Nile Shadows

I can't.

Well I don't like it, Joe. It frightens me. Bletchley has a reputation for being very single-minded.

As well he should be, in a job like that.

But people say he'll stop at nothing to get what he wants.

I know, he told me so himself once. He said he'd do anything to defeat the Germans. Anything, and he meant it.

But couldn't that mean you're still in danger?

I don't think so. Bletchley has always treated me in a certain way, which I can respect, and besides, there comes a time when you have to trust somebody. You play it alone as best you can for as long as you can, and then finally you have to come out and say, Look, this is all there is. This is all I am and I can't do anymore. Eventually that time comes, and I know it and Bletchley knows it and it's just that simple in the end.

It doesn't sound simple, said Maud in a low voice. Nothing about it sounds simple to me.

Joe watched her affectionately as she bent over her knitting needles. It was the second or third time she had brought it up. . . . Was it going to be all right? Was he going to be able to leave Cairo? Why would Bletchley let him go after all the things that had happened?

And of course Joe understood her concern. He knew she couldn't share the relief he felt, because she hadn't been through what he had experienced since his arrival in Cairo. For him, something was coming to an end and there was a finality about it, and the inevitable calm that brought. But not so for Maud.

Stern was dead and that was final, but the other parts of her life were still the same. It was all just as precarious for her as it had been a day or a month or a year ago, and their son Bernini was still in America and none of that had changed, and there was no finality, no ending. It looked now as if Joe would be able to escape and that was wonderful, a blessing, but everything else was still the same for her.

Except that the British might not be able to hold the line at El Alamein, which would mean packing up and leaving for Palestine and leaving the little place she had made for herself here ... moving again, returning to Palestine again after all these years. After all, she had only gone there once in her life and that was long ago when she had first met Joe in the crypt of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So long ago now, when her dreams had still been young. . . .

Her hands came to rest in her lap, her head bowed. All at once she felt utterly exhausted. To move again? Couldn't anything ever stay the way it was for just a little while? . . . But then all at once Joe was standing behind her and she felt his hands on her shoulders, and even now, despite the years . . .

Joe? There's one thing you don't have to worry about, at least. The Major's feelings are every bit as strong as you think they are. I've heard him talk about Colly and all the rest and . . . well you see the Major, Harry and I, we're . . . close.

Are you? Well that's good, Maudie, I'm glad to hear it. It makes it so much better when there's someone to share with. . . . And I liked him too, for what that's worth.

He's not just the way he appears sometimes, she said. There are other sides to him. It's just that he's young and sometimes he romanticizes things and . . . well, he's young.

Joe smiled warmly.

And a good thing, too, for a man to be. As I recall, I moved along those lines once myself.

He nodded, smiling, then turned serious.

So you mustn't worry, my love. It's going to be all right, I know it. . . . And what were you thinking about just now, I wonder? Besides this good piece of news about Harry?

Oh. Oh I was thinking about Jerusalem. A friend there has written, asking if he can help in any way. He doesn't know what I do here, what I really do, but he said he could always find me a place in Jerusalem if I needed one.

Ah and that's just fine, Maudie. You have some very good friends who think of you.

I'm fortunate.

You are, but it's not by chance, you know that. People do such things because they know how much you've always cared, because you've taken the time to show them and it means a lot to them. It helps them. To them you're a still point, a touch of sureness and certainty in all the flux and turmoil.

She frowned.

A still point? I don't feel that way at all. I don't feel there's anything certain about my life. It's all been just one wrenching experience after another, and I haven't handled any of them very well.

Oh yes you have, Maudie, better than most of us ever do. You've worked hard to understand people and it shows. Just look at that little table inside the door. There are letters from all over the world there, people you've befriended through the years in one place or another, people who remember and want to stay in touch, because it helps them to do that.

People are so terribly uprooted in wartime, she said. They're scattered and frightened and they have to survive dreadful things.

Yes they are and yes they do, but in a way that's not just wartime. In a way that's what there always is, and you've been helping in your quiet way for a long time now. Stern mentioned it once in a letter he sent to Arizona. All those people who write to Maud from their little corners of the world, he said.

Could they ever manage half as well without her?

Well it was kind of him to say that but of course they could manage, and perfectly well.

No, not quite so well, and I suspect you know that. You do something special for them, Maudie. You honor the memories they have of whole parts of their lives, and in doing that you honor them. It's trust you give them and faith, the good things. They look to you for it and you give it to them, and that means a lot. The one truly dreadful thing is when people no longer have the faith to go on, when it seems to no longer matter whether they survive or not because nothing they can do is worthwhile and no one cares.

And that's when the smallest thing can make all the difference. I owe Maud a letter, she must be expecting a letter. She hasn't heard from me in months. When you're off somewhere and everything seems black and hopeless, even a thought as small as that one can be something to hold on to. Maybe even the difference between living and dying.

Pride, Maudie. When we have it it's no more than the air we breathe and the sun overhead. But when we don't have it, God have mercy. To give it to even one person is a beautiful thing, because what is it after all but the laying on of hands, the human act. What can be done when we learn to think about more than just ourselves. And you do that, Maudie, and people know it and feel it deep down.

How you do go on, she said.

Joe laughed.

And that's true too, talk's always been my affliction. Long thoughts standing around like pilgrims outside an oasis, leaning on their staves and restlessly waiting to be spoken to life. Talk, the poor man's gold. The thirsty man's water.

She looked up at him, her face suddenly serious.

Then tell me something, Joe? Why are the letters always from so far away? Why are they always from some distant place?

Ah well, because your life has been like that, I suppose. Because you've looked so hard for your place, and that's led to moving and to wandering.

Too much, she murmured. Too much, it seems. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever find a place of my own, yet it's not something so special I want, not something unusual. . . . Well, someday maybe.

Of course someday, Maudie. After the war. There's no question you'll find it, no question at all.

She pushed back her hair.

Yes, she whispered. After the war. . . .

Joe felt her uneasiness. He was sitting on the low wall of the balcony again, looking out at the little buildings and the rooftops and the laundry hanging out to dry, not far from the little square with its neighborhood restaurant and its neighborhood cafe and its everyday people with their everyday concerns, that little place so far from the war where he had seen Stern sitting in the dust not too long ago.

In rags then, a beggar, a solemn quiet man sitting in the dust at the end of the day.

In the alley below, a little farther along, some children were playing. They had scratched figures on the hard baked earth of the alley, circles and squares, and they were following some complicated set of rules to advance