Edward Whittemore - Nile Shadows

Ahmad shuddered violently, as if he had been struck by a blast of wind from the dark reaches of the desert. He bowed his head and his voice trembled, but he managed to go on.

. . how much time was there to be after that? Would there be weeks still to come? Months? Even a year or two perhaps?. . No matter. It was decided and the mark had been made and we both understood. . Stern was to die. Stern had to die. Stern had become he who must die. It was decided and we both knew it.

Once more Ahmad lapsed into silence. Joe was as afraid as before to interrupt his mood, but he was even more afraid to let the moment pass. Urgently, he whispered.

But what gave you that sense of things, Ahmad? What happened to Stern in Poland?

Ahmad stirred and touched his nose, head bowed, still staring at the fire. His eyes flickered as he searched the flames for sensations, sounds, shapes, and this time when he spoke his voice was startlingly clear and ringing.

. . what happened was that our world had come to an end. What happened was that we had tried to survive one war too many and we had lost. In the end, the barbarians had been too much for us. With their blackness and their forces of darkness the barbarians had come to lay siege, and they had stormed the gates of civilization and overwhelmed us, triumphing utterly. . Before, we had managed. Once, we had managed. But now no longer was it to be so. Stern and I, we were finished and it was over. The gates were going to burst open and we would fall there, our strength gone, our pathetic armor torn and ripped away, the life seeping out of us. And everywhere around us, vicious and unrelenting, there would echo the empty laughter of grinning barbarians, the primitive meaningless laughter of jackals, taunting us and taunting us as we lay dying.

Ahmad raised his head. He passed his hand in front of the camp-fire, as if committing his tortured revelations to the flames.

. . a vision, then. A vision of what was and would be. A vision that seized both of us, born in that single moment when our eyes met and he said Yes and we both knew. . But when we knew, you understand, not anyone else, for Stern still appeared to be his old self then. He still looked the same and acted the same and there were none of those disturbing hints that have turned up more recently. In these last months the gestures of Stern's despair have become all too clear to anyone who knows him, but back then at the very beginning of the war?. . No, certainly not. Not even the Sisters, as well as they know Stern, could have suspected so long ago that he was beginning to crack. . come apart. . shatter.

The fire sputtered and Ahmad stared, captivated anew by the flames. Yet again he had lapsed into silence as Joe waited restlessly, a feeling of desperation welling up inside him. At last Joe whispered, trying to be calm.

But Ahmad, what happened in Poland? What did Stern do there? What was it exactly?

Ahmad turned his gaze away from the fire, his trance broken. He rearranged his legs, his hat. With the tip of his forefinger, he touched his nose.

Exactly, you say?. . Here now, what's this, Joe? What are the details of death, you mean, is that what you're asking me? What are the clauses and the subclauses of the pact Stern may have concluded with the Nazis? How many increments of the Black Code, or something else or whatever it is, equals how many Jewish lives on the first of every month? On the fifteenth of every month?

No, Joe, I don't know anything about these grim workmanlike orgies staged by the bookkeepers of the world, these despicable desecrations of the soul which alone seem capable of titillating the barbarians of our age, and worse, which seem to make up life in its entirety for them. This numbing banality of theirs which can delight only in a romance of the ledger and a romance of the rulebook, where abstract numbers can pile up with Germanic thoroughness, with that well-known Germanic attention to detail, with an implacable and industrious Germanic concern for categories, and for the corpses of categories. . the mind's carrion, these things that are often called theories of history.

No no, Joe, I can't tell you anything about that. Stern and I have never talked about things like that. All I know is that he went to Poland to do something important, and he did it, and the outcome for him and for me is decided. But as for these details you seek, you'll have to go elsewhere for them. I'm not a bookkeeper who can measure human souls by using numbers, nor am I a political philosopher who can cleverly pretend to theorize into existence yet another new and nonexistent superman, or Sovietman, while logically explaining away mass murder, by the by. Stern can hold his own with these monsters of abstract theories, but I can't. There's a world I see and feel and know, but it's not that one. Stern and I, we've always opposed the barbarians in very different ways. He in many, but I in only one. . in my soul.

In my soul. You see, Stern is truly more than I am. I've never been but one man, whereas Stern has always been many men.

Joe listened. He nodded. It was useless, he knew, to try to draw from the old poet what wasn't there.

Ahmad's knowledge was immense, but it was mostly self-knowledge and there were dimensions to Stern that simply didn't include him.

Well I understand now, said Joe, why these nights of ours have come about. And I want you to know how much it means to me that you've shared Stern here, your feelings for him, your love. But still, I. .

Ahmad interrupted.

Yes, and I know what you're thinking now. Why is it, you wonder, that what Stern did in Poland decides my end as well as his own? That's what you want to ask, Joe, isn't it?. . And what can I say that might satisfy you, or less, that might enlighten you just a little? Even the way I failed Stern, perhaps even that you find hard to comprehend. Because we are still brothers, Stern and I. That moment several years ago when we looked up from his thumb and our eyes met and we both knew our fate, that was after I'd shouted him down, wasn't it? In other words, even after our irreparable rupture, we were and are still brothers.

But you see, Joe, I failed him because I feel I failed him. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, it doesn't even matter what he thinks. What we feel is always true for us, it's real for us and genuine, it exists, and that's our universe.

I was always alone in the world, Joe. My father died when I was young and I never knew my mother, and there were no brothers and sisters, but then all at once there was Cohen and Ahmad and Stern, here in these byways that are my life. And the same music was in our veins and we were inseparable, and I was of them and every act and feeling of mine had a resonance in them, as did theirs in me. And then Cohen was killed and Stern went away, yet still.

Ahmad tipped his head, listening to the night. Gently, he smiled.

Joe? I'm a failed poet finally, and I'm afraid I can't explain this any better than I have. But perhaps I could add one thought that might provide a glimmer of what I feel about Stern. . I've spoken of the hope Stern has always given me, just by being out there somewhere and being himself, just by being. And I need that hope because it's always been a special unspoken part of my life, an intimation of the richness in man, in all human beings. And when that hope goes, life will go. . for me.

So what is Stern's Polish story, you ask? Well I can only answer for myself, and for me the answer is simply this. Three summers ago when the war was about to begin, Stern took his life in his hands in a Damascus prison and he weighed what he found there, in his hands, and immediately he broke out of that prison and went to Poland. And in Poland he acted as he felt he had to act, as was only right for him to act, given the human being he is. Yet given who I am, and the way I feel about him and the way I feel we've been connected through the years. . well he was also acting for me, as it turned out. And doing so, almost certainly, with never a thought for me. After all, Stern is important in this world. So important, very few people will ever know.