mysterious sky we dream under. And Stern? . . . And myself? Well to be completely honest, I have no idea whether Stern feels his life has been justified by what he has done. He alone can decide that. But listen to me now, Joe, and
For in the single moment I've spoken of, a single moment in time which is also my life, Stern
***
Later that same night Ahmad turned to study the sky to the east. Not a hint of the grayness of dawn had appeared above the courtyard wall, but they both knew it couldn't be long in coming now. Then too, Ahmad must have realized that his journey into the past with Joe was nearing its end, probably with that very sunrise.
For me, said Ahmad, this hour always brings Stern to mind, but not for the reasons you may think. I know this is the hour when he turns to morphine . . . sadly. But that affliction is a burden of only the last decade or so, and I remind myself of all he has suffered, and I also recall the many other sides to Stern and how he has always been there in some obscure corner within me, whispering to me in his soft voice, or simply listening and forgiving me in his kindly way.
I have so many images of the man from over the years. From the boulevards and the cafes, from the riotous nights when he and I and Cohen drank and swaggered and raved away the hours, dreaming our way into eternity. Yet there will always be one image of Stern I cherish above all others. A startling image from long ago that speaks of man in the universe, a vision forever stunning in the simplicity of its mystery.
It's a memory of Stern as a young man going out into the desert in times of great sadness or joy, and playing his violin in the eye of the Sphinx in the last darkness before dawn, alone and soaring with his strong somber music, those awesome flights of tragedy and yearning that can only come from a human soul.
Stern's haunting canticle in the wilderness for the lost sunken moon . . . his only companions the unknowable Sphinx and the fleeing stars.
***
And there was still a solemn rite Ahmad kept to, in memory of all the fabled dreams of his youth.
Every Saturday toward the end of the afternoon he would excuse himself, going first to take a bath and then emerging toward sundown in a mended shirt and the one old suit he owned, both newly pressed and shiny, a spotted tie around his neck and his one pair of dilapidated shoes newly smudged with polish, his dyed red hair slicked down with water and his battered flat straw hat cocked at some odd angle, his spyglass in one hand and his dented old trombone in the other, a genteel spectacle of quiet dignity, a gentleman without means.
Slowly then, because it was difficult for him, he would labor up the stairs to the roof of the hotel, there to sit for hours in the soft evening breezes, peering at the city through his spyglass and playing his trombone in the darkness. He claimed he could see the little crowded squares where he had passed the evenings of his youth. He even claimed he could make out the cafes where he had once held forth with such success, amusing his friends far into the night with heroic couplets and sudden bursts of song from his favorite arias.
So Ahmad claimed, alone now on the narrow roof of the rotting Hotel Babylon with the melancholy sounds of his trombone, above the twinkling lights of the great restless city.
And of course it made no difference, Joe knew, whether Ahmad could really make out those little cafes in the darkness or whether he only imagined he saw them, alive once more with laughter and surging with music and poetry, no end to the glasses of wine and friendship and above all no end to the wonders of love, the soft air of his great city echoing with those evenings of long ago when the whole world had seemed to stretch before him, as he said, and he was still young and strong and not yet ugly.
-12-
Beggar
Joe stood close to a building across the way, studying the little restaurant Liffy had told him about. There was nothing unusual about it but he stood there staring anyway, fascinated.
It was a small quiet neighborhood tucked away behind busier streets. A moment ago he had been pushing through the crowds of shouting men in cloaks and turbans, the honking taxis and the sheep and camels and rickety lorries and Greek merchants and Coptic traders, goats gathered at crossings and Albanian planters and drunken Anzac soldiers, Italian bankers and Indian soldiers and Armenians and Turks and Jews, carts selling juice and carts selling nuts and carts selling fruits, barefoot laborers bent under huge heavy sacks and everywhere the poor wandering aimlessly, chanting the names of gods and saviors and the makings of an imaginary evening meal.
And then all at once he had turned a corner and here he was in a quiet little neighborhood where everyday people lived, the war far away. Seemingly so.
There wasn't much to see. A woman carrying vegetables home. An old woman shaking her head and muttering, a little group of women talking. Men reading newspapers at the tables of a tiny cafe. A small square and narrow cobblestone lanes, a water pipe where children filled bottles. Patches of shade and flowers, gray clothing hung up to dry. Little balconies and open stairways and half-open shutters, odd sounds clicking together. A beggar sitting alone in the dust.
Joe passed in front of the small restaurant, the kind of place where most of the customers were probably known by name, men with meager incomes who either lived alone or had no one at home to cook for them.
He peeked in. Some customers for the evening meal had already arrived, shabby dignified men who were lingering over each dish, trying to wait until they had finished their soup before they unfolded their newspapers out of boredom, loneliness. A small man in a gray suit was making a show of greeting a waiter as he removed his red fez and went through an evening ritual of pretending to select a table, probably the same table he had been going to for the last twenty years.
As Joe moved off into the shadows, he found himself wondering whether this was the kind of place where he would have expected Maud and Stern to come at the end of the day, to share a simple dinner and a carafe of wine. Later to move across the square to the little cafe to have a sweet, because Maud liked sweets after dinner. To sit together at one of those tiny tables and sip coffee and talk, and also just to be alone together under the stars.
And no, he wasn't surprised. It was the ordinary feeling of the little square that struck him, that and the blessed quiet which seemed so rare in Cairo. He could understand how it would appeal to them.
People coming and going and doing their commonplace things, far from the war. Lentils and barley and cigarettes, a glass of wine, little cups of sugary coffee. A man selling used clothes. Children laughing.
Women sprinkling handfuls of water on the cobblestones to lay the dust at the end of the day. A hum of distant cries. A solitary beggar with downcast eyes.
No, it wasn't much of anywhere really, and none of it surprised him. The peculiar thing about Stern, after all, was that he appeared to be such an ordinary man in so many ways. The flamboyant figure who lived in Ahmad's imagination had long since disappeared with the years, and Joe knew that if he were to see Stern here on this street for the first time he would probably not even have noticed him. For Stern would have looked like anyone else in the little restaurant, the same as the man reaching up to take down his small inventory of secondhand suits, the same as the man making change in the little cafe or the clerk turning down an alley, the same as any of these people who were simply making a life, no more.
Stern's words, Joe realized. Stern's words spoken long ago in Jerusalem, in answer to Joe's eager questions about what Stern was really doing beneath it all. Words from another time and place altogether spoken when Joe had been newly arrived in Jerusalem and groping to find his way in the world, and Stern had already been a man with years of hard experience behind him.
Of course, that wasn't all of it. The man who appeared in Bletchley's files, and in many files under other names, was also vastly different from anyone on this street. With the quiet lives these men and women lived, they couldn't have conceived of where Stern went and what he did. Yet in another way this quiet street was all of it, for Stern had the same fears and hopes as these people. He wanted things to be better and he tried hard to make them better. He had his small successes and his greater failures and one day when he was gone, nothing would have changed particularly. And in the meantime Stern came to this little restaurant to escape the noise and the crowds at the end of the day, to meet an old friend and talk about everything and nothing and silently share the minutes, at peace for a moment.
And Maudie?
