Nile Shadows

How's that, Joe? The Bletch, you say? Well it's ominous all right but I can't say it surprises me particularly, only because nothing having to do with war surprises me. An all-seeing one-eyed Bletch in charge of the Monastery? It's madness, that's all. It's all madness and I try not to think about it. . . .

Liffy's stomach went on rumbling noisily. Joe asked him if he had ever heard of the two women known as the Sisters, whom Bletchley had mentioned.

Heard of them certainly, said Liffy, but that's no help to you. Anyone who's spent any time in Cairo has heard of those social lionesses of yesteryear, the two of them so old and famous it's rumored they might once have been on intimate terms with the Sphinx back before he was turned to stone, as so often happens with good ideas. But that was yesteryear and now the fabled Sisters live in seclusion in a houseboat on the Nile, watching time go by, a counterpart to the Sphinx in the desert. . . . But what, pray, does it all amount to? Has Bletchley suddenly gone philosophical on us? Just lost his grip and decided that the darkest hour of a dark war is the time to do some serious brooding over the enigma of the Nile and the Sphinx? Somehow it seems unlikely.

Joe nodded.

It does, all right, but Bletchley has a way of not appearing to say much when in fact he's saying a great deal. Now the last thing he mentioned at the Monastery was old Menelik and the Sisters, almost in the same breath, but why? And what's the connection between them, and what's that got to do with Stern today?

Liffy grew thoughtful.

Today, he muttered. The here and the now. . . . That's always a confusing matter, isn't it, because who knows what's here or now in someone else's mind? . . .

Abruptly Liffy smiled, whistled.

Wait, don't move. When you and I saw Stern in the eye of the Sphinx, it was in a lookout old Menelik had fashioned for himself in the last century. But that wasn't the only secret place that was dear to the old sage's heart, was it? There's also his crypt right here in Cairo beside the Nile, that ancient mausoleum beneath a public garden where he lived his last years. Now what about that, Joe?

Joe rubbed his eyes and gazed at the bottle of gin on the table.

It sounds fine to me. What about it?

Ah well. Today, Ahmad uses that crypt as his secret workshop, the place where he keeps his printing press and his engraving tools and so forth. I'll get to that. But first, didn't Bletchley make some comment when he mentioned old Menelik and the Sisters? Some attribute they had in common? You alluded to it .

. . what was it exactly?

Joe frowned.

You mean the fact that old Menelik was also something of a society figure in his day?

Liffy's hand shot out and he pointed at Joe.

Precisely. And who, by chance, just happens to be the expert on all Cairo social matters having to do with yesteryear? . . . Who, you say? Why Ahmad, of course. Ahmad, none other. The society pages of thirty-year-old newspapers are his specialty. . . . So then. What Bletchley seems to be saying is that to find out the truth about Stern, you must first find out the truth about old Menelik and the Sisters. And the key to that must be an excursion into Ahmad's past, because it is Ahmad who holds the key to Menelik's secret crypt today. Of course. Who else? This is Ahmad's clandestine workshop we're talking about, his underground truth.

Liffy laughed.

Too roundabout for you? Too devious and obscure? Well it wouldn't be for Bletchley and his Monks, I'd wager. Because lastly there's the fact that you're the only person staying in the Hotel Babylon, other than Ahmad himself, and that didn't happen by chance. That had to be arranged that way, by Bletchley of course. So whatever enigma Bletchley's brooding over, it starts right here in the Hotel Babylon with our local hermit-in-residence. And clearly, at this point on your journey east, all paths lead to Ahmad.

Liffy nodded thoughtfully.

Yes. That's exactly what Bletchley seems to be saying in his cryptic Monkish way. . . . Your journey now involves time, my child, not space. Not rivers and mountains and deserts to be crossed, but memories to be explored. For the moment has come to stop look and listen while tarrying in caves and open spaces, those of the past, and while marking well the local aphorisms. Ahmad's, no less. For now you must behold the very notion of this crumbling hermitage where you find yourself, this mythical Babylonian retreat which you share with only one other human being deep in a Cairo slum. . . . In short, what is the Hotel Babylon, my child? And who is Ahmad and what on earth is someone like him doing in these crumbling ruins while a terrible war rages across the world?

Liffy laughed, then turned serious.

In a way I envy you, Joe. I've never gotten to know Ahmad well, but I've always sensed there are whole worlds to be explored there, perhaps even a whole secret universe. And it may be that old Menelik is somehow at the center of this distant hieroglyphic past, a kind of black sun around whom many lives once revolved in some mysterious underground way. And although Ahmad has a strange ability to move from this world to others and back again, perhaps for that very reason you can't expect a coherent narrative for what you seek. Because it's Ahmad's memory that you hope to explore, isn't it, and memory never flows from beginning to middle to end, does it? It's always in transit in the middle of things, all of it is, and it deals exclusively in glimpses and suggestions, or shards, as Menelik might have called them.

Fragments, in other words. Odd bits and pieces from which we must try to reconstruct the cup that once was, the fragile vessel that once held the wine of other lives in other eras. . . . Fragments, shards, yes.

The elusive materials of the Egyptologist gut after all, we're in Egypt so that's only natural, I suppose.

Only to be expected, I imagine.

Joe watched him. He smiled.

My God, Liffy, your imagination has found a lot for me to do this Sunday afternoon.

Liffy looked up and nodded eagerly.

True? While I'm exploring a totally different kind of reality? But let's consider your business first, since yours is business and my plans involve nothing more than straightforward outright debauchery, merely erotic tumbling at its sweatiest. . . . Now then, how can I help? What can I tell you about Ahmad or the Hotel Babylon or the music of time? But wait, I have an idea. Why wouldn't a pianola be as good a way as any to get things rolling? . . .

***

Liffy snorted. He laughed.

You've seen it, I know you have. There it stands under decades of dust at the far end, the dark end, of the corridor downstairs, a pianola of all things. And what in God's name could it possibly be doing there?

Joe moved as if to stand up and Liffy immediately whirled and glared at the bottle of gin on the table.

Is there a genie trapped in that bottle? he asked.

It seems likely, muttered Joe.

And you want to let him out? Set him free?

It seemed like not such a bad idea.

Liffy frowned, shaking his head vigorously.

Business first, Joe. The pianola takes precedence. Now then. Every Sunday morning, after Ahmad has his coffee and his sesame wafers on his high stool behind the counter, he strolls back there into the gloom and ponderously plays the pianola for an hour or so. Peddling the past, he calls it, perhaps because the pianola only has one roll. Home Sweet Home. You might say Ahmad has a delicious nostalgia for bygone eras.

Liffy looked thoughtful.

Of course he also has his trade which he pursues in old Menelik's mausoleum, currently Ahmad's secret workshop. Down there Ahmad's a master forger second to none, said to be the best in Egypt. Money is his specialty, great heaps of counterfeit currencies for the use of fanatical Monks who have taken the vow of poverty. Spurious millions in the cause of bogus appearances, don't you see, rather like life itself. But Ahmad also turns out identity papers and other scraps of this and that, such as those coupons good for free drinks. Don't you remember me flashing one at the airport? Say Ahmad sent you and you'll never be sorry?

You mean those coupons actually work? asked Joe.

Always. Anywhere in Cairo.