God have mercy, thought Joe…. Morphine to steady the blood, oh God.
Joe squeezed his eyes shut and turned the handle of the printing press around and around, methodically making noise and cranking out counterfeit banknotes, spewing out more and more of the ridiculous money onto the floor.
THE PANORAMA HAS MOVED.
Oh have mercy, whispered Joe silently. He’s tried so hard and he’s given and given but he’s finished now and he just has no more to give. And when the time comes let a whirlwind descend on the desert at night and let the blessed stillness of dawn be on the sands where he’s walked. And let a moment of peace be on him before then, just one small moment of peace before the wind howls an end to him in the darkness … an end to all he was and wanted….
It was the same poor Arab bar where Joe had gone with Liffy that morning. A narrow barren place where laborers slumped along the walls in stony silence, somberly smoking and drinking in the half-light, stirring only to nod at their uselessness within the passing hours.
The two of them sat at the counter, facing the cracked grainy mirror on the wall. Now I have to get this right the first time, thought Joe. There are opposing points of the compass to be touched and not much time to do it in, so how to get things started with Stern? One way or another we’ve just got to break through that silence of his, damn it to the end of the world. He’s just got to know and believe in what he’s done, but how to help him go where he needs to go this one last time?
The mirror, thought Joe, recalling the visit that morning with Liffy. The mirror will have to tell him … the mirror. See all, hear all, speak what?
Joe laughed and spread his arms, gathering in the room with the gesture.
So this is your secret world, Stern? This is where you dreamed away the wee hours of your youth? Well it’s a murky place for sure, and certainly a place for dreaming. Certainly there’d be no other direction you’d want your fancy to take in the late hours here, in an alley as sordid as this one, in a rat-infested slum in Cairo or anywhere else.
And speaking of murkiness, Stern, there’s something that’s been weighing more and more on me since I arrived in Cairo. It has to do with the tiny glimpses we’re given of people, and the fact that everyone seems to be a secret agent in life in a way. With their own private betrayals and their own private loyalties that we don’t know anything about, and their own secret code copied down from a private onetime pad, which we both know is all but unbreakable. And with their status in this world not unlike my own in Cairo, in transit, as the good document describes it ever so nicely.
Ahmad, for example. When you looked at him you saw only a silent melancholy man endlessly playing solitaire and nodding over newspapers that were absurdly out of date, like all newspapers. But when he opened the secret panel to his clandestine little cave, hidden away behind the wall in the shabby corridor that passes for a lobby in the Hotel Babylon, with all the treasures he’d stored up over the years in that private little closet … well, a whole world of experiences suddenly came to life right in front of your eyes.
I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of that private world, Joe went on, but it would have been just as easy to have missed it altogether, as I’m sure many people did. And to them Ahmad will always be merely what he appeared to be, a taciturn man without any feelings particularly, some kind of large and immobile oddity not worth knowing.
Even the implements of the clandestine trade are there, continued Joe, cast in their own unique shapes as is only proper. An old dented trombone, say, that served as the unlikely key to Ahmad’s secret code, because it provided the notes to the tunes that others had forgotten, but not him. Or an old cardboard suitcase, empty save for a few sheaves of paper with some poems on them, the black bag of Ahmad’s particular escape and evasion operation over the years, its very emptiness bulging with voluminous secret memories that only Ahmad could decipher.
So it strikes me there are no commonplace people in the crowd, said Joe, and no innocents in the game of life really. We all seem to be double and triple agents with unknown sources and unsuspected lines of control, reporting a little here and a little there as we try to manage our secret networks of feeling and doing, our own little complex networks of life….
Ahmad? An immobile taciturn man without any feelings particularly? Ahmad? That eloquent and gentle poet? That shy swaying poet of stately lost dreams and elegant lost causes? A man who so heroically defended his mythical lost city of the soul?
No, Ahmad wasn’t what he appeared to be at all. And don’t we all use covers in a way, Stern? Don’t we all use our own secret codes? And don’t we all protect the secret sources of our strength and keep them separate one from another because they’re so dear to us, while all the while we secretly plan the little clandestine operations of our lives, our daring forays up the street to the greengrocer’s? And isn’t betrayal, as Ahmad also said, still the most painful wound of all, and self-betrayal the very worst kind there can be? So devastating to us it forever remains incomprehensible in our hearts? The one sin we can never forgive in ourselves, therefore the one sin we can never accept from anyone?
Well it does strike me that this secret-agent way of doing things is true for all of us in some fashion, said Joe, and part of it often comes from fear, I know, the fear that others may discover who we really are. But all of it isn’t fear, not generally, and in your case none of it is. So what’s the other part of it, Stern, the part that isn’t greengrocery espionage? The part that takes us beyond the obvious similarities in people and gets us closer to that figure you were talking about earlier. That mysterious stranger who manifests himself in the mirror behind the bar and just plonks himself down to stare at us when we’re brooding alone. Who is that stranger and why is it so difficult to know anyone in the end? Even ourselves.
Stern moved, sipping his drink. He smiled.
Answers, Joe? Pulling my cover as a greengrocer in order to find answers? Well I suppose the other part must come from that very mirror behind the bar, from the images there and the voices. When you look at this mirror in front of us, you see me and you see yourself. But since this is a place I once knew, when I look at this mirror, inevitably I see many people.
Now it’s beginning, thought Joe. And slowly, easy now, if we’re to hear the first whisper through the silence….
I wouldn’t doubt that for a moment, Stern. So tell me, of the many people in that mirror for you, can you see the first woman you ever loved? Is she still there?
Stern lowered his eyes.
Yes, he whispered.
And there it is, thought Joe, and now he’s listening to the echoes and straining to hear their beginnings, now when everything seems to be coming to an end. So slowly then, from the deepness of the silence….
You can see her, Stern? What was her name, I wonder?
Stern was still gazing down at the counter.
Eleni, he whispered.
Ahh, and that’s a beautiful name, Stern. A name from ancient times that has always meant beauty to everyone and especially to Homer, who launched a thousand ships in his mind because of her. And where did you fall in love with her, and who might she have been?
Awkwardly Stern shifted his weight, his eyes fixed on the counter.
It was in Smyrna. She was from one of the leading Greek families there, back when it was still a Greek city. We were married. It was before you and I met.
Joe was astounded. He had never known that Stern had been married.
What happened?
It was when I first returned from studying in Europe, whispered Stern, when I was just setting out and beginning to learn about revolutionary work. We fell in love and we were married and for a while it was wonderful. But my life didn’t seem to allow for a marriage, at least not for two people as young as we were. There was trouble between us and she left me and came back, then finally she left for good.
Where is she now?
Dead. She’s been dead for years.
She m
ust have been young.
She was, whispered Stern. Much too young.
What was it?
Stern turned uneasily and looked at Joe.
I’m not sure, I’ve never been sure. Footprints in the sky that I couldn’t see? The sound of perfect sunlight? Laughter and joy and the eternal tragedy of the Aegean?
Abruptly Stern turned away from Joe and stared hard into the shadowy interiors of the mirror. He raised his hand and reached out, as if he were groping for something there.
It seems everybody doesn’t make it, he whispered. It seems everybody can’t….
He had been in Athens when he finally heard the end was coming for Eleni. She had left him during the First World War, left him and Smyrna and gone to live in Italy. She hated war and she hated killing and she had learned to hate Stern’s work, even though it was her uncle, Sivi, who had taken Stern in as a young student returning from Europe and had first trained him in that very work.
In Athens, years later, Stern chanced to meet a man who had seen Eleni recently, an acquaintance who had known them both in Smyrna before the war.
I’m afraid it’s all over for her, said the man. The drinking just gets worse and you can’t really talk to her anymore. But it can’t last this way. She’s killing herself.
They talked awhile longer and then Stern said good-bye to the man and walked back to the small hotel where he was staying in Athens. Only a year earlier he had become a morphine addict although he hadn’t admitted it to himself yet, although he was still pretending he could face the grayness in the window at dawn, the coming of a new day, alone.
But that night he did admit it to himself as he sat up in the little hotel room in Athens, thinking of Eleni. That night he admitted many things to himself while thinking of her, because he had to.
A kind of prayer. That’s what he’d had in mind.
He wanted to remember how beautiful Eleni had been when they had first met in Sivi’s lovely villa by the sea. And he wanted to remember the long nights of love they had known that first spring and summer and autumn, and winter. The closeness and the tenderness, the excitement, all of it.
A kind of prayer to send to her to bring the good times back to life, by remembering them. So perhaps that one night at least Eleni might also be able to remember the good times, for it had been a wonderful love they had known.
And so Stern had recalled it all and been drawn back to the very beginning of their love, back to a spring day in Smyrna before the First World War….
A brilliant afternoon. The two of them young and laughing and falling in love, wandering through the empty alleys near the harbor and coming to a little café, deserted at that siesta hour. And sitting down at a small table in the shade of a narrow old building, quietly laughing in the stillness of the little square, a breeze off the water and the warm colors of sunlit stones against the blue sky.
A sudden thud. Eleni and Stern turning with smiles on their faces.
Two cats, still coupled, had slipped off the roof of the building above them and fallen, fallen, and come crashing down into the cobblestones no more than ten feet away. One of the cats was unmoving. The other cat was trying to raise itself on its front paws, its hind quarters crushed in the sudden fall from sunlight to shadow, quietly screeching and trying to raise its head and sinking back, trying to sniff for life as its eyes closed. The one cat dead and the other dying.
Stern staggering to his feet and stumbling away, sick to his stomach and sick in his heart and utterly bewildered in the small shaded square. Eleni running after him and taking him by the arm and holding him tightly, pressing herself to him as he wandered lost by the sparkling sea….
Yes, Stern had remembered it all and left nothing out in the darkness of the bare little hotel room in Athens. And once he had even imagined reaching out and touching Eleni in the stillness, and she had looked at him the way she used to and they were young again and in love and the world was made for them, and they would go on forever doing all the wonderful things they had known on the shores of the Aegean, with wine and love and soft whispers in the shadows, and little boats in the harbor….
A kind of prayer, then, down through the hours of that long night in Athens. And he hoped his whispers had reached Eleni and helped her in some small way as the darkness closed in and the end drew near. Nothing left out of his prayer, all the bright dark moments of love, the exquisite joy and the infinite sadness….
It wasn’t much but he hoped it had helped a little, for soon after that Eleni had slipped and lost her way, and the end had come for her.
Joe shook his head, stunned by this revelation from Stern’s past.
Somehow it’s all hard to take in, he said at last. I’ve just never thought of you as having had a wife. The way you’ve moved about and forever uprooted yourself, always traveling…. I don’t know.
Stern groped for his glass, a clumsy motion, his other hand edging back and forth on the counter.
Well it was a long time ago and you never lose what you had together, but you go on as best you can, if you can. Everybody doesn’t seem to be able to, and it’s not a matter of courage or worth that decides it, or of being more or less of a person. I don’t know what decides things like that. People come up with all sorts of answers but I’ve never found one that works for me. Eleni was a beautiful human being, that’s all. She had so much to give the world and she was no weaker than the rest of us, so why did it happen to her?
Yes, said Joe, it’s always the same. Why.
And what is that feeling anyway? asked Stern. The belief that there’s a purpose to it all, or should be?
Stern moved his hand on the counter, edging it back and forth.
I’ve always envied people who have it, but I’ve never been able to see things that clearly myself. It all seems chaotic to me, and only in retrospect does life take on any kind of purpose or design. Of course that could mean I’ve just never been able to fathom it. Or it could mean the purpose and design aren’t there, and it’s only our need for them as dreaming creatures that casts some kind of coherency over life when we look back.
Stern shrugged.
When we do look back, he said, we always know there were certain moments that determined our lives, and certain things that did become inevitable for us, eventually that…. But when did it become so? When did it begin, I wonder….
Stern took out the worn Morse-code key he always carried and held it in his hand, feeling its balance. Joe smiled.
Bit of the past still traveling with you?
What’s that?
The Morse-code key. I see you still carry it.
Stern gazed down at the smooth slip of metal shining from years of being rubbed between his fingers, gently polished by the oils of his skin. His eyes were thoughtful, far away.
I didn’t realize I’d taken it out. I seem to have become distracted lately, or maybe relaxed is a better word. There’s been little chance for that since the war started.
Joe nodded. Sign both good and bad, he thought. Good, because it means he’s leaning back and taking a look at things. Bad, because he feels none of it matters anymore.
Stern studied the key as if listening to something, then put it away.
There are no inanimate objects, murmured Stern. Everything around us whispers continually, it’s just that we don’t have time to listen. In the desert it’s different. In the desert you have the time and you listen long and hard because your life depends on it.
Joe watched him.
Why these thoughts, Stern?
Stern frowned, moving awkwardly around on his stool.
I’m not sure. I guess I was thinking about home, the idea of a home, what it means for all the people who have lost theirs in the war and will never have one again…. I chose my life and I knew what I was doing, but it’s still true you never get used to being homeless. You can get used to being away from home, whatever home happens to mean to you, that’s easy enough. You can even do it forever, if yo
u have to. But there’s a difference between that and not having a home at all.
Well I can see what you’re saying, Stern, but I’d never have thought you could consider yourself an alien out here. Not when you can pass yourself off as a native no matter where you go. What’s more, as a native of just about any background or standing.
Joe smiled.
After all, you haven’t always been a beggar in rags the way you are tonight. As I recall, some other incarnations of yours have been quite grand.
I guess.
Well?
It’s what you just said. I can pass myself off as a native. But being one, feeling that you belong in a place, is different.
That it is, and that brings us back to a stranger in the bazaars and deserts, aloneness amidst the clamor and the silence. What’s it all about, Stern? Why these thoughts tonight and what was the particular inanimate object you had in mind?
Stern frowned, moved.
A rug. I was thinking about a rug.
Joe watched him.
A rug, you say. Simply that.
Yes. Rugs always remind me of someone’s home because that’s where I’ve always seen them, in someone’s home. Most of my life has been spent in places like this, bare rooms with bare floors and almost no furniture, not places for living. It’s just a little thing, one of those innumerable details we almost never think about. One of those tiny physical details that define us eventually, strangely.
That old faded red wool hat of yours, Joe, that’s a physical detail. The one you used to wear in Jerusalem when you were living alone in that odd little room on a roof in the Armenian Quarter. Do you still have that hat?
Yes.
With you here in Cairo?
Yes.
And you wear it?
Well I did all right, back when I was taking my ease in the Hotel Babylon and seeing the world with the help of Liffy’s miraculous gift of faces and gift of tongues. Or when I was out back in the courtyard with Ahmad late at night, sitting in our tiny oasis and listening with him to the stars.
Why did you wear it, Joe?
Habit, I suppose. Reminded me of things, I suppose. Must make me feel comfortable wearing it.
Nile Shadows (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 3) Page 40