On top of the antique Turkish safe, Haj Harun smiled shyly.
I told you that, he whispered. Those were my words. We were sitting out on a hillside east of the city one evening, watching the sunset.
That's what we were doing, said Joe, and it was only this spring, and you pointed at the city as the sun went down and said that. And you said you were Melchizedek, because you both had and have the same dream, and I couldn't understand any of that at first and I said you were all mixed up, mixing up time again. But you weren't. You were right. Time works your way and not the other, and it took me a while to get used to the idea, to really know it, but now I have and do. Now I've learned the truth of it, the truth of the treasure maps too. Peace is the treasure, peace to seek, Melchizedek's gentle dream on the mountain. So a time will come for the Sinai Bible, gents, but it's not here and now. Here and now is for you to pick up your winnings, Munk, and let me tell you we've made it perfectly respectable for you, just very tidy and respectable.
Respectable?
Yes, your winnings. For my part, I knew you wouldn't want to be caught handling those dreadful religious articles I peddle on the side, so I've arranged to sell the concession to that shifty-eyed Frenchman who used to come to the game sometimes. All proceeds from the sale to go to you, to be paid in full over the next year. And what's more, he'll be working out of Beirut so you won't even have to look at him around here. I convinced him it was a more reliable business than dealing in stolen ikons, safer too, and he said he didn't want to live in Jerusalem anyway. Bad memories, he said. Especially that time back in '29 when Chief Sipping Bear wiped him out at this very table and sentenced him to work at an oven in purgatory, with the baking priest as his parole officer. Didn't much care for that apparently, did not, said the Frenchman with the shifty eyes.
As for pharaonic mummy dust, murmured Cairo.
Munk smiled.
Yes?
I knew you wouldn't want to be involved with that either. For philosophical reasons of course. It does speak of a distant past, after all, and what you're looking to is a future, the more immediate the better. So you won't have to deal with the pharaohs, Munk, neither in their powdered nor their mastic form. I've found a man who is buying all my mummies, and the mummy operation in its entirety, for a very handsome price. And he'll be headquartered in Alexandria, so you won't have to see him around here either.
Have I also met this man by chance?
By chance, you have. He was in the game the same evening when the Frenchman fared so poorly against Chief Sipping Bear. An elderly Egyptian landowner, cotton-fat, spastic when excited, said to be impotent if his favorite hunting falcon, hooded, isn't perched on the mirror that runs the length of his bed.
I remember him, said Munk. The black English judge found him guilty of having made a fortune by exploiting his workers. As I recall, the judge took away his cotton crop for the next ten years.
Precisely. Well now he's suddenly come up with the money to buy the entire mummy dust trade in the Middle East. And although spastic at times, he does have a keen business mind. And although elderly, he does have a large brood of what he calls nephews, who could and should be put to work. The falcon problem, it seems, was merely an eccentricity of his later years.
I see.
And there we have it, said Joe. We seem to be right all around, Munk, with no questionable affairs for you to worry about. You just take this money you've won at honest poker and use it to build those irrigation ditches you like so much. How Cairo and I come by the money has to do with us and a spastic elderly item in Alexandria and a shifty-eyed item in Beirut. Sure. And now the money will go to dig irrigation ditches in the wastes, so the wastes can be crops, and the truth is that's a nice way for money to go when it's going somewhere. So what's left but our rounds?
Rounds? asked Munk.
Right. It's New Year's Eve, isn't it? And one thing I've discovered along with everything else here, is that making the rounds on New Year's Eve is a regular ritual. So tonight we might as well all do it together, all four of us.
Cairo smiled. Munk looked mystified.
What rounds?
Haj Harun's annual inspection tour. Tell him, Aaron.
I will, said the wizened old man from the top of the safe. On the last night of the year I always go around the Old City to pay my respects to the elders of Jerusalem and see how the past year has fared for them.
That's all?
Yes, said Joe, but it might be more of a task than you'd suspect at first. Even though there are only two stops.
Only two? asked Munk.
Sounds minor, doesn't it. And so it does sound that way, but it's not. Far from it.
The first place we go, said Joe, is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to the top of the steps that lead down to the crypt. There's a man there on top of the steps who paces back and forth muttering to himself. He's been doing that for two thousand years, according to Haj Harun, and he's the first one we want to talk to.
What about? asked Munk.
Nothing, as it turns out.
No, I mean what does he say?
That's just it, he doesn't say anything. Nothing at all. He's so mysterious he doesn't even see us when we come up to him. Just goes right on pacing and muttering, in his own world altogether, some kind of holy vocation, don't you see. Now the other stop is a cubbyhole not far from Damascus Gate. A cobbler works in that cubbyhole, and according to Haj Harun he's been here much longer than the man on the top of the stairs, ever since the beginning in fact. He was already a man when Haj Harun was still a boy, and that dates him certainly. So he has a great deal to say. But the odd thing is, we can never find him.
Why? asked Munk.
Because Haj Harun can never remember where his cubbyhole is. It's near Damascus Gate, but exactly where he can't recall. Of course the configurations of the alleys have changed a bit since then. The last time Haj Harun did find the cobbler on a New Year's Eve, you see, was just before the Captivity. But the cobbler's here all right. Has to be. It's his home. So we keep looking.
Joe smiled. He drummed his fingers on the table.
That's right, Munk. A case of the crypt and the cobbler. Now this cobbler, as Haj Harun remembers, is just about the most talkative fellow you'll ever meet. He talks and talks and brings the events of a year up to date in minutes. And why not, dealing with soles the way he does? Having been around since the beginning the way he was? To him the world's a shoe just walking and walking and never standing still, what else does he see? No solitary silent crypt for him, not hardly. He's out there in the turmoil with the shouts and the cries of the hawkers, out there amidst the peddlers of commerce and empires, right out there where the crowds never cease to pass, sitting in his cubbyhole not far from Damascus Gate, a witness to it all.
While that other fellow, Munk, the one with the mysteries, he just mutters and paces in the gloom on top of the stairs in the church, going no place to outward appearances but guarding his crypt all the same.