Jerusalem Poker (The Jerusalem Quartet Book 2)

by Edward Whittemore

  Done what?

  Lived three thousand years in Jerusalem. He has done that, you see. It may be hard to imagine over here, away from that holy mountain, but it’s true. Do you believe me when I tell you so?

  Yes. Haj Harun. The man who’s lived for three thousand years in Jerusalem.

  Joe smiled. Bernini smiled.

  Maybe when you grow up, lad, you’ll be like him. What do you think?

  I don’t know. Maybe I will.

  Joe sighed.

  A wonder, that’s what.

  Father?

  Yes.

  Are you going to stay here with us now?

  Well as it happens, lad, I’m not. When a time comes it comes, you see, and that’s what it’s done for me. So I’m off to look at new places, the New World probably, which is to say America. I’m going to find out about it and then when I do, you and I will discuss it. In the meantime you’ve got your mum and she’s a wonderful woman, God never made better.

  I love her.

  I know you do, and in my way, so do I.

  Then why are you leaving?

  Ah you are a clever little piece of goods, on the foxy side of the O’Sullivans, I’d say. But the answer is straightforward. It’s that I must. Having been born a fisherman’s son, I’m bound for the desert. You may not understand that now, but someday you will.

  Oh no, I understand it now.

  You do? How’s that?

  A man named Stern told me. He’s a new friend of Mother’s.

  Did he now? What’d he say?

  Well he was leaving here once and I asked him the same thing, and he said that sometimes a man has travels to make.

  Well well, it’s true I guess. Not that your mother doesn’t have her own to make, she does. But aren’t you a smart one to be knowing all that at your age.

  Bernini hung his head.

  I’m not smart, he whispered.

  Why do you say that?

  Because I’m not.

  Bernini hesitated, staring at the sand.

  What is it? said Joe quickly. You mean your not being able to read? I already know about that.

  Bernini nodded.

  That and the other things, he whispered. Not being able to do arithmetic the way you’re supposed to.

  Here here, said Joe in a soft voice, stop hanging your head like that and take a look out to sea. There are all kinds of ways of being smart, we both know that. Take Haj Harun. Most of the time he doesn’t even know what century he’s in. You go for a walk with him through the streets of Jerusalem and he may be back somewhere a couple of thousand years ago, rambling through alleys no one else is smart enough to recognize. All lost it would appear, but he’s not, not really. It’s just that he sees things we don’t. The rest of us, we see what’s around us, he sees more. So you can’t say what’s smart and what isn’t, there are all kinds of different ways. A lot of people would say Haj Harun isn’t smart, and he wouldn’t be if it came to selling vegetables by the pound or cloth by the yard. Hopeless, he’d be, there’d be no profit ever. But if you want to know who the holy men were and what they thought, or better than that, what they felt in their hearts, or even the unholy Assyrians or anybody else, then you take a wander with him through the streets of Jerusalem and you’ll find out, you’ll know. Our gentle knight he is, watching over the eternal city.

  Bernini looked up. He smiled.

  You talk as if Jerusalem wasn’t a place.

  Oh it is all right, it’s just that it’s more as well. Something you carry with you, inside of you, wherever you go. And as for those travels we mentioned, you’ll be having your very own someday.

  I hope so.

  You will, I know it. When I was your age I was just bursting with the dream of them. Just dying to get out in the world and try my hand.

  And you did.

  Yes I did, I tried. Funny thing is, that’s still what I’m doing.

  A shadow suddenly came across Bernini’s face. He was gazing up the beach toward the little house. Joe looked quickly away and back again. There was pain in his eyes.

  Say it, he whispered.

  Bernini shook his head, his mouth set.

  No say it, lad, whispered Joe. You know it’s always best to say things. People hear them anyway. What is it?

  Well all I meant was, she’ll be home at five or six.

  Yes.

  Well aren’t you even going to come and see her?

  Joe took a deep breath.

  No.

  Not even for a few minutes?

  No.

  But we’re going to have a birthday party and there’s a beautiful cake. I saw it on the shelf.

  No. I can’t, lad.

  Just for a few minutes? To have a piece of cake?

  Ah, a few minutes or a lifetime. It seems there’s no difference.

  But then you’re not going to see her at all?

  Not this time. A time will come, but it’s not now.

  But why? Won’t you tell me why? She’s my mother and you’re my father. Why?

  I’ll try to tell you, it’s hard to explain. You see she has a life of her own now and I’m not in it. You are, and old friends like Munk, and new friends like Stern, and the people she works with and others, they make up her life now. Especially you. But I’m somewhere else. I mean I’ve been somewhere else so long, I’m somewhere else now.

  But she’d like to see you.

  I don’t think so.

  Are you afraid to see her?

  Not afraid, no, I just don’t think it would be for the best at the moment. Someday, but not now. Your mother and I haven’t seen each other in thirteen years, and some things are too recent. Scars take time to heal. You have to treat the past gently.

  What’s too recent?

  Sivi’s death, for one.

  But he was such a sad old man. He almost never talked and he never smiled, not even once. He just sat and stared at walls, at nothing. It made me uncomfortable to be in the same room with him.

  That was when you knew him, lad, but it wasn’t always so. Things change. There was a time when Munk knew him long ago, and your mother and Stern, when he was always smiling and laughing and telling stories, amusing everybody and making things better than they had been before. I didn’t know him myself then, but they say there was never anyone, never anyone who enjoyed life more. Just accepted everything and everyone and put people at ease right away, and made them laugh and was kind and generous, and was always saying funny things. But then the fires of Smyrna got in the way, and the slaughter and the screams, and soldiers beat him with rifles and he was never the same after that. What I’m saying is that he was a good man, and that he and your mother go back a long way, long before I ever met her, and it can hurt terribly when someone like that is taken from you. When they die. It just seems then that nothing is right in the world, just nothing at all, and you feel that nothing will ever be right again. It takes time to get over that. And you know how she spent these last years taking care of him.

  Bernini nodded.

  Yes you do, you saw it. Without her he wouldn’t have had much of anything these last years. And before that it was the other way around. Before that he helped her, along with all the others. Sivi was her link to the past, to bad days as well as good, but a link in any case, giving life some continuity, a dimension, a meaning. After all he’d been the brother of her husband, the one who died in the war before your mother and I met, and later he took her in when she left Jericho with you just after you were born. Just so many things he did for her, just so many memories she shared with him. So his going is more than it seems, more than you can imagine. When you lose someone like that, someone who’s been so much a part of your life for so long, it’s as if all those years have suddenly been taken away from you. Your own past, taken away from you. You feel cheated and robbed, it’s just terrible to go through. Son?

  Yes?

  I’ve gone on about this because I think you should understand it. There’s no way you could know
it yourself, from what you saw of Sivi. No way you could realize what his death must mean to her. So that’s enough of the past for her to deal with right now. She doesn’t need me walking in.

  Bernini nodded. He looked out to sea.

  Why did she leave Jericho with me?

  Well that’s a direct question, isn’t it. She’d have to give you her answer, but I guess mine would be that I didn’t know enough. I’d had no experience with a woman, you see. Only twenty when I met her and we were together less than a year, and I didn’t know what things meant. I just didn’t know what people were doing when they did them. So I got things mixed up, got them wrong. I did that with your mother.

  Did what?

  Didn’t understand the silences, the anger. I was so dumb I thought it was something I’d done. We do that when we’re young. We think that anything that happens, happens because of us. So I thought I’d done something and she didn’t love me anymore. Of course it was just the opposite. She did love me but she was afraid, because love had always hurt her before. So she pulled away from me and I didn’t know why. Leaving me because she loved me. Terrible pain for the both of us coming out of the love we had for each other. Life can be like that, it can do that. Just turn on itself. It’s the strangest thing. You have to be so careful with someone you love. People are fragile when you get that close to them. Living alone is easier by far in this world, or even living with someone but keeping yourself alone all the same. There aren’t any risks then, but you’re always the poorer for it. The riches are in the risks and that’s the truth, you’ll find them nowhere else. Not ever, as I well know.

  I still don’t see what you got wrong.

  Joe smiled.

  You don’t now? Well nothing more than myself of course. That’s always it. Whatever you do or don’t do, you’re the one who’s done it. Did you know the O’Sullivan Beare clan used to have a lovely legend?

  What’s that?

  A saying, a motto. Love, the forgiving hand to victory. That’s the legend and none was ever better. It says everything that has to be said. Well I’ve always known the words, but when I was younger I didn’t really understand them. I took people for what they said and did, and that’s not enough in this world. You also have to take people for what they don’t say and don’t do. Sounds simple, but it’s not until you learn it.

  I think I’ve already begun to learn it.

  Bernini’s face was serious, intent. Joe nodded.

  How’s that, lad?

  Well I don’t listen to people’s words so much. I listen to what’s inside.

  What’s that now? What you call inside?

  Bernini put his hand in the sand. He pushed it back and forth, making a trough. All at once he seemed faraway.

  What’s inside, lad?

  Have you ever seen the fishermen throwing those little octopuses against the rocks by the harbor after they catch them?

  I have.

  The octopuses are so small, you wouldn’t think they could be that tough. But they have to keep smashing them against the rocks over and over before they’re ready to be hung up to dry. But then later when they’re grilled over charcoal and cut in little pieces with olive oil over them, aren’t they the best thing in the world?

  They are, the very best. A feast in themselves.

  Yes, said Bernini, beginning another trough in the sand. Joe watched the trough grow.

  But now I think I’ve missed your meaning, lad. What was it you were telling me about what’s inside?

  Just that. That’s all. That even though the octopuses are small, someone has to work very hard to make them good to eat. But when they do, they’re the best thing in the world.

  Joe smiled. He drew a line in the sand and capped it with a shorter line, then made a loop at the top.

  Know it?

  A cross with a circle on top of it?

  Well it’s not quite a cross, is it, not quite a circle either. It’s an old mark, called an ankh. In ancient Egypt it was the sign for life, or maybe the sun, same thing. My friend Cairo told me about it, and he had it from a living mummy called old Menelik.

  Are there really living mummies?

  It seems so. Why?

  Because I’ve always wanted to think so.

  Have you now. And why is that?

  I like the idea of people not dying.

  Do you? Then I think you’re going to like the story of my friend Cairo being brought up by his foster father, who was in fact a living mummy.

  Wait a minute. Cairo’s a city, not a person.

  Things can be different for different people. For me, Cairo will never be a city but a man, a great huge black man who’s so strong and friendly he lifts you right up off the ground when he greets you. Puts his arms around you and hugs you, and all of a sudden you find you’re up there dangling in the air. It’s his way of shaking hands, of saying hello.

  Really?

  Yes. Anyway, this living mummy, old Menelik, brought up Cairo with a grin as dry as dry while lying at the bottom of a sarcophagus where he’d been residing through the ages beside the Nile, endlessly talking away to Cairo and telling him all there was to know about secret tombs and temples and what went on inside of pyramids, not to mention his friend the genie, Strongbow by name, who had a comet of his own as an eternal plaything.

  Bernini clapped his hands.

  Old Menelik? The genie Strongbow?

  Exactly, lad. The stuff of dreams, that’s what they are. Men have fallen by the wayside trying to keep up with the likes of them. There’s magic in those tales that flies, that leaps across time with its sparkling visions, the magic that comes at one and the same time from the songs of long ago and the lovely tunes yet to be sung.

  Bernini got up and began to walk around in a circle, looking for stones to scale. He stopped for a moment and raised his head.

  Is that really the way it is?

  How’s that, lad?

  It never ends?

  Oh no blessed be, it never does. Just keeps right on going. I’ll tell you that and so will Haj Harun and the baking priest, and the potting priest and all the rest of them. Stern and Munk whom you know, and Cairo whom you don’t know, and a cobbler in Jerusalem whom I don’t even know myself although we went looking for him last New Year’s Eve, looked hard and didn’t find him that time; but there’ll be another time because Haj Harun has never forgotten him, hasn’t and won’t. So yes indeed, just ask any one of them and the answer will always be the same. They’ll all tell you that, straight off and no question about it. We go right on in the lives of others and there’s no end to it for sure.

  Why?

  Ah, now you’re getting to it and I can see why you like to spend your time down here on the shore, just watching and listening until you have it all. And the sea will whisper the answers, lad, it will do that for you. Gently, don’t you see. Quietly, don’t you know. Whispering away just for you. Because it’s here for no other reason.

  Bernini smiled.

  Aren’t you going to choose a stone, Father? Aren’t you going to scale even one?

  I am. That’s why I’m here. To see you on your birthday and scale a stone across the water. Like to hear something else while I’m looking for a stone?

  Sure.

  You’ve got a brother or a sister in Jerusalem.

  Bernini smiled.

  No I haven’t.

  Yes it’s true. Of course the child is only a half-brother or a half-sister.

  Well which is it?

  I don’t know.

  How old?

  Almost eleven. Do you like the idea of it though?

  Sure. But why all the mystery?

  It just seems that’s the way it is sometimes. It just seems some things are always a mystery.

  Well who’s the mother?

  A saint. That’s why I can’t see her anymore and don’t know anything about the child. She’s a saint and she lives with God.

  Bernini frowned. He laughed.

  I don’t thin
k I should believe everything you say.

  Don’t you now? Can’t imagine why you’d tell me that. Although of course the world is full of facts, and we’re all free to choose the ones we want to believe.

  Bernini went on laughing.

  Father, haven’t you even found a stone yet? They’re all over the place.

  I know they are and I’m looking. I’m looking. Now here’s a possibility and here’s another, but I want to take my time, I want to find one that’s just right for now. Mind you, it’s not always the same one that’s wanted. It depends on the shape of the waves and the cast of the wind and the slant of the sunlight as well. Sometimes a skimmer will do the job, light and fast, and sometimes one with more weight to it is in order. There’s no way of knowing beforehand. You just have to dream.

  You’re talking in riddles again, Father.

  Am I now. Just jokes and riddles and scraps of rhymes? But you see a life without dreams is no life at all, a loss for sure and sadly so. Or as Haj Harun used to like to say, time is. And always said in a very ethereal manner, it was.

  What’s it supposed to mean?

  Oh I don’t know, that we’re here by the sea together? That we’re sharing the sun and the sea and finding our stones to scale over the water? It’s not much, what we’re doing. On the other hand, it’s everything. Scaling stones is the tale.

  What tale?

  Haj Harun’s tale, I guess. And the baking priest’s and the potting priest’s, and Cairo’s and Munk’s and Stern’s, and your mother’s, and my own and yours. All of them about to be told, when I find the stone I’m looking for.

  Sometimes you have a queer way of talking, Father.

  I do, it’s true. It comes from those times when I was a boy straining so hard to hear the whispers of the little people, trying so hard to catch the sounds of their singing and dancing, even though I knew I’d never see them. Whispers, that’s right. Whispers, that’s all. But once you hear those whispers, lad, you never forget them and you’re never the same. Because they remind you of birds soaring free in the sun and sea gulls gliding in your wake, and a fine strong tide running you home in your little boat after a night at sea, running you home to the new flowers smiling in the green green grass. And then home you are at last on your little island and it’s dancing you think of and singing and making your feet fly in the sun, and maybe later, when the moon has risen softly, even holding your hurling matches brazenly on the strand. And feasting through the ages, even that. Ah yes you do, that’s what you think of. And you strain so hard to hear those whispers as the years go by. You want so much to hear them again and you do try, just try and try, you do that even though the whispers are dimmer, are farther away this year than last, last than the year before. And yes, it’s true, even though you know the wonders of their world are beyond you, always were and always will be. You’ll just never see them, just never, never have and never will, but still you go on believing in them and trying to hear the tunes of their dancing and the songs sung at their feasts, mysterious whispers in the sparkling sunlight, the whispers you heard when you were a child so long ago. So long ago.