Nubar gripped his throat. He was having difficulty breathing. Being so small, he couldn't help but be terrified by the specter of a man seven and a half feet tall.
Or was he a man? Perhaps much more? Did that explain his height and his odd behavior, the sudden appearances and disappearances in a filthy restaurant beside the Nile? In a remote hill tribe in Persia in time of need?
Ahura Mazda, chief of the gods of goodness?
Nubar fell back limply on is paper couch. His unfocused eyes roamed the ceiling.
He had now arrived at the main body of the juice squeezer's report. The direction of the narrative was vague, a tortuous route through the Old City with no hint of its destination. To Nubar under the Grand Canal, mythical Jerusalem seemed to be growing ever more indistinct on its faraway mountaintop.
The informer's account began with the anonymous pilgrim, mentioned at the very beginning, whose name and race and nationality were all unknown.
One hot afternoon in August this pilgrim had lost his way in Jerusalem. He was trying to find a gate out of the Old City, any gate would do, but the maze of alleys had confused him. He wandered into the cul-de-sac where the informer's fruit juice stand was located and collapsed in the doorway. After numerous glasses of pomegranate juice the pilgrim eventually revived. As he did he began to talk about the cause of his near-total disorientation.
The first stop on the pilgrim's itinerary that morning had also been his last, St Savior's Convent, the Franciscan enclave in the Old City that was practically a city in itself. He had arrived in time to join a scheduled tour, but soon after the tour started he became enamored with a statue in an alcove and found himself detached from the group.
The pilgrim opened the nearest door and discovered he had chanced upon the convent bakery, his first serious mistake of the day.
At this point in the narrative, wrote the informer, the pilgrim had begun to twitch violently. He laughed loudly until tears came to his eyes, then all at once stopped laughing and moaned as if in great pain. The informer thought the man was suffering from sunstroke or perhaps some hysterical disorder. In any case it was only after gulping down several more glasses of pomegranate juice, newly squeezed, that the pilgrim was able to resume his account.
Somberly Nubar chewed his lip. A cable had come to mind. Imprecise language could be dangerous, because it might very quickly lead people to make false conclusions.
MY FRIENDS. LET ME MAKE ONE THING PERFECTLY CLEAR.
IT IS ESSENTIAL TO OUR NATIONAL SECURITY, AND TO OUR SURVIVAL AS A FREEDOM-LOVING PEOPLE LIVING UNDER GOD, THAT THE JUICE SQUEEZER BE
WARNED NOT TO USE EXAGGERATED TERMS FOR CONCEPTS HE DOESN'T
UNDERSTAND.
WHAT I MEAN TO SAY IS JUST THIS. STRICTLY SPEAKING, THERE IS NO SUCH THING
AS AN HYSTERICAL DISORDER. THERE IS ONLY DISORDER OF A GENERALLY
LAWLESS NATURE, WHICH IS TO SAY LAWLESSNESS IN GENERAL, AND THAT CAN
ALWAYS BE CONTROLLED BY DISCIPLINE AT THE TOP, IF IT IS IRON DISCIPLINE. SO, MY FRIENDS, LET ME SHARE THESE THOUGHTS WITH YOU. TELL OUR GOOD FRIEND
THE FRUIT JUICE SQUEEZER TO SIT UP STRAIGHT AND CONCENTRATE, AND TO BE
READY. HE TOO WILL HAVE HIS ORDERS, NO LESS THAN YOU DO, FOR THERE IS A PLACE FOR EVERYONE BENEATH ME.
AND SO LET ME SUBMIT AGAIN FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION THE SIMPLE YET VITAL
PROPOSITION THAT WE CANNOT HOPE TO SURVIVE AS A FREEDOM-LOVING PEOPLE
UNDER GOD IF WE ALLOW SELF-DELUDED CITIZENS AND SELF-APPOINTED
ZEALOTS, NO MATTER HOW WELL-INTENTIONED THEY ARE, AND I PERSONALLY
KNOW THEY ARE OFTEN WELL-INTENTIONED, STILL WE CANNOT ALLOW THEM TO
RUN AROUND THE STREETS OF JERUSALEM, OR AROUND THE DEAD SEA FOR THAT
MATTER, EVEN IF IT IS THE DRIED CUNT OF THE WORLD, SHOUTING WHATEVER
COMES INTO THEIR HEADS. BECAUSE, MY FRIENDS, IT JUST WON'T WORK.
NUBAR
THE GENTLE AND UNDERSTANDING,
YET NONETHELESS, BY NECESSITY,
IRON FIST AT THE TOP.
Nubar smiled benignly. He tucked his housecoat more tightly around his legs and read on.
The anonymous pilgrim, wrote the informer, now found himself standing in the doorway of the convent bakery. Inside the bakery a very old priest was doing a jig in front of the oven, while removing loaves of freshly baked bread. All the bread seemed to have been baked in one of four distinct shapes. The pilgrim remarked upon this, upon saying hello, and the old priest readily agreed.
Exactly four, said the old priest merrily, right as right you are. And those four shapes are none other than the Cross and Ireland, and Jerusalem and the Crimea, and what do you think of that?
Here the pilgrim made his second serious mistake of the day. He didn't slam the door and run. Instead he stood there, and shook his head, and said he didn't know what to think of it.
Well the Cross for obvious reasons, said the old priest, still doing his jig, and Jerusalem for equally obvious reasons. And Ireland not only because I was born there but because it's the most beautiful land there is so far as lands in this world go. And the Crimea because I was in a war there once and survived a disastrous cavalry charge there, and as a result of surviving that folly I saw the light and found my vocation in the Church, God's orders being vastly superior to man's at all times but especially so when you've seen service in the Light Brigade. So that's all of it and for the last seventy years I've been serving God soberly here where you see me, in front of this very oven turning out delicious loaves of bread shaped in the four concerns of my life. And after seventy years of such service, I suppose it's not surprising that I should be known to all who know me as the baking priest.
Nubar's head jerked back.
Nubar had never known until this moment. And with that secret now out in the open, who could imagine what else might follow?
Nubar giggled happily. He congratulated himself.
At last it was all coming together.
In his excitement Nubar snatched up his canteen. He gargled with a mouthful of fiery mulberry raki, chewed some wood off the canteen, lit a soggy Macedonian Extra. He knew success would be his in the end. He'd always known it.
The informer in Jerusalem, meanwhile, was continuing his leisurely account of the conversation between an anonymous pilgrim and an elderly Franciscan known as the baking priest.
Since it was August, the bakery was hot.
Frightfully hot? asked the baking priest. He then said that although he was naturally accustomed to the oven's heat, he could well understand how it might be uncomfortable to others. For this reason he suggested the pilgrim should feel perfectly free, if he wished, to take off his clothes and hang them on the hook by the door.
And here was the pilgrim's third serious mistake of the day, and by far the most disastrous.
He should have realized, as he later told the informer at the fruit juice stand, that the bakery was so unbearably hot his sanity couldn't survive there for long. There was no question that he should have bolted at once, realizing the folly of listening to a man who was nearly a hundred years old, who had been merrily dancing in front of an oven in Jerusalem for seven decades, baking the same four loaves of bread.
But the unfortunate pilgrim, sweating heavily and already dazed, did as he was invited to do. He took off all his clothes and hung them on the hook by the door.
Naked then, he promptly collapsed beside a large water jar, too weak to do anything but splash an occasional handful of water over his burning head, utterly defenseless against any fancy the Franciscan might choose to conjure up as he capered around the room, distributing loaves of bread to its four corners.
On a pilgrimage, are you? sang the old priest. Well let me tell you there be odd events here, odd events
