Jerusalem Poker

Because that's where I've been living, Joe. Since Smyrna, for the whole last year, that's where I've been.

There's a leper colony there and I've been working in it. Joe? Please? These hands that held you last night wash lepers. Wash lepers. They're not good enough for anything else. Joe? Could you forgive me for what I've done in life? I know God never will, but could you? I've been wretched for so long, and I know I don't even have the right to walk in these streets where He came to suffer and die for us.

Yesterday evening when I entered the gate I thought I'd be struck dead. But I had to come and tell someone here and you're the only person I dared to speak to, because you've never really known me.

I've been terrified of Jerusalem for so long, Joe, you can't imagine, no one can. And I'm weak and I've done one awful thing after another in life, and I've suffered for it, but that was why I went to Ein Karem.

To be near Jerusalem, to be able to look up at it, the Holy City that will never be mine. Oh Joe, please? I know what I did to you last night was horrible, but if you say you'll forgive me I'll go away and you'll never see me again, I swear it. I'll go away and never bother you again, Joe. Only here, now, just once let me be forgiven here. Just once. Please?

He stood in the doorway. The new sun was touching the domes and the spires and the minarets with gold. The tears were running down his face and his voice was choked.

Yes, little Theresa, poor tormented little one. Of course I forgive you.

With His words, Joe? Could you please? I'll go and you'll never see me again. In His city? Please?

Joe nodded. They weren't his words to give but he repeated them anyway because there was no one else to speak them, no one else to utter the healing words. So he looked at the floor and whispered what Christ had said to the woman in the house of the Pharisee.

Thy sins are forgiven, thy faith hath saved thee. Go in peace.

A scream, an almost silent scream that cut through him with all the pain of Smyrna. Joe looked up, he looked at the bed. Theresa was sitting with her hands up in front of her, staring at them and screaming silently.

Joe stared too. Punctures had appeared in, her palms. Christ's wounds. She was beginning to bleed.

Joe got up from the wall and paced back and forth.

I don't know how long I stood there, Cairo, right there in that doorway. It seemed forever. And she didn't move either. She sat there naked on the bed with the blankets falling open, her hands in front of her, staring, watching the wounds form, watching the blood come out, both of us watching it happen, not believing it and watching it happen. I don't even remember whether either of us spoke after that or how I got her down to Father Zeno or why, but I did.

She was in some kind of shock and I wasn't much better. He bandaged her and put her to bed and prayed beside her all day and all night. He asked me not to say anything about it and of course I wouldn't have anyway, we were both pretending it might have been anything.

But it wasn't, Cairo. It wasn't anything. The wounds went away in a few days but they came back the next month and the month after that, and they have ever since. Ever since that night we made love in there ten years ago.

What does Father Zeno say?

Only that he hears her confession and I'm to tell no one what she said that night. She never goes out anymore, she prefers it that way. She has a room down there somewhere, I don't know where, and she keeps to it most of the time, and after the wounds come she doesn't see anyone, not even Father Zeno. I respect him. What he's doing is best for her.

Do you see her?

Never.

Would you like to?

I don't know. I did the first three or four months she was there. She seemed to want it, to need it. We wouldn't do much, hardly even talk, just sit together in the courtyard in the evening. But then one evening Father Zeno met me and said she couldn't see me then and it would be better if I didn't come anymore.

Did he say why?

No.

Did you ask him?

No.

Cairo nodded. Joe sat down again. The moon was gone now and the domes and spires and minarets of the Old City were waning in the soft starry glow of midnight.

You know, said Joe, I don't think I'm going to be in the game much longer.

How's that?

I'm not sure, but it's been almost twelve years now, hasn't it. Twelve years in December.

The last day of December, said Cairo. You were sitting in that coffee shop feeling bitter because you were a few months away from your twenty-second birthday and already eighty-five years old, and I came in with Bongo to get out of the wind, and then Munk turned up with his samurai bow and his three-level watch, and that's when it all began. A cold winter day with snow definitely in the air.

Yes. You know I was doing some thinking when I was down in Aqaba this time. Thinking it might be time to move on. Thinking that what I've been telling myself I wanted for the last dozen years, well maybe it's not what I want at all.

Joe waved his arm toward the city.

The things that happen here, what can you say about them? They happen, that's all. Have you ever heard of something called the Sinai Bible?

What is it?

Well it's supposed to be the original Bible. Supposedly it was written three thousand years ago, more or less.

Cairo smiled.

And how's that possible?

Who knows? Who knows what's possible around here? Not me, I don't, I'm just a poor fisherman's son from the Aran Islands, a windswept place and barren and nowhere, so poor that God didn't even put any soil on them. We had to make it out of seaweed and manure. Well the point is the Sinai Bible is buried near here.

How did you learn about this Sinai Bible?

Oh I've been hearing about it since I arrived in Jerusalem. It's the kind of thing that will fascinate me every time. And you can pick up clues when you're looking for them.

Joe laughed.

Ah and I was innocent when I first got here. I actually believed then that this Bible was something Haj Harun had written. I heard about it and got it wrong, and Haj Harun confused me more, and off I was just spinning like a top around the idea of a Sinai Bible. You know what Haj Harun likes to call it when he's mixing up the ages? The story of my life. But of course it could be, depending on your point of view. It could be that as well as anything else. After all that's about how long he's lived, three thousand years or so. So why shouldn't he think the original Bible is the story of his life?

It's a nice way to look at it, said Cairo.

Yes. Anyway, after a time I learned that such a Bible actually had been found in the last century, in the Sinai I guess, that's why it has that name. A Trappist monk found it, but that's all I know about him, and he was so appalled by its chaos he decided to forge a new original and let it be found, then buried the real original here in Jerusalem, the Holy City don't you see. Well he did that and the fake original was acquired by the czar in the last century, and just this year the Bolsheviks sold it to the British Museum for a hundred thousand pounds. So how's that for a saga and a half? But the real one, the real one's still here.

Where?

Right here, somewhere in the Armenian Quarter. Buried in a basement hole.

And that's why you wanted to live here? You moved in to be close to it because you wanted to find it?

I did, I mightily did, but now I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure I really want to see what's in it. Something along those lines, I just don't know anymore. Maybe it'd be better to leave it alone. Better to think of it as the story of Haj Harun's life, and remind myself that I've been fortunate enough to have been able to keep the old man company these dozen and one years, better just to let it go at that. There are more than enough mysteries in