Edward Whittemore - Jerusalem Poker

You did.

Me? said Sivi, even more startled than before. Me? Impossible. Out of the question.

Yes you did. You were talking earlier about spring and the sea and a distant shore, but I have no intention of going to America or anyplace like that.

Sivi tipped his head and laughed happily.

Oh, is that all. It seems you missed my meaning completely, young Munk. Come along and I'll point it out to you. As it happens it's only a few yards away.

Munk followed Sivi across the garden and into his villa. They walked to the second floor where Sivi threw open the doors to the balcony. The sun was slipping toward the harbor, which was still busy with boats. Strolling crowds thronged the quays in the evening promenade.

There, young Munk, that's the sea I had in mind. The Aegean. And you're already on its distant shore, cold damp Europe is far away to the north. So you see you've already set sail, here and now in sun and light, that's all I was suggesting. It's true, isn't it?

Sivi smiled. Munk smiled too.

Yes it's true.

Good. Now I'm told you're very successful at a special kind of trading, commodity futures are they called? Well then, if you're already trading in futures, why not trade in your own?

Trading doesn't mean anything to me, said Munk. You have your dream of a greater Greece. But as you've said, I don't know what I want.

Sivi laughed. He spread his arms as if to embrace the sea.

What you want? Of course you know what you want. You want a dream like anyone else. But a dream, is that all? Just look out there at what lies at your feet, look and be reassured. For was there ever a man who stood on these shores and didn't dream? This is the Eastern Mediterranean, young Munk, the birthplace of dreams. The men who gave our Western world its gods and civilizations came from here, and with good reason.

What is the reason?

I thought you'd never ask. Odd how the young disregard the wisdom of age in order to discover things for themselves. It's almost as if matters of the spirit could never be transmitted, only experienced. The reason, Munk? Light. The purity of the light here. In this light a man senses there are no limits for him in the world. He can see forever, and that vision intoxicates him. It fires his heart and makes him want to go and do, never to stop but to go farther, to go deeper, more. Thus the curiosity of the Greeks of old and their fearless explorations of the soul. Never has man surpassed the dramas enacted on these shores twenty-five hundred years ago, three thousand years ago. That was laughter, that was tragedy, and it is what we know of life. Even today we know no more. And strangely, modestly, they attributed their laughter and their tragedy to the intervention of the gods. But it just wasn't so. The miracle of it all was theirs. It was them. They stood on these shores and wept and laughed and lived those lives.

The old man smiled and stroked his moustache.

Well now, what do you think of that?

You're shamelessly romantic, Sivi, that's what I think.

It may be so. Yet all the same the light here is different. It's a palpable thing and its effect is inescapable, which is why Greece has always been more of an idea than a place. When the modern nation was founded in the last century, Alexandria and Constantinople were the great Greek cities in this world, and Athens was but a lonely plain where a few shepherds grazed their flocks at the foot of the Acropolis. But no matter. An idea doesn't die. It only slumbers and it can always be resurrected. Tell me, would anyone have ever heard of the Dorians if they'd stayed up there in the north puttering around the Danube? Just one more minor central European tribe three thousand years ago, passing the time with their crops and domestic animals and setting out for an occasional foray a few miles downstream? Exactly, and enough to put anyone to sleep. But the Dorians didn't stay up there. They had the luck or good sense to come trotting down here where they could learn to dream, and dream they did, and the result was ancient Greece in all its splendor. Ah yes, Munk, the Dorians should be a lesson to you. By the way, when you were on your mission for the Sarahs, how far were you able to trace Strongbow?

South of the Holy Land, that's all. Nothing more specific than that.

No? Well it was the Yemen where he ended up, and died.

Strongbow's dead?

Yes, four years ago, just before the war broke out. Appropriate, wasn't it. One of the towering figures of the nineteenth century, and the successor to the explorations of Johann Luigi Szondi in this part of the world, dies on the eve of the Great War that will bring an end to his century.

How did you find that out?

How? murmured Sivi. Don't I have a reputation for knowing everyone's secrets? Well so I do, but in this case it was simpler than that. Strongbow's son told me.

His son? I didn't even know he had a son.

He did, but the son's identity is a confidence I can't reveal. He's always gone by a different name.

Munk laughed.

Is there anyone at all in this part of the world who hasn't come to you with their confidences at one time or another?

They had returned to the garden. Sivi uncorked the bottle of ouzo standing on the table and sniffed it. He nodded approvingly and filled two glasses.

Tea won't help us now. Ouzo is definitely wanted, a substantial measure over ice to cloud the clear liquid, the better to clear our minds as evening falls. As for people confiding in me, there must be some who haven't yet, but then I wouldn't be surprised if they were getting ready to do so this very evening, after dark of course. You see the truth is, a juxtaposition of facts in my case tends to reassure people. On the one hand it's known that my father was a leader of the Greek war for independence and a great friend of Byron. Masculine heroics, in other words, the sound of the bugle and the charge against the oppressor, flowing capes and drawn swords and fierce eyebrows, the poet-warrior in a headlong gallop and all that.

Yet on the other hand, it's equally well known that when I attend the opera and take off my evening cape, the gown and jewels I will be wearing will be so elegant no woman could possibly hope to match them. I am, in short, an embodiment of life's bizarre contradictions. Therefore trustworthy.

Munk laughed.

What brought Strongbow to mind, Sivi?

Dreams, of course. The dreams we have when we're young.

Ah yes, mused Sivi. My dream at your age was to become a great scholar, and all because of Strongbow's study.

What? You're not going to tell me you own a set too?

Certainly. Thirty-three volumes on Levantine sex and I shouldn't own them? Is such a thing conceivable?

But why me too?

It turned out the Sarahs had a set. None of the men in our family ever knew it.

Sivi chuckled happily.

Is that so? Well apparently life wasn't as bleak up there as I'd thought. It seems there were certain diversions on rainy evenings by the Danube when the Sarahs had to stay late at the office. But they were probably just being sentimental. The study isn't exactly what people think. Two-thirds of it, in fact, is devoted to describing a love affair Strongbow had with a gentle Persian girl when he was nineteen, the most complete love story ever told and a pastoral idyll that could make any woman swoon. Anyway, what I wanted to do was compose a companion study on Byzantine sex. Levantine is one thing, but Byzantine? It could have been truly arresting.

What happened?

I did a two-page outline and began to have doubts. Strongbow rightly notes that there are nine sexes, and being only several of them, how could I attempt to be accurate overall? No, I realized I couldn't be so I abandoned the project. Such grand designs seem to be no longer possible. Now Alexander the Great would have been much better prepared for such an undertaking. We know he loved several women and a number of boys, his horse, a male companion or two and at least one eunuch. And if we know all that, just imagine what we don't know. Indeed, a person could be more comprehensive in those days.