Edward Whittemore - Jerusalem Poker

Tell me about the experiments. Are they interesting?

Yes, but another time. Have you ever heard of Mani or the Old Man of the Mountain? Or of Osman-Bey?

Sophia looked confused

I'm not sure. Are they local people?

Not at all. Mani founded Manichaeism in Persia in the third century. The Old Man of the Mountain was supreme ruler of the Assassins, the Moslem sect that was also founded in Persia. Both men were Jews.

As for Osman-Bey, he fearlessly exposed the Jewish plot to take over the world.

Oh Nubar. Why don't you try reading the Catholicos Narses IV instead of things like this? It's such gentle poetry. It would soothe your nerves.

And the founder of the Freemasons, continued Nubar excitedly, was also a Jew and so are many of the cardinals in Italy. They're hoping for a majority soon so they can elect a Jewish pope. Didn't you know the French Revolution was a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy?

That's ridiculous. And I thought you just said the Jews captured control of the Freemasons in the eighteenth century. Why would they have to do that if they'd already founded the Freemasons?

It's the same thing. The Jews made a secret pact with the Templars and then took them over, later they did it again with the Freemasons. The grand master of the Freemasons has always been a Jew and every Freemason must assassinate anyone the grand master orders him to, even a member of the inner council.

You can't become a Freemason of the thirty-third degree unless you're a Jew. The symbols they use in their lodges are the snake and the phallus.

You ought to find a wife, Nubar.

Have you ever heard of Sir John Retcliffe?

No.

He was an Englishman who wrote an autobiographical novel called Biarritz. There's a chapter in it that describes the secret meetings held in a cemetery in Prague by twelve Jews, representing the twelve tribes.

The novel has two versions. In the first version Sir John is the chief rabbi at a meeting in the cemetery in 1880, when he delivers a speech calling for world domination by the Jews. He wrote that to try to fool them but it didn't work, so then in the second version he told the truth.

What was the truth?

That he was an English diplomat, a Catholic, and that he might well have to pay with his life for revealing, fictionally, the Prague cemetery plot.

What happened to him?

He paid with his life.

Sophia shook her head.

Such lurid fantasies, Nubar. And you've never even known a Jew, have you?

No one who was openly a Jew or admitted to it. But I have my suspicions.

Oh dear, Nubar. I think it's time you took a vacation with the Melchitarists.

Nubar scowled. The Melchitarists were a monastic literary order of Catholic Armenians, formerly in Constantinople and now in Venice, who published works in Armenian. Sophia admired their combination of monastic piety and literature, perhaps because it reminded her of his grandfather's labor in the Holy Land, and whenever she thought Nubar was becoming overexcited she suggested he go off and visit the Melchitarists. They would have been more than happy to welcome him, Sophia being their chief financial benefactor. But he had no desire to vacation with monks in Venice or anywhere else.

I'll tell you one thing, he said. I'm never going to a city that has underground transportation tubes.

Why not?

Because that's the way the Jews plan to blow up cities when the time comes. They'll take over the subway trains and race around setting off bombs behind them.

Is that bread really good for you, Nubar?

Yes, it's a new kind of whole wheat.

Won't you have even a small glass of wine? It helps the digestion.

No thank you, Bubba. Teetotalism and vegetarianism must go together. Cleanliness within and without is of the utmost importance.

Ah, sighed Sophia, I just don't understand you. But then, I'm old and the world is full of riddles.

Nubar nodded enthusiastically. He leaned forward.

Seemingly insoluble riddles?

It would seem so. Digging for oil is so simple compared to understanding human beings.

Let me quote something to you, Bubba. The whole truth is to be found in this formula, which provides the key to a host of disturbing and seemingly insoluble riddles. What do you think of that?

I think it's nonsense. The whole truth can be found only in God, and He surpasses human understanding.

What does the formula refer to, some Fascist or Marxist ideology?

But Nubar was suddenly evasive.

Not exactly, he said, and went on to ask a question about his grandfather, the spiritual presence at the end of the table whose plate of lamb chops was now being replaced by a bowl of fruit, a subject that was guaranteed to make Sophia forget everything else as she lapsed back over the decades.

Two weeks later on a dark stormy evening, Nubar sat hunched over the workbench in his tower room inhaling toxic mercury fumes, brooding, his mood one of rambling speculation. He had been conducting mercury experiments since the middle of the afternoon and by now his workbench was a complex jumble of pelicans and alembics, crucibles and athanors that seethed and gurgled and hissed and bubbled.

Nubar sniffed. He breathed deeply and coughed.

He was well aware that chronic mercury poisoning could produce a delirium akin to madness, but that in no way deterred him. The dangers inherent in his experiments were unavoidable.

Perhaps it must be repeated thousands of times, Paracelsus had written, in order to achieve the unique set of circumstances that produces the philosopher's stone of eternal life.

The philosopher's stone. Immortality. Had he at last found the way to achieve it? And all because of a bizarre report that had been smuggled out of a communal Polish farm in Palestine?

Nubar had come across the report on New Year's Day, after lunch. Normally he took a nap after lunch, and he always carried a handful of UIA reports to bed with him to help him fall asleep. But there had been no nap that day. Instead he had found himself sitting up in bed reading and rereading an unusual report with a thoroughly odd title.

The Lost Greek and the Great Jerusalem Poker Game

The Greek in question, now lost, was named Odysseus and had been the chief of the UIA station in Ithaca. The previous autumn he had used his annual leave to go to Jerusalem, claiming he wished to make a pilgrimage to the holy sites. But then he had disappeared, simply dropped out of sight. Nothing had been heard from him or about him until this report, in a plain brown wrapper, had suddenly turned up one December morning in the office of the UIA chief of station in Salonika, apparently thrown over the transom by a person of unknown identity. The report was both a confession and a desperate plea for help.

The lost Greek began his report by admitting he hadn't gone to Jerusalem with any intention of visiting holy sites. He couldn't care less, he said, about holy sites there or elsewhere. His sole reason for the trip was to try to make a fortune in the Great Jerusalem Poker Game.

The what? wondered Nubar, never having heard of such a game. Intrigued, he read on.

The lost Greek had entered the game one afternoon with a substantial amount of money. By the end of the afternoon he was well ahead. However, he had made the mistake of drinking while he was playing, which tended to loosen his tongue even though he was normally a wily man with a reputation for shrewd and clever tactics. Overconfident and perhaps a little drunk, he began to brag about his prowess as a burglar and the easy targets to be found in Palestine. In particular he mentioned burglarizing something called a kibbutz on his way to Jerusalem. It had been a small dusty place, very poor. The farmers had been out in the fields and in a matter of minutes he had made away with all their valuables.