Dying, that's all, the fires on one side and the harbor on the other and no place to go, no place to take her, just dying in unbearable pain. And what you did, Stern, was what I should have done, and I wish I had done it so it wouldn't be tormenting you now. Please, she said in Armenian, and you told me what it meant but I didn't do anything so you did, and I should have done it but I was too angry at you and Maudie and the whole fucking bloody world. Mad at myself I mean, let's keep it honest. So after all, Stern, what did you do but end a dying child's pain? Ended the torture. There was no way she could have lived through that night
Joe?
I tell you Haj Harun did the same thing and that's why he was weeping in the garden. It happened outside the garden. There was an old Armenian man who'd had his eyes torn out and he was walking into the flames, finished. Strands of bloody tissue hanging from his empty eye sockets. Tears of blood, Stern.
Immovable tears. For the love of God, he was screaming, kill me before I burn. And Haj Harun did.
Gentle harmless old soul that he is, he raised his sword and swung it and after that I had to take him by the hand and lead him back to the garden or he never would have found it, he was crying so hard. And Stern, he's been on the losing side for three thousand years defending the Holy City, everybody's Holy City. You're always on the losing side in such a game but he goes on. Always. Losing is all. So what did you do that was so bad? Stern's hands were shaking. He reached out and gripped Joe's arm.
I'll tell you what I did. I took a knife. I slit her throat.
Oh Christ man, screamed Joe, it wasn't your fault.
Stern's chair went crashing backward onto the floor. He lurched to his feet and stared at Joe with wild eyes, backing away from the table. Backing away and stumbling clumsily across the room.
Wait, called Joe, you can't just go on running. We'll talk. Don't go on running.
Stern stared, a trapped animal backing away, big and hunched and shapeless. He knocked over a chair and kept on backing away, hit a table and backed into the door, frantically groping for the door handle behind him, trapped, trying to escape.
Stern, for Christ's sake. Wait.
The door banged open. An empty frame of darkness, snow swirling across it. Joe felt the blast of cold air all the way at the back of the room. He sat there looking at the night and the snow in the empty doorway.
Don't go on running. Once, in this very room, Stern had said the same thing to him. A dozen years ago that was, before Smyrna. Strange, thought Joe, how the words that were meant to help were always the same. Someone said them to you when you were sinking, trying to help, and then a dozen years later you were saying the same words to them. Saying and saying, going around, it never ended, But you just couldn't help running sometimes, just couldn't, you ran away from yourself, just had to, trying to survive in the cold and the darkness. Everyone a victim now or then, everyone, trying to survive.
How long could Stern manage with his morphine? Taking morphine and living with his hopeless dream of a homeland that could never be, Arabs and Christians and Jews together, trying to believe. How long?
Running.
The door banged closed. Wind gusting in the alleys and sucking it closed, sealing the light from the darkness, the warmth from the cold, swirling snow in the land of milk and honey.
He was vulnerable, Stern, and that's why people loved him. Bulky and shapeless and going down yet trying to believe, and that's why people loved him. Everybody longed to believe and wanted to reach out to the man who tried to. But everybody didn't make it. Everybody couldn't. How long for Stern?
Running.
The Arab at the front of the shop was snoring again under his newspaper. Joe pushed back his chair and dragged himself wearily to his feet. He'd tried, but it hadn't worked out. A small step at first, then nothing.
But maybe someday Stern would recall that small step, maybe sometime it would help him just a little as he sank and sank with morphine in his hopeless dream.
Yes, Stern. That too was one of God's secret names.
The proprietor of the shop looked dazed as he staggered over to the table. He managed an oily smile.
Why not? thought Joe. Time for him to collect a tip if he can. More important to him now than the snow and the silence, the darkness, has his troubles like everybody else making a living, making a life. Best he can do. Eyes out of focus and teeth rotting in his head, on the limp and looking to ingratiate himself, best he can do.
Want a woman, sir?
No thanks.
A boy?
No thanks either.
Someone else? It's cold tonight.
I know it.
Snowing, cold. Not a night to be alone out. there.
I know it.
Hashish?
No.
So what do you want?
Nothing, nothing at all. Here. Keep it.
The Arab looked down at the handful of bills. His smile spread.
You Jewish?
No.
Christian?
Born that way, yes.
Merry Christmas then.
Right. Thanks.
-15-
Sheik Ibrahim ibn Harun
What is this game we've been playing, Cairo? And where did it really start?
Christmas day and Cairo had brought buckets of lobsters and champagne to the little roof in the Armenian Quarter where Joe lived with his pigeons. The weather was cold and raw, the sky overcast, but they set up a table outside so they could have the city spread out in front of them while they celebrated, their time in Jerusalem almost over now.
Here we are in overcoats again, mused Joe, just like that first day of the game twelve years ago when we sat down on the floor in the back of Haj Harun's shop. Funny how things come around and come together. Speaking of which, Cairo, I'm glad you came. I wouldn't have thought of anything so fine as lobster.
I know you wouldn't have. You'd have been inside crouched over your turf fire nursing some dreadful stew.
True enough, and that would have been all right too, but this is much better. The kind of occasion a man can look back to when he's finishing up and getting ready to go the other way, no doubt off in some bloody unknown corner of the world by then, tottering around on useless legs and creaking in every joint and cursing the day he was born, certainly cursing another Christmas to be faced, for what's the sense of celebrating something and trying to be happy when it's all over and behind you and there's no more to come? And probably in his cups as usual on Christmas because that's a black day in Ireland, which is to say the pubs are closed, and alone at home in a dark mood shaking his head and muttering cross thoughts like the malcontent he is at the end of life, having seen what he thinks he's seen although most of it was a blur, when all at once he stays that glass on its way to his lips and peers down into it, right down into that muddy well of his soul, and takes a good look and says to himself, Hold on there you villainous trickster, what do you mean forgetting that beautiful Christmas years and decades ago when you were sitting on a rooftop in Jerusalem with your feet up, you and a friend feasting like lords with the Holy City itself spread out at your feet? Right there in front of you, you grumbling ingrate. And your man will have to admit it then. He'll have to stop cursing everything in sight and throw a smile back into his glass. Drink I may, he'll say then, but I've known those moments, I have, those beautiful rare moments and it's all been worth it because of them, all worth it and more because of those sweet rare moments, ah just the sweetest. Sure, that's what he's going to have to say in the end, coming around to the truth at last after a wicked and dissolute life. So will you raise a glass to that, Cairo lad? To this very moment and none other?