I'll never understand the Balkans, said Joe. Go on.
Well Sophia also told Munk how her Skanderbeg, formerly a Trappist by the way, had discovered the original Bible in the Holy Land, been shocked by its chaos and gone on to forge an acceptable version. A new original.
Discovered what? whispered Joe. The wind up here's playing tricks with my head.
The original Bible, repeated Cairo slowly. You know, the Sinai Bible.
Joe choked. He reached for his handkerchief but didn't get it up to his mouth in time. A slug of dark brown phlegm shot out of his throat and landed in his champagne glass. Joe gazed absentmindedly at the glass for a moment and fished in it with a spoon.
You're smoking too much, said Cairo.
Joe nodded vaguely.
I believe it. What I don't believe is this business about the Sinai Bible, Munk knowing about it all these years. Why didn't he ever mention it to me?
Did you ever mention it to him?
No.
Well?
I see. But wasn't he interested in finding it?
Munk's not religious, said Cairo. You know that.
I do. But I'm not religious either.
So?
Joe shook his head. He seemed dazed.
All right, Cairo, so the bog's all around me and I'm sinking fast. Give me a hand and pull me out before my head goes under. In other words, when did you learn all this from Munk? About this Luigi fellow who was your common great-grandfather and what he'd been up to one night in Albania? No I don't mean that, I mean about the Sinai Bible. When did you learn about the Sinai Bible?
When I met Munk.
What? All the way back at the beginning of the poker game?
Yes.
How'd it happen? I'm about to go under for the last time.
I asked Munk about his name. Menelik Ziwar had told me my great-grandfather's real name was Szondi.
He did? Old Menelik the mummy? On his back in the bottom of his sarcophagus conjuring up the past again? Well I thought I was going under for the last time but it seems you can sink forever in this bog. I mean, how did old Menelik know that? I always thought he was ferreting out tombs along the Nile, not spending time down in villages on the fringe of the Nubian desert soliciting accounts of Swiss wanderers who had passed that way in disguise some years before he was born.
Menelik had known my great-grandmother when he was young, when they were both slaves in the delta.
She told him about the father of her child, who'd been a well-known expert in Islamic law in his day.
Later Menelik was able to trace this expert back to Aleppo, where he discovered his real identity.
Aleppo, you see, was where Johann Luigi had lived for several years, perfecting his Arabic, before assuming his disguise and setting out on his wanderings.
Ah sure, someone's real identity. So tell me now in the end when it's almost over, what is this game we've been playing, Cairo? And where did it really start?
Cairo laughed. Any one of those places we've mentioned?
Yes I suppose. And when. When did it start?
Any one of those times we've mentioned?
I believe it, I do. All these years I've been circling around like my pigeons up there. Well why not pop another song of time so we can see the scheme of things over the Old City?
Cairo opened another bottle of champagne and the pigeons scattered in the air. The two men watched them swoop back and slowly begin to circle.
Ah that's better, that's nicely reassuring. For a moment there all this was unsettling my mind. Here I'd been thinking about finding the Sinai Bible these last dozen years and more, thinking no one in the game knew the great secret of its existence but me, and what do I discover all of a sudden? You and Munk both knew about it, that's what. And you, Cairo. Just a couple of months ago we spent a long night up here talking together, deciding to end the game, and you let me run on about the Sinai Bible as if you'd never heard of it. Guilty or not?
Cairo smiled.
No, I never did anything like that.
You didn't? Is my mind adrift and afloat in the manner of Haj Harun? I certainly thought you did.
No. I simply asked you how you'd heard about it. And more important, what it meant to you.
Is that all?
Yes.
And I just ran on and on after that? Well I do that, I know. But why didn't you interrupt me and say you already bloody well knew about the Sinai Bible? That everyone in the game knew about it? Of course, what else, since it's just about the oldest piece of goods in Jerusalem.
About three thousand years old? said Cairo, smiling.
Joe groaned.
Oh all right, so I was running on and you were just being a good listener. But tell me this, Cairo. After you'd heard about the Sinai Bible, why weren't you ever interested in finding it? Why wasn't Munk?
I guess we had our own goals in the game.
And so you did. And so in the end, all we know is where the game ends. Jerusalem naturally. Jerusalem of course. Saith ending of endings end. Jerusalem as it was and will be. And here we are with you and Munk and that nasty little Nubar all cousins today, friends and foes alike related, and where does that leave me? Don't I get to be related to someone?
I would think so. In fact since you were the youngest of thirty-three brothers, I would think you must have quite a few nieces and nephews, not to mention their children.
True, I must. Quite a few. Even though seventeen of my brothers were killed fighting in the Great War, that still leaves room for a number of nieces and nephews and their children.
Where are the rest of your brothers?
America mostly, scattered around something called the Bronx. I'll have to look them up someday. But you and Munk and little Nubar all second cousins a century after the fact. That was some job for one great-grandfather, this tireless young Luigi. Whatever became of him?
He died of dysentery at St Catherine's monastery in 1817. Do you know anything about St Catherine's?
Just that it's quiet and remote. I tramped in there once to have a turn around and climb the mountain.
Wanted to know what it felt like to stand up there, but of course no one spoke to me or gave me any tablets.
A lobster tail cracked in Joe's hands.
Oh my God, wait, you're not going to tell me that's where Skanderbeg Wallenstein found the Sinai Bible?
Of course.
Where else, of course, naturally that was the place. Anything more?
That's also where he did his forgery. In a cave just below the summit.
Joe whistled softly.
Full circle, no stop. St Catherine's it is on all counts, all points touched and none left out, the miracle of the mountain and why not. Luigi fathers everyone and then dies there, having been a Christian and a Jew and a Moslem at one time or another, and then one of his sons finds the original Bible there and forges a new original there. And then one of his great-grandsons, our very own Munk of course, finds his cause there, through the intervention of a Japanese baron of course, just as you'd expect, and soon this said Munk will proceed to win the Great Jerusalem Poker Game, of course and of course. It's the nature of the game assuredly and it's all clear to me now, now that it's behind me. That rogue Luigi has brought it all together, and nicely so. But he must have been a mischievous one, that's what he must have been, carrying on and about the way he did and ordering and disordering things a century later. Ah yes. And tell me, Cairo, speaking of nasty little Nubar, what do you hear about him these days?