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, whenever 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.