Jerusalem Poker

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.

I still don't see what you got wrong.

Joe smiled.

You don't now? Well nothing more than myself of course. That's always it. Whatever you do or don't do, you're the one who's done it. Did you know the O'Sullivan Beare clan used to have a lovely legend?

What's that?

A saying, a motto. Love, the forgiving hand to victory. That's the legend and none was ever better. It says everything that has to be said. Well I've always known the words, but when I was younger I didn't really understand them. I took people for what they said and did, and that's not enough in this world. You also have to take people for what they don't say and don't do. Sounds simple, but it's not until you learn it.

I think I've already begun to learn it.

Bernini's face was serious, intent. Joe nodded.

How's that, lad?

Well I don't listen to people's words so much. I listen to what's inside.

What's that now? What you call inside?

Bernini put his hand in the sand. He pushed it back and forth, making a trough. All at once he seemed faraway.

What's inside, lad?

Have you ever seen the fishermen throwing those little octopuses against the rocks by the harbor after they catch them?

I have.

The octopuses are so small, you wouldn't think they could be that tough. But they have to keep smashing them against the rocks over and over before they're ready to be hung up to dry. But then later when they're grilled over charcoal and cut in little pieces with olive oil over them, aren't they the best thing in the world?

They are, the very best. A feast in themselves.

Yes, said Bernini, beginning another trough in the sand Joe watched the trough grow.

But now I think I've missed your meaning, lad. What was it you were telling me about what's inside?

Just that. That's all. That even though the octopuses are small, someone has to work very hard to make them good to eat. But when they do, they're the best thing in the world.

Joe smiled. He drew a line in the sand and capped it with a shorter line, then made a loop at the top.

Know it?

A cross with a circle on top of it?

Well it's not quite a cross, is it, not quite a circle either. It's an old mark, called an ankh. In ancient Egypt it was the sign for life, or maybe the sun, same thing. My friend Cairo told me about it, and he had it from a living mummy called old Menelik.

Are there really living mummies?

It seems so. Why?

Because I've always wanted to think so.

Have you now. And why is that?

I like the idea of people not dying.

Do you? Then I think you're going to like the story of my friend Cairo being brought up by his foster father, who was in fact a living mummy.

Wait a minute. Cairo's a city, not a person.

Things can be different for different people. For me, Cairo will never be a city but a man, a great huge black man who's so strong and friendly he lifts you right up off the ground when he greets you. Puts his arms around you and hugs you, and all of a sudden you find you're up there dangling in the air. It's his way of shaking hands, of saying hello.

Really?

Yes. Anyway, this living mummy, old Menelik, brought up Cairo with a grin as dry as dry while lying at the bottom of a sarcophagus where he'd been residing through the ages beside the Nile, endlessly talking away to Cairo and telling him all there was to know about secret tombs and temples and what went on inside of pyramids, not to mention his friend the genie, Strongbow by name, who had a comet of his own as an eternal plaything.

Bernini clapped his hands.

Old Menelik? The genie Strongbow?

Exactly, lad. The stuff of dreams, that's what they are. Men have fallen by the wayside trying to keep up with the likes of them. There's magic in those tales that flies, that leaps across time with its sparkling visions, the magic that comes at one and the same time from the songs of long ago and the lovely tunes yet to be sung.

Bernini got up and began to walk around in a circle, looking for stones to scale. He stopped for a moment and raised his head.

Is that really the way it is?

How's that, lad?

It never ends?

Oh no blessed be, it never does. Just keeps right on going. I'll tell you that and so will Haj Harun and the