Nile Shadows

We were?

Maud beamed, she was so pleased she had remembered. She laughed.

Yes. It was in Jerusalem but we never knew who said it. We'd just come back from the Sinai and it was our first evening in Jerusalem and we went for a walk in the Old City. And it was crowded and noisy and so confusing after the desert, overwhelming even. Then all at once there was a great commotion in front of us and we couldn't move. Don't you remember?

Joe was smiling.

Yes, I do now.

It had something to do with a donkey, said Maud. Either a donkey had pitched his load or kicked someone or was just braying at the sky and wouldn't move, something like that, and right away everybody was pressing in and shouting and waving their arms and yelling in all their different languages, every conceivable kind of person, the way it is in the Old City. All those milling throngs of people who look as if they might have lived a thousand years ago or two or three thousand years ago, all of them shouting and waving their arms and yelling as if the world were coming to an end. Remember?

Joe nodded, smiling.

Yes.

And that was when it happened, said Maud. It was just a voice near us, just another voice in the crowd, but there was a yearning and a reverence in the words that rose above everything else and carried to us, part prayer, part anguish, part hope. And clear somehow, so very clear. . . . O Jerusalem. O gift of faces, o gift of tongues . . . remember?

Ah yes. Laughter and shouts and a donkey braying to the heavens and the chaos of life on every side, and a clear voice in the midst of the chaos which we could hear, the two of us just rejoicing in all of it. It was one of those beautiful moments all right, one of those rare precious moments that make it all worthwhile and should never be lost, should always be passed on. . . . Must always be passed on.

So you know what I intend to do someday, Maudie? Someday I'm going to tell Bernini all about this, every last detail of it. Liffy with his miraculous disguises and Ahmad with his secret closet, and me with them in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. And going back, Strongbow with his magnifying glass for seeing through the ages and old Menelik with his underground musicales and Crazy Cohen with his back-to-back dreams in sevens, the three of them feasting away the last century in an oasis called the Panorama. And later on, Half-Crazy Cohen and Ahmad pere out on the Nile with the Sisters drinking champagne from cups of pure moonlight, and later still, Big Belle and Little Alice playing their bassoon and harpsichord in a timeless shadowy moonroom while keeping watch on the river. And David and Anna dreaming their way to Jerusalem beneath a motionless clock in the dusty back room of Cohen's Optiks. And before them, another Cohen and another Ahmad and Stern striding down the amazing sidewalks of life, three kings of the Orient of old, the one with his oboe and the other with his dented trombone and above all Stern, that one . . . alone with his violin in the eye of the Sphinx in the last darkness before dawn, soaring with all our tales of tragedy and yearning.

Rich music, Maudie, the whole of it circular and unchronicled and calmly contradictory, suggesting infinity, and the tales themselves no less preposterous than true things always are. So why not a grand collection of them for that old white canvas bag Bernini always seems to have with him over there in New York? A little of this and a little of that always carefully tucked away in that shapeless old white canvas thing, like a shopping bag of life. But maybe Bernini's kingdom too in a way, at least that seems to be how he thinks of it. Nothing in it really, just his treasures, as he calls them. . . . So yes, I'd like to think of him roaming around over there in the New World someday with this legacy of tales from the Old, rich music to carry with him always, now that he's just starting out on his journey.

Things he can understand straightaway, after all. Jokes and riddles and scraps of rhymes a lad can take to heart and make his own.

Joe laughed in the darkness.

Yes Maudie, I do like it. . . . It has a ring to it, Bernini's bag. A sound that can't be mistaken. . . .

***

They talked of other things, the time drifting and softly slipping away in the night. They talked and fell silent and finally Joe rose and she followed him inside, where he stood looking down at her little mementos.

You'll take care, Joe, won't you? You're very precious to me.

I know, I feel the same way, Maudie. I always have. So you take care too and someday there'll be another time, someday after the war. I do know it, Maudie. . . .

He picked up her seashell, the one she had saved from the oasis on the Gulf of Aqaba where they had gone when they were young, long ago in the beginning of love. He put the seashell to his ear and listened, his eyes closed, listening and listening, then replaced it. And held her and kissed her and looked into her eyes, and was gone.

Maud stood watching the door for a time, as if it might open again. Then she wandered back to the balcony and sat in the darkness with the seashell in her hands, gazing out at the little lights in the night and thinking of many things, a world of faces and voices welling up before her under the stars. And every so often she put the seashell to her ear and listened as Joe had done, hearing once more the soft familiar roar of the sea, the quiet murmur of waves forever caressing the worn sands of memory . . . breaking and washing smooth the sands . . . bare the shores.

Tides echoing in the turnings of the all-healing sea. As Stern had once said, the closest we ever come to the sounds of infinity. . . . Echoing now from the tiny universe in her hand, these soft tides and these ancient waves of all that was and would be. . . .

***

Bernini's bag, she thought much later, still cradling the seashell in her hands, still cherishing the shadowy whiteness of its memories against the night.

Yes, Joe's right, she thought. Bernini would love it if only Joe could have a chance someday to pass on those worlds he's known. Jokes and riddles and scraps of rhymes . . . rich music on the shores and tales suggesting infinity. . . . Oh yes, Bernini would love every single whisper of it, every last whisper from a beginning that never was, to an end that will never be. If only Joe could have the chance. If only. . . .

For of course the Colonel had said more that afternoon than she had told Joe. The Colonel had called her into his office as she was leaving and closed the door and taken her hands in his, holding them tightly, something he had never done before. And when he had quietly spoken his few words, trying to help as best he could, she had heard the sorrow in his voice and had understood what he was telling her about Joe, and about Bletchley and what would happen now.

***

. . . maybe tonight, Maud, we ought to think of something Liffy used to say. He used to say miracles happen all the time, it's just that we don't raise our eyes to look for them. Well you and I know words are easy and life never is, but Liffy knew that too and he knew it as well as anyone, but still he went on trying to look for the miracles. He always tried to see more and feel more, and so for him, miracles did happen all the time. They did. . . .

In the darkness of her balcony, Maud suddenly pushed away her tears and held up her seashell to the stars, whispering.

It's yours. It's a part of you too and so is Bernini, and so is Joe. And how I wish . . .

-23-

Nile Echoes

An empty street corner with a single streetlamp casting a small circle of weak light. A distant clock striking the hour.

Five minutes passed.

A rickety old-fashioned delivery van came rattling out of the darkness, so old it might once have served as an ambulance in the First World War, so dilapidated it might once have been on permanent tour through the rutted back streets of greater Cairo, its bell clanging pied-piperly, its large awkward owner wistfully offering freshly cooked