That’s it, said Bletchley, a delayed reaction to all your time in the air.

  And that ball turret was terrible, muttered Joe…. I just can’t seem to get ahold of anything today.

  Joe’s sense of unreality grew more profound as they drove out of Cairo. He sat in a daze, a dream, gazing out the open side of the small desert car, watching the city drop away. Several times he noticed Bletchley sneaking glances at him.

  What’s worrying him? he wondered.

  He wasn’t sure whether he’d spoken since the drive started, or even how long they’d been on the road. He knew he could check his watch but somehow it didn’t seem important. They’d left the city behind and now everything was the same, sand and more sand and the hot sun and the glare, Bletchley shifting gears as they drove more deeply into the desert, Bletchley’s good eye flickering toward him every so often.

  Ever east, my child, thought Joe. Stop look and listen. Mingle.

  Ought to mingle and say something, he thought, and was immediately surprised to hear his own voice asking Bletchley a question.

  Do you have a family?

  Bletchley shifted gears.

  What do you mean? A wife and children?

  Yes.

  No, I don’t. I’ve never been married. I was too young before we went to war the last time, and after that there were those years spent getting patched up. By then I was too accustomed to living alone to be of much use to anyone.

  You weren’t though.

  Weren’t what?

  Too old to get married.

  When?

  After you’d been patched up. When was that, a couple of years after the last war? You must have still been in your early twenties.

  Chronologically, but in other ways I didn’t feel that young. Nothing very chronological about life, after all, it doesn’t always follow a logical sequence the way we like to pretend. Some people stop growing in their early twenties. Just stop, say that’s enough for me, and get off and sit down beside the road for the duration.

  Ever east, my child, thought Joe. And when you finally reach….

  Besides, continued Bletchley, I still had hopes. I was trying to have a glass eye put in and when they couldn’t do it in one place, I’d try another. Paris, Johannesburg, Zurich, I kept making the rounds. The last operation wasn’t that long ago.

  Oh.

  Just three years ago, in fact. They’d done all the rebuilding they could by then, and the glass bead stuck in at an angle was the result.

  The glass bead game, thought Joe. That has to be one of the worst.

  So I finally gave it up and accepted the fact that I’d have to be a monster.

  Children don’t understand things, said Joe. You can’t expect them to.

  No that’s true, you can’t. But what about mature men and women? What can you expect from them?

  Joe gazed at the desert. The glare off the sand hurt his eyes and he pressed them shut. Bletchley was shifting gears, not waiting for an answer to his question because there was no answer.

  On the mesa in Arizona there had been an old woman with a badly deformed face, born that way, so severely deformed she had been hidden away since she was a baby. Throughout her entire life she had never been known to leave the little room where she had come into the world.
Many nights Joe had sat up with her in her little room, listening to her sing in the most beautiful voice he had ever heard, a startling voice filled with wonder for all the things she had never seen or known. She sang for hours and when she ended they would sit together in silence for a time, then the old woman would turn her back and Joe would get up and leave without a word. To have said anything would have been cruel beyond belief, for her singing was all she had of the world, her song the flight of her soul.

  Hungry? asked Bletchley. I brought some things. I thought we might stop for a bite along the way.

  They sat on the sand, squeezed into the shade beside the small desert car, Joe with his back against one of the warm tires. Bletchley opened some tins of marmalade and biscuits. There was also a thermos and two battered cups.

  Joe took a few bites and all the food tasted exactly the same, a harsh metallic flavor. He fumbled with a cup and finally let Bletchley fill it for him. The liquid, cold tea or whatever it was, also had a harsh metallic flavor. Dully he watched Bletchley spreading marmalade on a biscuit, an action that seemed to go on forever.

  What’s the matter? asked Bletchley.

  I was going to ask you the same thing. You seem to be moving very slowly today.

  Bletchley put his hand on Joe’s forehead.

  You’re running a bad fever, he said. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the change in the water. It happens fairly frequently.

  Time and change and the water, thought Joe. Not exactly the trouble you’d expect to find out here where there is no water, but it’s best never to rely on appearances. And sand and more sand and utter desolation, just as Liffy said. So it’s not all green hillsides on the journey to the East, ah no. There are wastelands to cross, my child, before you sleep. Wastelands, bright and deep….

  They were driving again, Bletchley shifting gears, the glare off the sand intense. And for Joe, sinking more deeply into his fever, the sky and the desert had lost whatever boundaries they might once have had.

  I’ve known men who’ve followed the desert, Bletchley was saying, adventurers who see it as a primeval force, like the sea. But there are dangers in the desert that a seagoing man doesn’t have to face. The sea, with its overall evenness, tends to moderate men by suggesting an essential balance to all things. But the desert, with its harsh extremes, can have just the opposite effect by making things seem clearer than they are, so you always have to beware the temptation of idealism. God knows human affairs are murky enough, but out here there’s the danger of forgetting that, because everything is so stark, so much itself. Appears to be, that is.

  Bletchley shifted gears. They left the paved road for a rougher track.

  The fact is, he continued, we’re apt to romanticize things we don’t understand, what we were talking about earlier. Take that old expression, to follow the desert. It gives an impression of adventure and makes one sound like a wanderer, but the bedouin aren’t really wanderers. They always have their home with them, their tent, and their country is always with them, the desert. An outsider, a northern European, will view it differently. But that’s because a northern European is accustomed to seeing his home and his country in a different light. Less of it.

  Joe nodded. Puffs of smoke had appeared on the horizon, followed by a spatter of dull muffled booms. In another moment they had rounded a dune and Joe could make out a battery of British howitzers parked off in the wastes, raising great clouds of sand as they methodically fired into the desert. The front lines, he knew, were many miles away.

  What are they doing?

  Bletchley turned his head to get his eye on the battery.

  Shelling the desert, he yelled above the booming salvos.

  The empty desert?

  Looks that way.

  But why?

  Who knows, maybe they thought they saw the enemy. It’s impossible of course, but they might have thought they saw something.

  Just thought they did? wondered Joe. Well why not. It could be a case of right you are if you think you are, the desert as you like it.

  But as they drove along above the camouflaged battery, Joe sensed there was something even more out of place than the vast stretches of barren desert separating the howitzers from the nearest German units. He concentrated as best he could and at last it came to him.

  They’re facing east, he shouted. Isn’t that the wrong way for them to be fighting the war? The Germans are to the west.

  Bletchley snorted, yelled.

  The wrong way? But how can there be a right way to slaughter people? And anyway, mirages are common enough in the desert. I don’t have to tell you that.

  Correct, thought Joe, you don’t. But all the same it still seemed strange to him as he gazed down on the howitzers, watching them fire and recoil, fire and recoil. The cannon crews were moving quickly, hurrying back and forth as if they had a certain number of rounds to fire off that day.

  What do you think? he shouted. Are they working against a quota of rounds they’re supposed to expend?

  Very likely, yelled Bletchley. Supplies have to be regulated for maximum effect in wartime, so naturally quotas and rationing are the order of the day.

  Joe nodded, still groping in his mind for a rational explanation to this furious and relentless artillery barrage, aimed at nothing.

  But aren’t they wasting a lot of valuable ammunition? he shouted. Just firing off into the empty desert like that?

  So it seems, yelled Bletchley, but no one has ever claimed war is a force for conservation. It spends and consumes and destroys, that’s all. The only reason we seem to have it around is because there’s a streak in man that finds it exhilarating. Or more accurately, the idea of it. Not one of our nobler streaks, but there you are. And I think it would also be safe to say the nature of that exhilaration won’t bear very close scrutiny.

  Agreed, thought Joe. It won’t and doesn’t. Because that streak is the killing of people and the exhilaration in that is just plain unspeakable, a blackness at the bottom of the soul. Very deep is the blackness, may we not call it bottomless?

  Better try again, thought Joe, put it some other way to Bletchley. There has to be some explanation for behavior, even when it’s idiotic. It may be human nature to want to bombard an empty desert, but someone as smart as Bletchley would have to have some kind of reasonable reason for it. The greater good? The grand design? The missing link and the unknowable universe?

  Listen, shouted Joe. If you feel that way about it, the uselessness of war and so forth, why did you want to make the army a career? Family tradition aside.

  I suppose because the army provides a form and a structure, yelled Bletchley. A regulation for everything. Not a reason for doing something, but a clear order that it’s to be done. As human beings, we like that. Gods provide the orders for some people, political systems for others. But without orders and commands and regulations, the chaos of being is simply that. Chaotic. And that tends to be too hot a situation for most people to handle.

  Too hot to handle, hummed Joe, recalling a bawdy line from one of Liffy’s music-hall tunes, watching the artillerymen slam home shells and slam closed breechblocks as the howitzers puffed and recoiled, the air crackling and the dust billowing in the unending cannonade.

  Hold on, yelled Bletchley. There’s rough going here.

  Joe lurched forward and grabbed hold of the handle in front of him. Rough going here, he hummed, recalling another line from one of Liffy’s bawdy tunes. Off in the desert ahead he spied what appeared to be a railway boxcar coming into view. The boxcar was undersized and lying on its back, its wheels in the air with no railway tracks in sight.

  How did that get out here? he shouted.

  Bletchley was staring straight ahead, concentrating on the driving, unable to take his eye off the rough roadbed.

  What is it? One of those old Forty and Eights?

  Looks like it, shouted Joe, remembering the term that had been used in the last war for a small French freight car, so named because it
had been able to carry forty men or eight horses to the slaughter at the front. But of course the French hadn’t been fighting in the Egyptian desert then, they’d been dying back home in muddy trenches. Joe hummed, It’s a long way to Tipperary.

  Wouldn’t it have been more logical to call those boxcars Forty or Eights? he shouted. After all, that’s what they were.

  Nothing very logical about war, Bletchley grimly yelled back.

  All true, thought Joe. No arguing with that one.

  In fact when you look back at the last war, yelled Bletchley, the whole thing seems utterly senseless.

  Joe nodded and looked back at the endless barren wastelands. The overturned French boxcar had dropped out of sight, but now there was an overturned chariot standing on the horizon. It was of a heavy primitive design, its huge wooden wheels capped with iron that had rusted very little in the dry desert air.

  I’ve seen one of those before, thought Joe. In pictures anyway. The Assyrians used them back at the beginning of the Iron Age when they were a-thundering out of the north, taking their turn as the much a-feared barbarians of the day.

  Which last war were you referring to? he shouted.

  How’s that? yelled Bletchley.

  I said, which last war? Whose? The one you said was utterly senseless when we look back on it?

  Oh, well anybody’s. What difference does it make? Don’t all last wars look pretty much the same when you look back at them? Murder and mutilation and wreckage, and all for what?

  For what? thought Joe. What? It’s a regular Whatley, that’s what.

  Bletchley glanced at him sideways.

  Are you all right? he yelled.

  Not particularly, shouted Joe, but listen. What are you really afraid of, Bletchley? Can you tell me that?

  What do you mean? In what context?

  Personal context. Deep down, right there where you are in this world. What are you really afraid of?