The old man? Someone like no other. A friend I had in Jerusalem. He showed me the world and showed me what it's all about. Haj Harun is his name. So gentle and frail, you wonder how he's ever done it.
Done what?
Lived three thousand years in Jerusalem. He
Yes. Haj Harun. The man who's lived for three thousand years in Jerusalem.
Joe smiled. Bernini smiled.
Maybe when you grow up, lad, you'll be like him. What do you think?
I don't know. Maybe I will.
Joe sighed.
A wonder, that's what.
Father?
Yes.
Are you going to stay here with us now?
Well as it happens, lad, I'm not. When a time comes it comes, you see, and that's what it's done for me.
So I'm off to look at new places, the New World probably, which is to say America. I'm going to find out about it and then when I do, you and I will discuss it. In the meantime you've got your mum and she's a wonderful woman. God never made better.
I love her.
I know you do, and in my way, so do I.
Then why are you leaving?
Ah you are a clever little piece of goods, on the foxy side of the O'Sullivans, I'd say. But the answer is straightforward. It's that I must. Haying been born a fisherman's son, I'm bound for the desert. You may not understand that now, but someday you will.
Oh no, I understand it now.
You do? How's that?
A man named Stern told me. He's a new friend of Mother's.
Did he now? What'd he say?
Well he was leaving here once and I asked him the same thing, and he said that sometimes a man has travels to make.
Well well, it's true I guess. Not that your mother doesn't have her own to make, she does. But aren't you a smart one to be knowing all that at your age.
Bernini hung his head.
I'm not smart, he whispered.
Why do you say that?
Because I'm not.
Bernini hesitated, staring at the sand.
What is it? said Joe quickly. You mean your not being able to read? I already know about that.
Bernini nodded.
That and the other things, he whispered. Not being able to do arithmetic the way you're supposed to.
Here here, said Joe in a soft voice, stop hanging your head like that and take a look out to sea. There are all kinds of ways of being smart, we both know that. Take Haj Harun. Most of the time he doesn't even know what century he's in. You go for a walk with him through the streets of Jerusalem and he may be back somewhere a couple of thousand years ago, rambling through alleys no one else is smart enough to recognize. All lost it would appear, but he's not, not really. It's just that he sees things we don't. The rest of us, we see what's around us, he sees more. So you can't say what's smart and what isn't, there are all kinds of different ways. A lot of people would say Haj Harun isn't smart, and he wouldn't be if it came to selling vegetables by the pound or cloth by the yard. Hopeless, he'd be, there'd be no profit ever. But if you want to know who the holy men were and what they thought, or better than that, what they felt in their hearts, or even the unholy Assyrians or anybody else, then you take a wander with him through the streets of Jerusalem and you'll find out, you'll know. Our gentle knight he is, watching over the eternal city.
Bernini looked up. He smiled.
You talk as if Jerusalem wasn't a place.
Oh it is all right, it's just that it's more as well. Something you carry with you, inside of you, whenever you go. And as for those travels we mentioned, you'll be having your very own someday.
I hope so.
You will, I know it. When I was your age I was just bursting with the dream of them. Just dying to get out in the world and try my hand.
And you did.
Yes I did, I tried. Funny thing is, that's still what I'm doing.
A shadow suddenly came across Bernini's face. He was gazing up the beach toward the little house. Joe looked quickly away and back again. There was pain in his eyes.
Say it, he whispered.
Bernini shook his head, his mouth set.
No say it, lad, whispered Joe. You know it's always best to say things. People hear them anyway. What is it?
Well all I meant was, she'll be home at five or six.
Yes.
Well aren't you even going to come and see her?
Joe took a deep breath.
No.
Not even for a few minutes?
No.
But we're going to have a birthday party and there's a beautiful cake. I saw it on the shelf.
No. I can't, lad.
Just for a few minutes? To have a piece of cake?
Ah, a few minutes or a lifetime. It seems there's no difference.
But then you're not going to see her at all?
Not this time. A time will come, but it's not now.
But why? Won't you tell me why? She's my mother and you're my father. Why?
I'll try to tell you, it's hard to explain. You see she has a life of her own now and I'm not in it. You are, and old friends like Munk, and new friends like Stern, and the people she works with and others, they make up her life now. Especially you. But I'm somewhere else. I mean I've been somewhere else so long, I'm somewhere else now.
But she'd like to see you.
I don't think so.
Are you afraid to see her?
Not afraid, no, I just don't think it would be for the best at the moment. Someday, but not now. Your mother and I haven't seen each other in thirteen years, and some things are too recent. Scars take time to heal. You have to treat the past gently.
What's too recent?
Sivi's death, for one.
But he was such a sad old man. He almost never talked and he never smiled, not even once. He just sat and stared at walls, at nothing. It made me uncomfortable to be in the same room with him.
That was when you knew him, lad, but it wasn't always so. Things change. There was a time when Munk knew him long ago, and your mother and Stern, when he was always smiling and laughing and telling stories, amusing everybody and making things better than they had been before. I didn't know him myself then, but they say there was never anyone, never anyone who enjoyed life more. Just accepted everything and everyone and put
