Jerusalem Poker (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 2)

by Edward Whittemore

  MY FRIENDS. LET ME MAKE ONE THING PERFECTLY CLEAR.

  IT IS ESSENTIAL TO OUR NATIONAL SECURITY, AND TO OUR SURVIVAL AS A FREEDOM-LOVING PEOPLE LIVING UNDER GOD, THAT THE JUICE SQUEEZER BE WARNED NOT TO USE EXAGGERATED TERMS FOR CONCEPTS HE DOESN’T UNDERSTAND.

  WHAT I MEAN TO SAY IS JUST THIS. STRICTLY SPEAKING, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN HYSTERICAL DISORDER. THERE IS ONLY DISORDER OF A GENERALLY LAWLESS NATURE, WHICH IS TO SAY LAWLESSNESS IN GENERAL, AND THAT CAN ALWAYS BE CONTROLLED BY DISCIPLINE AT THE TOP, IF IT IS IRON DISCIPLINE.

  SO, MY FRIENDS, LET ME SHARE THESE THOUGHTS WITH YOU. TELL OUR GOOD FRIEND THE FRUIT JUICE SQUEEZER TO SIT UP STRAIGHT AND CONCENTRATE, AND TO BE READY. HE TOO WILL HAVE HIS ORDERS, NO LESS THAN YOU DO, FOR THERE IS A PLACE FOR EVERYONE BENEATH ME.

  AND SO LET ME SUBMIT AGAIN FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION THE SIMPLE YET VITAL PROPOSITION THAT WE CANNOT HOPE TO SURVIVE AS A FREEDOM-LOVING PEOPLE UNDER GOD IF WE ALLOW SELF-DELUDED CITIZENS AND SELF-APPOINTED ZEALOTS, NO MATTER HOW WELL-INTENTIONED THEY ARE, AND I PERSONALLY KNOW THEY ARE OFTEN WELL-INTENTIONED, STILL WE CANNOT ALLOW THEM TO RUN AROUND THE STREETS OF JERUSALEM, OR AROUND THE DEAD SEA FOR THAT MATTER, EVEN IF IT IS THE DRIED CUNT OF THE WORLD, SHOUTING WHATEVER COMES INTO THEIR HEADS.

  BECAUSE, MY FRIENDS, IT JUST WON’T WORK.

  NUBAR

  THE GENTLE

  AND UNDERSTANDING,

  YET NONETHELESS,

  BY NECESSITY,

  IRON FIST AT

  THE TOP.

  Nubar smiled benignly. He tucked his housecoat more tightly around his legs and read on.

  The anonymous pilgrim, wrote the informer, now found himself standing in the doorway of the convent bakery. Inside the bakery a very old priest was doing a jig in front of the oven, while removing loaves of freshly baked bread. All the bread seemed to have been baked in one of four distinct shapes. The pilgrim remarked upon this, upon saying hello, and the old priest readily agreed.

  Exactly four, said the old priest merrily, right as right you are. And those four shapes are none other than the Cross and Ireland, and Jerusalem and the Crimea, and what do you think of that?

  Here the pilgrim made his second serious mistake of the day. He didn’t slam the door and run. Instead he stood there, and shook his head, and said he didn’t know what to think of it.

  Well the Cross for obvious reasons, said the old priest, still doing his jig, and Jerusalem for equally obvious reasons. And Ireland not only because I was born there but because it’s the most beautiful land there is so far as lands in this world go. And the Crimea because I was in a war there once and survived a disastrous cavalry charge there, and as a result of surviving that folly I saw the light and found my vocation in the Church, God’s orders being vastly superior to man’s at all times but especially so when you’ve seen service in the Light Brigade. So that’s all of it and for the last seventy years I’ve been serving God soberly here where you see me, in front of this very oven turning out delicious loaves of bread shaped in the four concerns of my life. And after seventy years of such service, I suppose it’s not surprising that I should be known to all who know me as the baking priest.

  Nubar’s head jerked back.

  The baking priest. The man who had rescued O’Sullivan Beare when he first arrived in Jerusalem as a fugitive. The mysterious priest whom Nubar’s agents had never been able to trace or identify. Was he real or had O’Sullivan Beare made him up?

  Nubar had never known until this moment. And with that secret now out in the open, who could imagine what else might follow?

  Nubar giggled happily. He congratulated himself.

  At last it was all coming together.

  In his excitement Nubar snatched up his canteen. He gargled with a mouthful of fiery mulberry raki, chewed some wood off the canteen, lit a soggy Macedonian Extra. He knew success would be his in the end. He’d always known it.

  The informer in Jerusalem, meanwhile, was continuing his leisurely account of the conversation between an anonymous pilgrim and an elderly Franciscan known as the baking priest.

  Since it was August, the bakery was hot.

  Frightfully hot? asked the baking priest. He then said that although he was naturally accustomed to the oven’s heat, he could well understand how it might be uncomfortable to others. For this reason he suggested the pilgrim should feel perfectly free, if he wished, to take off his clothes and hang them on the hook by the door.

  And here was the pilgrim’s third serious mistake of the day, and by far the most disastrous.

  He should have realized, as he later told the informer at the fruit juice stand, that the bakery was so unbearably hot his sanity couldn’t survive there for long. There was no question that he should have bolted at once, realizing the folly of listening to a man who was nearly a hundred years old, who had been merrily dancing in front of an oven in Jerusalem for seven decades, baking the same four loaves of bread.

  But the unfortunate pilgrim, sweating heavily and already dazed, did as he was invited to do. He took off all his clothes and hung them on the hook by the door.

  Naked then, he promptly collapsed beside a large water jar, too weak to do anything but splash an occasional handful of water over his burning head, utterly defenseless against any fancy the Franciscan might choose to conjure up as he capered around the room, distributing loaves of bread to its four corners.

  On a pilgrimage, are you? sang the old priest. Well let me tell you there be odd events here, odd events within and about our Holy City, and none stranger than the epic tale of a long-term resident of Jerusalem who saw a genie in the last century and God in this one. Know about him? Probably not, but my source is unimpeachable, being the former terror of the Black and Tans in County Cork, and with such noble service behind him we can do nothing but believe him down to the last syllable.

  The old priest fixed the helpless naked pilgrim with a maniacal stare. Maniacal, yes. There was no other word for it. After seventy years in front of that hot oven, the old priest’s eyes glowed with a disturbing and unmistakable luster.

  Are you ready then? said the old priest to the pilgrim. What’s that, you are? Good. Well here’s how this oddest of odd epics goes when properly told. But before we begin I suppose we should give it a name for itself and that would have to be God and the Genie. And then when you consider the man who saw them both, whose very own epic it is, you just might want to ruminate further and let your imagination go and sense that we have a Holy Trinity on our hands. Just might, I say. No one would want to go all the way with such a thing and claim it for sure. All right then. Our headlong charge is coming up, so hold on now. Tighten your reins, lad, sit tight and smartly. We’re about to cover some ground in a breathtaking breakneck gallop as daring as any the world has heard since the plains at Balaklava thundered to the gallant hoofbeats of hopeless heroes. Ho, I say. Ho-o-o-o-o-o-o.

  But before I report on what came next, wrote the informer, I think I should mention a funeral that was held in the spring in Haj Harun’s back room. It was for Cairo Martyr’s little pet, the albino monkey with the bright aquamarine genitals who was in the habit of curling up on Martyr’s shoulder and pretending to be asleep, until his name was spoken.

  The pet died of old age, in its sleep, and the funeral was quite an event. Szondi and O’Sullivan Beare and Haj Harun joined Martyr as pallbearers, since it seems they all had great affection for the little fellow and sadly mourned his passing. In fact the poker game was closed down for two weeks in tribute to the pet, whose grave is known only to the four of them, the burial party having set out with great stealth one dark moonless night, carefully on the lookout to see that they weren’t being followed.

  I include this information, wrote the informer, because it may have some significance I don’t understand.

  Bongo, screamed Nubar.

  And immediately regretted it, for the syllables somehow seemed to feel at home in the confines of that subcellar and the echoes twanged around an
d around Nubar’s head even after he had clapped his hands over his ears, bongobongobongo.

  If the report went on like this Nubar knew he was going to get upset, possibly even angry. A quick cable to the fruit juice stand in Jerusalem was needed.

  FLASH FROM HERE. ARE YOU MAD? HALT ALL FUTURE REFERENCES TO ALBINO MONKEYS. COLOR OF GENITALS UNIMPORTANT. I NEVER LIKED THE IDEA OF THAT FREAKISH BEAST FROM THE JUNGLE. UP UNTIL THIS POINT YOU WERE DOING WELL BUT NOW YOU’RE BEGINNING TO SLIP. GET BACK TO THE EPIC TALE AND NOT ANOTHER WORD ABOUT THINGS THAT DON’T MATTER.

  NUBAR

  TOP BONGO.

  No. Wrong. Was his mercury poisoning causing his brain to substitute words inadvertently? Or had that loathsome name jumped into the cable because it was echoing around his head?

  Either way it was dangerous. He had to be careful. Using the wrong words could lead to confusion in the ranks, even chaos. His absolute authority might come into question. In his mind he crossed out the last line of the cable and wrote TOP LEADER instead.

  But that seemed too brief. He pondered the problem for a moment and decided on a longer ending.

  GET BACK TO THE EPIC TALE AND NOT ANOTHER WORD ABOUT THINGS THAT DON’T MATTER.

  NUBAR

  THE TOP ALL

  RIGHT AND

  ALSO JUST

  PLAIN

  NUMBER ONE,

  SO YOU

  BETTER GET USED TO THE IDEA FAST.

  Nubar scratched himself and turned pages.

  The man referred to as a long-term resident of Jerusalem, the witness to the events in the epic, was described by the baking priest in such a way that the informer knew it had to be his neighbor in the alley, Haj Harun. No one else in Jerusalem wore a faded yellow cloak and a rusty Crusader’s helmet tied under the chin with two green ribbons.

  Both of the unusual occurrences in the epic, sang the baking priest, seeing a genie in the last century and God in this one, took place while this long-term resident, an elderly item, was making his annual haj.

  Here the informer interrupted his narrative to make a personal observation. There was no way of knowing, he wrote, whether Haj Harun went to Mecca every spring, as he claimed. He also disappeared at other times, saying he was off exploring imaginary caverns of the past beneath the Old City, something he claimed he had been doing for the last three thousand years. The informer then added a comment on that.

  What is one to make of these extravagant claims that seem to pop up every time Haj Harun is mentioned? Can the old man be believed or is he suffering from terminal amnesia? Or perhaps from advanced dementia brought on by acute senility?

  If you want my opinion, it’s the latter. That’s exactly what I think. This Haj Harun is definitely a strange one. And furthermore, I question the legality of anyone skulking around beneath Jerusalem for the last three thousand years, isn’t that against the law? Wouldn’t it be a clear and present breach of some existing statute, perhaps the sanitation code, for example?

  Nubar snorted furiously. They weren’t going to get away with this. Immediately he made a mental note for another cable to Dead Sea Control.

  ARE YOU MAD? WHY ARE YOU LETTING THIS INFORMER THINK? I WANT FACTS, NOT SPECULATIONS, AND I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING MORE ABOUT SANITATION CODES OR LEGALITY IN GENERAL, OR IDLE OPINIONS ABOUT WHAT’S LEGAL AND WHAT ISN’T. I AM THE SANITATION CODE AND WHATEVER I DO IS LEGAL BY DEFINITION, REMEMBER THAT. ANYTHING SAID TO THE CONTRARY IS A SUBVERSIVE CRIME THAT AIDS AND ABETS THE ENEMY, AND THAT CRIME WILL BE DEALT WITH AS IT DESERVES TO BE, WITH UTTER RUTHLESSNESS.

  THAT IS TO SAY, WITH CRIPPLING FINES AND PURLOINED MAIL FOLLOWED BY CONSTANT SURVEILLANCE, BY OFFICIAL VERBAL ABUSE AND BREAK-INS AND SHOOT-OUTS AND OPPRESSIVE HARASSMENT BY ALL AGENCIES, BY PERJURY AND BLACKMAIL AND INSINUATIONS OF SINISTER FORCES AT WORK, BY SECRET PHYSICAL BEATINGS WHERE POSSIBLE AND UNRELIEVED THUGGERY ALL AROUND.

  AND LET ME MAKE ANOTHER THING PERFECTLY CLEAR. NO ONE IS GOING TO GET AWAY WITH AIDING THE ENEMY. I REPEAT, WHAT I DO IS LEGAL AND IF ANYONE ELSE DOES ANYTHING I DON’T LIKE, ESPECIALLY ANYTHING THAT IS IN THE LEAST WAY THREATENING TO ME, I’LL GRONK THEM AND GRONK THEM GOOD. AND YOU CAN BET YOUR SWEET ASS ON THAT YOU SHITHEAD ASSKISSING CUNTLICKING ASSSUCKING CHICKENSHIT COCKSUCKING FUCKOFF ASSHOLES.

  THAT’S RIGHT, YOU’RE IN TROUBLE NOW, BOY. AND IF I WERE YOU I’D STAND UP AT ATTENTION AND START SHOUTING HAIL TO THE CHIEF AND I’D SHOUT IT AS LOUD AS I COULD AND I’D KEEP ON SHOUTING IT UNTIL THE CHIEF TOLD ME OTHERWISE.

  YEAH. YOU’RE NOT GOING TO HAVE ME TO KICK AROUND ANYMORE, YOU BUNGHOLE COCKSUCKING ASSHOLES. BUT I MAY JUST DECIDE TO DO A LITTLE ASSKICKING MYSELF AND HOW’D YOU LIKE THAT, YOU CHICKENSHIT SANITATION FARTS?

  YEAH, SO WATCH OUT, BOY. BIG NUMBER ONE MAY JUST TAKE OFF THE GLOVES AND COME DOWN THERE AND GIVE YOU DEAD SEA SHITS THE KIND OF REAM YOU DESERVE.

  YEAH. ASSHOLES.

  NUBAR

  FUCK SUCK KILL.

  ULTIMATE LEADER AND SUPREME

  AUTHORITY AT THE

  TOP OF THE HEAP AND ALONE

  THERE FOR ALL TIME.

  Nubar felt a little better after that, but it only showed you could never relax your authority. They were all ready to go over to the enemy if you showed the slightest weakness, the slightest deviation from absolute iron-fisted control.

  He brushed away something that seemed to be nibbling at his ear, an imaginary bat perhaps, then returned to the report.

  Now the narrative was back in the Franciscan bakery, the pilgrim sprawled naked on the floor with his head on fire, the baking priest dancing around through the fierce heat bearing fresh loaves of bread in all directions.

  Off to Mecca he was all right, sang the baking priest, just as sure as the wind will blow he was going to reach his Mecca, this elderly article on his annual haj in the first half of the nineteenth century. Well he gets himself well down into the desert that spring, well down into Araby and away from the customary tracks as is his custom when on a haj, when what does he find going on down there all of a sudden in Araby? What, you say? He finds the sky turning strangely dark one morning, that’s what, darkly strange I say. And all alarmed he is and why not, since he’s in the middle of nowhere where no man should be, and what happens then but he stumbles across an apparition of a man who’s all of seven and a half feet tall, and what’s this striking figure doing but sighting through some complicated astronomical instruments, by way of measuring heavenly bodies. Like it so far?

  Nubar groaned. He closed his eyes.

  Seven and a half feet tall. Surely not Ahura Mazda again?

  He took a long drink of mulberry raki, coughed weakly and read on.

  Well, sang the baking priest, clapping his hands and slapping his sandals on the floor, well and then well. It’s not exactly what an honest traveler would expect to run into out there, and with this apparition looming up in front of him with heavenly instruments and the sky so dark and all, well your man is just suddenly very frightened.

  Why, you say? Because he knows a thing or two about the world and one thing he knows for sure is that this has to be a genie he’s dealing with. But luckily for him this genie is a good genie who takes pity on him and decides straightaway to make things better, not worse. So the genie tells him right off why it’s dark out there. It’s dark, says the genie, because a comet is passing overhead. But no one knows about the comet except him, the genie, because of course a genie can have his very own comet if he wants one, and it seems this genie did. And now this genie was out there in the desert plotting his comet’s cycle of six hundred and sixteen years, taking roundabout measurements of this heavenly plaything of his, so to speak. All this the giant good genie quickly relates to your man the elderly item.

  The baking priest did a quick turn in front of the oven. His cassock twirled and he came up with an armful of bread before resuming his tale.

  Well that’s certainly something now, but although it explains the darkness of the sky out there, it also tends
to mystify your man.

  Exactly six hundred and sixteen years? he asks the genie, in a humble whisper of course, showing the greatest respect. Why exactly that period of time?

  For a good reason, answers the giant good genie, who then goes on to demystify the situation at once. It seems, you see, that this comet he has discovered and made his own is related to certain unexplained events in the lives of Moses and Nebuchadnezzar and Christ and Mohammed, along with a few lesser known passages from the Thousand and One Nights and an obscure reference or two from the Zohar, those literary matters thrown in for balance and good measure.

  That is to say, those events in those lives would be unexplained if it weren’t for this comet the genie had discovered, which had come over at the proper time in those lives to do the job required of it, said job being to provide heavenly evidence that something important was going on in the lives just mentioned.

  Do you follow me? The giant good genie’s comet was up there to explain the inexplicable, although no one else knew it, and the genie was down there in the desert using his astronomical instruments to keep our heavenly historical affairs on course, as he always does when his comet comes over every six hundred and sixteen years, no more and no less and will you just imagine that? Will you now?

  A case of genuine celestial evidence, the baking priest had added. Makes you think, doesn’t it. And since then the man who told me all this has learned the name of the giant good genie in question. Strongbow is his name. And so that heavenly body up there that explains the inexplicable and lets us know that important events are happening in important lives, said celestial evidence has to be known of course as Strongbow’s Comet.

  Celestial evidence? Nubar didn’t like that at all. Who were these people and what did they think they were doing over there in Jerusalem, in Araby, inventing this nonsense? His grandfather had discovered the original Bible and now it was rightfully his, the philosopher’s stone belonged to him. It was as simple as that. Decisive action was needed.