Nile Shadows

Don't know, do I. Liffy used to talk about sitting in empty railway stations late at night, hungry and tired and never sure when a train might show up. Never sure where it might be going, if it did.

Liffy?

Joe opened his hands and looked at them.

Better we don't talk about him. Some things are just too painful and enormous to get ahold of right away, and Liffy's death is one of them for me.

The Major was stunned.

Liffy? Dead?

Yes, God bless him.

But that's terrible. How did it happen?

He was shot and bayoneted and blown up and gassed and knifed and beaten and starved and buried alive and burned to ashes, and the ashes were scattered on the waters of the Nile.

What?

Dead, that's all.

But who killed him?

The war? Hitler? Some army or other? I don't know.

But why?

On the face of it, a case of mistaken identity. But that doesn't tell us much because so many identities are always being mistaken in life. Why then, beneath it all? Simply because of what he was.

I don't understand. What was he?

A sound as clear as a golden bell, whispered Joe. A sound as of a mighty rushing wind. There all right, but never something you could get your hands on.

What?

Yes, that was him. And truly, Major, your question is one that ought to be asked here in the lap of the Sphinx, for the answer to it is the very same answer that solved the riddle of the Sphinx three thousand years ago. Remember how the riddle went? What walks on four legs in the morning, on two at midday, and on three in the evening? And the answer then was a man, first as a baby crawling, then strong in his years, then old with his cane. So a man is the answer to the ancient riddle, now as then and forever. A human being is the answer, no more and no less, and that's why Liffy was killed. Because he was human and because he was good, and it's as simple as that and just as complex.

Joe gazed down at the crumbling stone at his feet.

Major? I need you to help me. Will you do that?

If I can.

Good. I'll call you at noon. You won't be able to speak freely on the phone, but if you use the word Sphinx when we talk, I'll take it to mean there really is a meeting on with Bletchley. And if you don't use the word, no matter what you say, I'll take it to mean there's not going to be any meeting and I'm being set up to be killed. . . . All right? Just between the two of us?

Yes.

Joe talked then about many things, but especially about Stern and himself and Liffy. Finally he rose and put out his hand.

In any case, Major, I appreciate you coming here no matter how it turns out, and I'm glad we had a chance to listen to the Delphic oracle in the moonglow and hear what the Sphinx had to say, and refresh ourselves by recalling Colly and Stern and Liffy. Things do have a way of being passed along, don't they?

Despite even adverse winds and sunspots. Well then. . . .

Joe slipped down to the ground and was quickly gone in the darkness, leaving the Major naked of weapons and lost in thought.

. . . Liffy impersonating Joe at the houseboat and his reasons for doing so . . . Joe's mysterious connections with Stern and others over the years . . . Liffy's feelings for Stern and . . .

But what does it all mean? wondered the Major, gazing up at the calm and battered face of the Sphinx.

***

A light burned in the back of the Colonel's bungalow. The Major went in through the gate and walked down the path to the kitchen door, where he rapped lightly. A voice was humming inside. The door opened.

Morning, Harry.

Morning, sir.

Cup of tea?

Thank you.

He sat at the small kitchen table, his head tipped sideways under an overhanging shelf, while the Colonel busied himself at the other end of the room near the stove. Tipsy unpainted cupboards made from packing-case lumber lurched along the crowded walls of the narrow kitchen, products of the Colonel's fondness for carpentry in his off-duty hours. Every shelf in the cluttered kitchen was askew and the cabinet doors all hung ajar, unable to close. The unpainted kitchen table was heaped with the Colonel's customary assortment of scholarly books on early Islamic calligraphy, medieval Jewish mysticism, the Bahai sect, Persian miniatures, Jerusalem at the time of the Second Temple, archeological finds in central Anatolia. A plate of muffins was squeezed in beside the books and the Major pinched one.

Harder than a paw of the Sphinx, he thought. The Colonel, happily banging around in the corner, interrupted his humming to call out over his shoulder.

Piece of cheese to go with your muffin, Harry?

No thank you, sir.

The Colonel came ambling over and cups and saucers clattered down on the table. He wandered off once more and the Major just had time to pluck the wing of a fly out of his cup before the Colonel came ambling back with the teapot, still merrily humming to himself and doing a sort of bearish dance as he slowly shuffled up and down the narrow room on his false leg.

One step forward and a feint to the side, two steps backward and a feint to the side. Feint and shuffle and one and two, the Colonel turning around to make some backward headway and sidling up to the table more or less rumpside first. One step forward and two steps backward.

The Colonel's Bolshie Trot, as it was called, after Lenin's famous description of the backward advance of historical necessity in a world that seemed to care nothing at all about necessity, historical or otherwise, and preferred to do its advancing hindside first, as the Colonel said, both for protection and in order to keep its eye on the past. A dance indulged in by the Colonel only before breakfast and late at night, rarely, when he had drunk too much brandy.

In his hand the Colonel was carrying a chunk of hard white decaying matter, greasy and crumbling. A vague smile drifted across his face as he popped a piece of it into his mouth and stood beside the table, swaying on his false leg, gazing down at his hand.

Cheese, he muttered, chewing thoughtfully. Do you realize that's what we all must have looked like once upon a time, back when the protein molecules were getting started on this bit of stray matter we call the earth? Makes you think all right, doesn't it. Did you say you wanted a piece, Harry?

I think not.

No? Well the truth is breakfast has always been my best meal. Any old thing in the cupboard tastes delicious and the first pipe tastes delicious and I'm ready to take on the world. But then a half-hour later I begin to creak and wheeze and feel as if I weighed a thousand pounds, and that's it for me for the day.

Cheese to cheese. Makes you think all right.

The Colonel hadn't gotten around to dressing yet. He was wearing huge baggy underdrawers that hung down to his knees and one khaki sock, on his real foot, with a large hole in the toe. His undershirt was so poorly darned in so many places it gave his upper torso the appearance of a mass of poorly healed wounds. A faded old yachting cap was perched on the side of his head, and even though most of his body was covered, he looked far more naked than any unmutilated man ever could.

Feint and shuffle, one and two. Humming happily, the Colonel sat down at the table.

Nice out, Harry?