Another adopted stray, said Munk, like me before the war. And it's been wonderful for him since she moved in. Despite what he says the old sinner has his bouts of gloom and loneliness, and it's made a great difference to him to have her here. She's family to him and he loves her enormously, and I'm sure she loves him in her way. But there's a kind of intensity about Theresa I've never understood. Something hidden. Something that won't allow her to be really close to anyone. I don't know how to describe it.
Is that all Sivi knows about her?
Yes, other than the fact that she was educated in a convent in France, apparently very strictly, although she's not a practicing Catholic now. But about her family or lack of it, or how she happened to turn up in Smyrna, nothing. Of course he never asks people who they are or where they've been. If they want to tell him he's glad to listen, no one could be more sympathetic. But if they don't he just accepts what he sees and plunges ahead without any reserve whatsoever, just assuming you deserve his confidence, his friendship. It's an extraordinary trait, as if he had no guile at all. Of course he must have some or he wouldn't be human. But I've never seen it. And anyway, Maud, surely you already know all this.
She nodded.
Yes. When I came here the first time as Yanni's wife, an American no less with no family, out of nowhere, there wasn't a single question about who or what. And this spring when he found me standing at the door with Bernini, not having heard from me in almost a year and having no idea I'd had a child, well he burst into a smile and threw his arms around me and that was that.
Munk rose from the bed to pour more wine. Maud took a sip and gazed out the open window at the lights in the harbor.
When did it start between you and Theresa?
About a year ago. I've been visiting Sivi since before the war and I suppose it was only natural that Theresa and I should fall in with one another. But I was never in Smyrna for more than a few days at a time, and I didn't think it was a particularly serious matter for anyone. Certainly Theresa didn't act as if it was.
That distance you mentioned?
Yes. Not cold exactly, but as if she didn't really care one way or the other. She never asked me if I could stay another day, for example. In fact she never even asked me when I would be back. When I turned up that was fine, and when I left that was fine too. But when I came here at the beginning of June, she suddenly got all upset and said she didn't want to see me anymore. It was strange though. When she told me that I had the sensation she wasn't there somehow, not with me I mean. She was somewhere else, talking about something else. To be frank I don't think it was me, her interest in me or lack of it, that caused her to become so emotional.
I know, said Maud.
Why? How, I mean.
Well we talked several times too, before she left for the summer. She was terribly guarded but a feeling came through all the same. It's odd, but it almost seemed as if what bothered her were the places you kept talking about. Palestine, I mean. The Holy Land. Particularly Jerusalem. I don't know why I had that impression. Maybe it has to do with the fact that she was religious once and isn't now. Do you think she could be afraid of Jerusalem for some reason?
Maud shook her head. She laughed harshly at herself.
Afraid of Jerusalem, just imagine it. Afraid of something, unlike the rest of us. Aren't you afraid of anything, Munk?
No. What we have to do will take time, but it will happen.
Maud smiled. She put a finger on his nose.
It will? It just has to happen? What's that? The faith of the fathers?
More, my lady, much more. Remember that I became a Zionist because of a former Japanese baron.
And the reason I happened to meet my Rabbi Lotmann was because I once discussed cavalry tactics with his twin brother, Baron Kikuchi, who was a hero of the Russo-Japanese War.
And so?
And so Baron Kikuchi and I chanced to meet in Constantinople while we were both covering the first Balkan war. And then years later he writes to me asking me to check on the well-being of his twin brother, who was converted to Judaism and is supposedly studying medieval Jewish mysticism in Safad.
But the twin isn't there and eventually I trace him to St Catherine's monastery in the Sinai, where he's gone into hiding because of his Zionist activities and is pretending to be a Christian pilgrim, a Nestorian from China. At St Catherine's I listen to the evening concerts on the koto of this man who is now Rabbi Lotmann, and the music is so haunting and strange in that unusual setting that I find I can't sleep at night.
Instead the former Japanese baron and I stay up and talk and talk, and the result is that a Hungarian Jew is converted to Zionism in the Sinai by an aristocratic landowner from northern Japan who was raised as a Buddhist in matters of death, and as a Shintoist in matters of birth.
Maud laughed again.
All true. And so?
And so given these vast implausibilities, geographical and racial and religious and esthetic, it immediately becomes apparent that much more than just the faith of my fathers is involved. Quite obviously, someone with an extraordinary overview has taken a hand in the matter and given me faith in this task.
Maud reached out and tweaked his nose.
It's always useful to have that kind of help, she said. The only thing you haven't explained is why these Japanese twins happen to figure so prominently in God's plan?
But that's easy, said Munk, tapping her nose in turn. The Japanese are a unique people who arrived in their islands more or less as an entity, with a culture of their own, just before and after the time of Christ.
But no one has ever been quite sure where they came from. Now it was suggested more than once in the last century, by them of course, when they'd opened up their country and begun to Westernize themselves, that they just might be the survivors of the ten lost tribes of Israel. No one has ever taken that seriously but the time span wouldn't have to be wrong if you consider a leisurely journey across Asia, with time out to plant crops and care for livestock as a wandering people must, and also with time out to develop their unique culture, so they'll definitely be an Asian people when they eventually arrive in their Asian islands. And lastly, I don't think I mentioned that both Baron Kikuchi and his twin, Rabbi Lotmann, are very small men with very short legs. Legs that short, if not in a hurry, would cover distances sparingly and take some centuries to cross the world's largest continent from its western end to its eastern tip. So in conclusion, God's plan for the last two and half millennia has been to have His chosen people stationed at both extremities of Asia to see that nothing untoward occurs in the interior, which as we know has been a notorious birthplace for marauding tyrants throughout history. And those are the facts, in brief.
Well what do you think?
Maud smiled and filled both their glasses. She raised hers in a toast.
Thank you, madame.
Before she moved to Athens in September, Maud saw the changes in Theresa. She couldn't believe it was really as bad as it appeared but in fact it was worse, as Sivi told her the next time they met, in Athens late in the spring of the following year.
She's coming apart, said the old man sadly. She just doesn't care about anything. Drugs and alcohol and practically any man who speaks to her on the street. She told me there were thirty-five last month and she didn't even know the names of most of them. Then she laughed and said they all had beards though.
Beards?
Yes, it's crazy. I don't know what that was supposed to mean, or whether it meant anything at all. But I didn't like the way she said it and that laugh was more a scream of desperation, just horrible to hear. But she won't let me help her, she says it's not my concern and there's nothing I can do. Well if it's not my concern, whose can it be? She doesn't have anyone else. Oh I tell you, Maud, I feel sick about it. It simply can't go on like this much longer. There has to be an end in sight or it will be all over for her. And she's so young, just a child.
Maud took his hand and agreed with him, not knowing the end was indeed in sight because a gunrunner named Stern, the man in Jerusalem who had told Munk where he could find Rabbi Lotmann, had recently arranged
