Haj Harun nodded gently.
Bread, Prester John. Even here men can't live by spirit alone.
-8-
Joker Wild
Change the view, that's the article. If you're down on the coast, bugger it up to the mountains, bugger it down to the coast. Do you follow me?
Still the Old City, still everybody's Holy City. In the back room of Haj Harun's shop the high round table was heaped with currencies and jewels and precious metals, the Great Jerusalem Poker Game now in its ninth year and notorious throughout the Middle East as the place where fortunes could be quickly made or quickly undone, the game still run by its three founders and only permanent members, an enigmatic African, a clever Hungarian, a wily Irishman.
From the far side of the table Munk Szondi snapped his fingers, signaling to the Druse warrior on mess duty to refill his bowl of garlic bulbs. The warrior took the bowl to the corner where the garlic bunches hung and lopped off a load with his sword, returning the overflowing bowl to the table.
Munk picked up a handful of bulbs, crunched his way through them and yawned. It had been a long evening of seven-card high-low, and business was slow. In front of him lay a meager supply of chits representing Jericho orange futures, Syrian olive-oil futures and not much else. Munk sighed, rippling his cards with garlic fumes, and gazed dully around the table.
To his left, a lean leathery British brigadier on long leave from the Bombay Lancers.
Next to him a limp cringing Libyan rug merchant who had stopped off to pray at the Dome of the Rock after shamelessly and successfully beating his dying cousin with a stick, somewhere to the east, in order to acquire the cousin's valuable collection of Bukharas.
Continuing clockwise, a French dealer in stolen Byzantine ikons, a shifty-eyed pederast who regularly visited Jerusalem on his trips of desecration up and down the Levantine coast.
An elderly Egyptian landowner, cotton-fat, spastic when excited, said to be impotent if his favorite hunting falcon, hooded, wasn't perched on the mirror that ran the length of his bed.
Two enormous Russians with shaved heads, ostentatiously dressed as kulaks and picking their teeth with knives, pretending to be mining technicians interested in sulphur deposits on the shores of the Dead Sea, obviously Bolshevik agents sent to foment atheism in the Holy Land.
A commonplace group, in short, with the players dropping in and out of the game.
Off somewhere to Munk's right was Cairo Martyr hunched beside his hookah, not doing very well either, in front of him a small stack of Maria Theresa crowns which the African fingered from time to time, listlessly polishing the impressive breasts of the former Austrian empress with his smooth thumb.
And also off somewhere to his left, as usual, O'Sullivan Beare, quiet tonight for a change and apparently more interested in his antique cognac bottle than his cards, the bottle actually containing his fiery home-brewed poteen. The Irishman absentmindedly traced with his finger the distinctive cross that appeared on all his bottles, in front of him an insignificant pile of Turkish dinars, backed up by a totally useless reserve of Polish zlotys.
Munk yawned again and gazed down at the cards he held. The betting had come around to him.
Fold, he said, reaching under the table to scratch himself. Joe also folded, as did Cairo.
The servile Libyan rug merchant and the French ikon thief went on to win. But the British brigadier and the spastic Egyptian landowner had been more than holding their own all evening and the two noisy Bolsheviks seemed on the verge of a breakthrough. Luck was running to the strangers at the table.
Hello there Munk, called Joe from across the table. Would you be having the time on this dreadfully dreary evening?
Munk took out his three-layer pocket watch and began flipping through the faces. Eventually he came to one that satisfied him and glared at it. A heavy garlic belch erupted from deep inside him.
Hello there Munk, called Cairo from his side of the table. How's it read?
Slow, answered the Hungarian.
Right, said the African.
Figures, muttered Joe.
All three men nodded vaguely at each other and went back to their diversions, garlic cloves and poteen and the breasts of the former Austrian empress. While the cards were being shuffled, Joe recited some lines in Gaelic.
Know that one, Munk? Cairo? It's a pome I used to be telling myself back when I was doing my jig around the Black and Tans. Roughly speaking, it says a man should never sit still when he has a dose of the slows. Change the view, that's the article. If you're down on the coast, bugger it up to the mountains.
If you're up in the mountains, bugger it down to the coast. Do you follow me? You have to get yourself to where you were or might have been, then there's a chance of something happening. And that, gents, is the meaning of the pome in all its brevity.
Both Munk and Cairo nodded sleepily, although it was only eleven o'clock. Munk yawned and pushed back his chair, gathering up his few remaining chits of orange and olive-oil futures. As he did so the chimes attached to the sundial in the front room began to strike, rolling twelve times in all.
An early midnight and bedtime for me, said Munk. I trust no one cares if a loser leaves the table?
No one did. Munk drifted out the door as the new hand was being dealt. The Libyan went high and won, the Frenchman went low and won. Cairo folded on the next hand and pocketed the only two breasts of Maria Theresa still in his possession.
That it, sport? mumbled the British brigadier. Not your night either?
Cairo shrugged and swayed out the door in his stately robes, trailing the sweetish smoke from his final puff on the hookah. The chimes in the front room creaked and inexplicably tolled midnight for the second time, although it was only eleven-fifteen. The Russians took a hand, then the Egyptian and the brigadier.
The French pederast and the limp Libyan shared another pot, the rug thief going low and the ikon thief high.
Joe had only three Polish zlotys left when the Druse warrior on duty in the alley entered the room and stood at attention behind Joe's chair.
I believe your batman wants you, mumbled the British brigadier.
Joe looked up and the Druse warrior handed him a calling card engraved in gold. Joe looked at it and his eyes widened. He sat up very straight, whistling softly.
What is it? someone asked.
Jaysus.
A new player? asked one of the Russians.
Jaysus Joseph and Mary.
Three new players? asked the other Russian.
Rather late, mumbled the brigadier, but of course there's still room if they have money to lose.
Joe whistled very softly and tapped the calling card. He leaned back and licked his lips hungrily.
Now it's just too bad, he murmured, that Munk and Cairo had packed it in and left when they did. I'd just like to see their faces now.
Well? asked someone.
Well you can't blame me for being shocked, said Joe. I mean who'd ever have believed that item would dare show up here again after the bundle he dropped in '24? Not me, I couldn't have imagined such a thing was possible. Sat right where you're sitting, Mr. Brigadier, and just as coolly as you please gambled away three villas in Budapest and two in Vienna with all their treasures included, paintings and statues you could hardly count, regular palaces they were, and if that wasn't enough he threw in a Czech hunting estate and a piece of Bohemian forest and a whole Croatian lake jammed with fish, all over two acres can you imagine. Two acres? That's right, mad arrogant he is. You'd have thought he was the former owner of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, which isn't far from the truth as it happens. And another thing he was big on betting that night was musical instruments.