Edward Whittemore: Jerusalem Poker

Why? asked Munk Szondi.

That terrible tumble I took when my horse was shot out from under me during the Charge of the Light Brigade. Landed right on my head, I did, and it's never been the same since, this overworked head of mine. It seems to be under a continual siege of unknown nature, by unknown forces, and it just goes right on whistling and shouting and howling and doing all kinds of things I have no control over. But then too, that's how I survived, because my horse went down and I couldn't keep up on foot. Somewhere way back then, you see, the charge went elsewhere and I got left behind. So bless those noises in my head I say, without them I wouldn't be here. Now what manner of time limit did you mention?

The Hungarian brought out a tiny gold pocket watch and placed it in the middle of the table. He pressed the button that opened the lid and they all leaned forward.

They were looking at a blank enamel face, a full moon unmarred by hands or numbers or quarters. Munk Szondi pressed the button again and the blank face clicked back to reveal another watch, the face normal in appearance but with the minute hand moving at the speed of a second hand, the second hand a whirling blur.

I see, said Munk Szondi.

He pressed the button once more to reveal a third face, also normal in appearance but with both hands seemingly stationary. Actually the second hand was moving but with exaggerated slowness. The three men gazed at it for several minutes and in that time it had moved only a second or two.

Cairo Martyr leaned back and roared with laughter. Even O'Sullivan Beare managed to smile. With the same solemnity as before, Munk Szondi clicked all three levels closed and returned the tiny gold watch to his vest pocket. He picked up the cards and began to shuffle.

The way I see it, gents, what we have ahead of us here is a long gray afternoon. Just why we all happen to be in Jerusalem I wouldn't know, other than the obvious fact that it's everybody's Holy City. But in any case here we are on the last day of December, a cold afternoon with snow definitely in the air, a new year upon us tomorrow. So as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't much matter whether time passes slowly or quickly or not at all. How do the two of you feel about it?

Cairo Martyr laughed and cut the pack once. O'Sullivan Beare smiled despite himself and cut the pack a second time. Munk Szondi put aside his bow and arrows and the first cards of their twelve-year game went down on the boards in the Old City, in a smoky Arab coffee shop, where it all began.

Early in the game it became apparent the playing styles of the three founders couldn't have been more different.

Cairo Martyr's was the most unorthodox, since he never looked at his cards until all the betting was over, relying instead on some private law of averages to bring him his winnings. Of course he had to be always bluffing, but outsiders found it next to impossible to outguess a man who could honestly say he didn't know what he was holding.

Munk Szondi used his unique knowledge of Levantine commodities to make money. According to the rules of the game, anything of value could be used in the betting. Thus when a pile of Maria Theresa crowns and chits representing Egyptian dried fish futures were on the table, Szondi would overplay his hand simply to get the fish.

For Szondi invariably knew that Persian dinars were due to weaken in the next few days in relation to dried fish, and that a handsome profit would be his if he discounted the Maria Theresa crowns in Damascus, doubled the value of his fish futures by buying dinars on the margin in Beirut, sold a quarter and a third of each in Baghdad as a hedge against customs interference on the Persian border, and then saw to it that his courier with the fish futures arrived in Isfahan on Friday, a market day, when the fish futures would be most in demand.

Only O'Sullivan Beare played according to mathematical percentages, or said he did, claiming he had adapted to poker the ballistic tables once memorized when he was on the run in the hills of southern Ireland, needing distance then because he was fighting the Black and Tans alone and couldn't afford to approach the enemy directly, instead firing his old musketoon high in the air from far away, in the manner of a howitzer, so that the bullets of his just cause traversed a steep arc and came plunging down on the target as if from heaven.

Inscrutable bluffing in Cairo Martyr's case.

An awesome knowledge of Levantine trade when it was Munk Szondi's turn.

The scientific trajectory of heavenly bullets when the betting passed to O'Sullivan Beare.

Highly individual methods of play, further complicated by unorthodox thrusts at chance, all of it equally baffling to outsiders. Nor did there seem to be any limit to the financial resources the three founders brought to the table.

Cairo Martyr was said to have been looting the tombs of the pharaohs for years and had an immense store of mummies at his disposal. As was well known, pharaonic mummy dust when snorted, or when smoked in its mastic form, was an infallible Levantine aphrodisiac.

If used in sufficient quantities daily it could also provide previously barren women with large families, assure a man of long life and wisdom, and in general serve as a powerful substitute for anything.

And even if the supplies of genuine pharaonic mummy dust were exhaustible, there was still the large number of royal cats the Egyptians had also mummified. And lastly, no one doubted that Cairo Martyr would be more than ready to manufacture powder from old rags, now that he had established himself as the supreme purveyor of mummy dust in the Middle East.

As for Munk Szondi, a Khasarian Jew, it was inconceivable that anyone could ever unravel his arcane knowledge of the values relating Yemeni rugs and Damascus figs with the upcoming spring production of Levantine lambs, the worth of these and a thousand other items bound together in inextricable laws that only he could fathom.

And finally there was O'Sullivan Beare's much more recent wealth, the stupendous business he was doing in religious artifacts, symbolic wooden fish being just one of his profitable lines. The fish were smoothly carved in a cylindrical shape with a nob of greater girth at one end. They came in various sizes but on the average were about the length of an open hand. The Irishman claimed these abstract wooden fish were an exact replica of ones used by the early Christians to secretly identify themselves to their coreligionists in those dangerous times.

But if a mere primitive symbol, why had they suddenly become so popular in modern Jerusalem, spreading from there throughout the Middle East? And if Christian, why were they in equal demand among Jews and Arabs and nonbelievers?

It was true women carried them secretly more often than not, hiding them in their handbags and even appearing embarrassed if a shopkeeper chanced to spy one when they were digging for coins. But men displayed them openly enough in the bazaars, where their uses seemed far from abstract. On the contrary, when greeting one another, men seemed to take pleasure in boldly waving these wooden objects in the air. And when they adjourned to a coffee shop they rapped them loudly on the tables to attract the attention of waiters.

In fact after coffee and tobacco, the Irishman's symbolic wooden fish were the largest-selling staple in the Middle East. They could be found everywhere, in the tents and palaces of all known races, even among bedouin who had never seen a fish.

Mummy dust. Trading in futures. Religious symbols.

With that kind of backing the three men seemed unbeatable. Year after year they stripped visitors to Jerusalem of all they owned, bewildered emirs and European smugglers and feuding sheiks, devout priests and assorted commercial agents and pious fanatics, every manner of pilgrim in that vast dreaming army from many lands that had always been scaling the heights of the Holy City in search of spiritual gold, Martyr and Szondi and O'Sullivan Beare implacably dealing and shuffling and dealing again, relentlessly plunging Jerusalem into its greatest turmoil since the First Crusade with their interminable poker game in the vaulted chamber where they had moved that very first night, after the coffee shop closed.