Sinai Tapestry (33 page)

Back at the little house by the sea Bernini sat on the floor working his way through the pile of parcels, holding up each new wonder as he uncovered it, amulets and charms and picture books, an Arab cloak and Arab headgear, a model of the Great Pyramid made of building blocks complete with secret tunnels and a treasure chamber.

Bernini clapped his hands, Maud laughed, Stern bounded into the kitchen reeling off the dishes he was going to make for dinner that night, lamb in Arab pastes and fish in French sauces, delicate pastries and vegetables touched by heady spices and aspics of the rainbow. She helped him find the pots and pans and sat in a corner while he chopped and sniffed and tasted, dashing a drop here and a pinch there and frowning judiciously, all the while carrying on a headlong account of scenes and anecdotes from Damascus and Egypt and Baghdad, exhilarating to Maud in the routine of her otherwise quiet life.

Toward the middle of the afternoon he opened the champagne and caviar and later they lit candles in the narrow garden to be near the sound of the waves as they savored his marvelous dishes, Stern still flooding the table with his stories from everywhere, extravagant costumes and ridiculous gossip and imagined conversations beguiling and raucous by turns, Stern leaping up to act the parts, standing on a chair and swinging his arms and smiling and sneaking along the wall, pointing and making a ludicrous face, tapping his glass, laughing and raising a flower.

Bernini came to say good-night and there was stillness for a while in the spring night of the garden, tender and softly relaxed as they lingered in the silence over their cognac, then gradually the talk swirled again reaching out to embrace forgotten moments, slipping back and forth through the decades in brilliant recollections, spinning its net in ever longer shadows until the whole world seemed to crowd around their circle of candlelight, brought there by Stern.

Sometime after midnight he took out his notebooks to show her his plans neatly arranged and outlined in detail, lists of meetings and supplies and schedules.

By the end of the summer, he said. Unquestionably by the end of the summer. It has to be, that’s all.

A point here, another on this page. One two three four.

Orderly in black and white, to be ticked off by his finger from one to twelve. From a hundred to infinity. Foolproof plans. Yes by the end of the summer.

More cigarettes and more bottles uncorked, more sparkling reminiscences and splendid sentiments in the flickering light as they went on to read poems to each other and quote words that spoke of suffering and grandeur, life rich and full in the wine of faraway places, in time returning through the candlelight under the stars by the sea where they wept and laughed and talked away most of the darkness, holding each other tightly then at the end of the night truly at peace with themselves, the hour so late they couldn’t remember blowing out the candles and going inside, Stern snoring lightly on the couch and Maud just as quickly lost in sleep in the bedroom.

The next morning Stern had already left when she awoke but the note said he would be back by late afternoon with the makings of another feast. And so there would be another superb evening under the stars and then the following day they were walking down the pier in Piraeus once more, the brief hectic visit over.

In the summer he came several times and again in the clear mild evenings of autumn, piling the brightly colored packages in front of Bernini and conjuring up the banquets and scenes and memories from everywhere, spinning through the schemes in his notebooks. In his cabin they had a last glass of vodka before the ship sailed, Stern appearing confident and enthusiastic as always, his face flushed with the excitement of a new beginning, perhaps drinking a little more than he had the last time they parted, waving and smiling as the ship pulled away.

This time it was going to happen, whatever it was, by the end of the year. And when he came at Christmas he would say it was going to happen by Easter, and at Easter he would say by the end of the summer.

Always the same with Stern. It was always going to happen but it never did.

She went home and found Bernini playing with his new toys. She asked him if he liked them and he said Yes, very much. She wandered out into the garden thinking of Stern and the presents he brought, the expensive food and champagne.

She knew he had no money. She knew he had probably gone away with almost nothing in his pocket but he always insisted on doing it, on paying for it all himself and everything the best, imported, it was foolish, and taking taxis which was also foolish, she never used them herself.

But Stern did when he was with her, spending his money quickly, all at once, what little he had, he just couldn’t be bothered with it because he was too busy living for the poetry of his ideas and the grand schemes that never came to anything. So warmly generous, so impractical and foolish, yet it was also sad in a way for she knew the poverty it represented.

She could never have done that even if she hadn’t had the responsibility of Bernini. It just wasn’t in her to squander enough for a month in two days and then go without the rest of the time as he did.

She also thought of his notebooks, the pages filled with neat handwriting, always new illusions deep at night when hope burned in the flame of a candle against the darkness. But the candlelight vanished at dawn and for him Easter would never come.

He knew that, yet the beautiful dreams, the unreal promises, were always there. Why? Why did he do it?

Suddenly she laughed. She had stopped in front of a mirror and was absentmindedly straightening her hair. The face in the mirror was wrinkled, the hair was gray. Where had it come from? Who was it?

Not her. She was beautiful and young, she had just been chosen for the Olympic skating team and was going to Europe. Imagine it. Europe.

She laughed again. Bernini looked up from the floor where he was playing.

What’s so funny in the mirror?

We are.

Who’s we?

Grown-ups, dear.

Bernini smiled.

I know that. I’ve always known that. That’s why I think I’m not going to be one, he said, and went back to building the Great Pyramid.

When the Second World War broke out in Europe, Stern found her a job in Cairo. He was involved in various clandestine work and frequently away from Cairo, but when he returned they were always together. Now the long nights of talk and wine they had known in Athens before the war seemed far in the past when they drove out to the desert and sat silently beside each other under the stars, accepting the solitude, wondering what each new month might bring.

Stern had aged severely in the time she had known him, or perhaps it was just that she always remembered him the way he had appeared that first afternoon by the Bosporus in the rain, hunched and tall and massive beside the railing, his very bulkiness reassuring. Now the bulky shape had gone and his body was terribly wasted. He moved unsteadily with his mouth set in a thin painful line, his speech hesitant, his face ravaged and deeply marked, his hands often trembling.

In fact when Maud first saw him in Cairo, after a separation of nearly a year, she was so alarmed she went to see his doctor. The younger man listened to her and shrugged.

What can I say. At fifty he has the insides of an eighty-year-old man. And there’s his habit, do you know about that?

Of course.

Well then.

Maud looked down at the backs of her hands. She turned them over.

But isn’t there something that can be done?

What, go back? No. Change? He could, but it would probably be too late anyway.

Change what, doctor? His name? His face? Where he was born?

Oh I know, said the man wearily. I know.

Maud shook her head. She was angry.

No I don’t think you do know. I think you’re too young to know about a man like him.

Maybe so. I was young once, I was only fifteen at Smyrna.

She bit her lip and lowered her eyes.

Please forgive me. I didn’t know.

No, there’s no reason why you should.

Two years passed before their last evening together. They had driven out to the desert near the pyramids. Stern had his bottles with him and Maud took a sip or two from the metal cup. Often she talked to keep him from depression but not that night. She sensed something and waited.

What do you hear from Bernini? he said at last.

He rubbed his forehead.

I mean about him.

He’s fine. They say he likes to play baseball.

That’s very American.

Yes and the school’s just right for him, he’ll learn a trade and be able to get along on his own someday. It’s best for him to be over there now doing that and you know I appreciate it. But it still bothers me that you had to send him, when you have next to nothing yourself.

No that’s unimportant, don’t think about it. You would have done the same for someone, it just happened to be easier for me to get the money together.

He drank again.

Do you think you’ll be going home, Maud, after the war?

Yes, to be near Bernini, but it will be strange after all this time. My God, thirty-five years. I can’t call it home anymore, I don’t have a home. And you?

He said nothing.

Stern?

He fumbled for the bottle, spilling what was left in the cup.

Oh I’ll keep on here. It’ll be very different after the war. The British and French are finished in the Middle East. There’ll be big changes. Anything’s possible.

Stern?

Yes.

What is it?

He tried to smile but the smile was lost in the darkness. She took the cup from his shaking hand and filled it for him.

When did it happen? she said quietly.

Twenty years ago. At least that’s what I tell myself. Probably it was always there. Beginnings generally are. Probably it goes all the way back to the Yemen.

Stern?

No not probably. Why should I be telling you lies now? Why did I ever? Well you know why. It wasn’t you I was lying to.

I know.

Always there, always. I was never a match for any of them. Ya’qub and Strongbow and Wallenstein, myself, fathers and sons and holy ghosts, it’s confused but there’s a reason why I keep thinking of that. Anyway, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do any of the things they did. They were too much for me. The Yemen and a balloon, it was hopeless. But that other thing was there too. Twenty years ago was there too. It hasn’t all been a lie.

What made you think of it tonight?

I don’t know. Or rather of course I do. It’s because I’ve never stopped thinking about it. Not a day has gone by. Do you remember me telling you how Strongbow died? Well it won’t be that way with me. Not in my sleep.

Stern, we don’t know those things.

Maybe not, but I do this time. Tell me, when did you first find out about the morphine?

That doesn’t matter.

Tell me anyway, when?

Early on I suppose.

How?

I saw the black case once when you were sleeping over in Istanbul. I woke up one morning when you were still asleep and it was open on the floor beside you.

But you knew before then, didn’t you. You didn’t have to see the case to know.

I suppose so but what difference does it make?

None. I just wondered. I always tried hard to make it seem otherwise.

You didn’t just
try,
Stern. You
did.

He fell silent, lost somewhere. She waited for him to go on but he didn’t.

Stern?

Yes.

You were going to tell me when it happened. What it was.

You mean when I like to think it was. What I’ve always told myself it was.

Well?

He nodded slowly.

Yes. It was called Smyrna. I’d arranged a meeting there. O’Sullivan Beare was going to meet Sivi for the first time. I haven’t told you about Sivi before. He wasn’t just what he appeared to be. The two of us worked together for years. From the very beginning in fact. He was a very close friend. The closest I’ve ever had except for you.

Then that day you saved my life by the Bosporus, the day we met, you had just been to see him?

Yes.

Christ, she whispered, oh what a fool. Christ, why didn’t I think of it.

But Stern heard only the first word. Stern was someplace else, hurrying on.

Christ, you say? Yes he was there too. A small dark man younger than you see in the paintings. But the same beard and the same eyes. Carrying a revolver. He shot a man in the head. And the Holy Ghost was there carrying a sword. Weeping, half his body a deep purple. God himself? I didn’t see him but he must have been there carrying something. A body or a knife. Everybody was there in that garden.

Stern?

Yes, a garden. Now when was that exactly.

Stern?

There was an animal sound deep in his throat.

Right at the very beginning of the new century, that’s when it was. Right after the world of the Strongbows and the Wallensteins had died in the First World War. It couldn’t survive the anonymous machine guns, their world, and the faceless tanks and the skies of poison gas that killed brave men and cowards equally, the strong and the weak all the same, the good and the bad together so that it no longer mattered who you were, what you were. Yes their world died and we had to have a new one and we got it, we got our new century in 1918 and Smyrna was its very first act, the prelude to everything.

Stern?

When, you say. Only twenty years ago and forever, and what a garden lay waiting for us then.

Stern picked up the knife, Joe watched him do it. He watched him take the little girl by her hair and pull back her head. He saw the thin white neck.

A
N IONIAN COLONY SAID
to have been the birthplace of Homer, one of the richest cities in Asia Minor under both the Romans and the Byzantines, second of the seven churches addressed in the Book of Revelations where John also called it rich and said that one day it would know terrible tribulation, which it did when Tamerlane destroyed it.

But now early in the twentieth century once again prosperous with nearly half a million Greeks and Armenians and Jews, Persians and Egyptians and Turks and Europeans in their various costumes industriously pursuing trade and love, their beautiful seaport surpassing all others in the Levant in the bewildering flow of life’s goods.