Edward Whittemore - Jerusalem Poker

One day Theresa threw herself down the stairs. Her brother carried her to her room and that night he went out into the drenched forest to dig deeply the grave of their hopeless love in the loose stinking earth, there to bury the tiny bundle of unborn flesh wrapped by Theresa in her own Confirmation dress, once spotlessly white and flowing and now bloodied to the ends of its delicate lace, soon to rot in the undergrowth of fallen vines and blind nibbling creatures.

That winter the howling winds of trapped memory had come to haunt her brother. In the tool shed where their mother had been crucified he soaked himself with kerosene and struck a match.

And so at the age of nineteen Theresa had left everything behind and fled south to the Mediterranean, by chance to beautiful Smyrna where kindly Sivi had taken her in and where she had known a few peaceful years because of him, only to find the horrors of the past were inescapable, abandoning herself then to her sins and spiraling downward in a life of degradation.

Until a terrible massacre descended on Smyrna and Sivi was raving in pain, and a wizened ageless man abruptly appeared to defend them, an apparition in a rusty helmet and a faded yellow cloak, trailing a long sword.

Who is that? she had screamed, and a soft Irish voice had whispered near her that it was all right, the old man thought he was the archangel Gabriel now, come to smote God's enemies.

She had turned. She had looked up and seen a small dark man standing over her, a man with the beard and the burning eyes from the paintings on the convent walls of her childhood.

Christ in the gloom and smoke with a pistol in his belt. Christ in the fires of Smyrna.

Dawn had come to the roof in the Old City by the time Theresa had finished speaking. Joe stroked her head and wrapped another blanket around her naked body. She had refused to dress until she had told him everything. He rose and went to the door, leaving her sitting on the narrow iron cot. He opened the door and stood there gazing north in the gray light.

Joe?

Yes.

I've never told anyone before. Never. Do you mind my having told you?

No, he said sadly. No. It's better to tell someone.

Joe? That stained-glass window in Normandy? The garden beneath Jerusalem where Mary went to meet Elizabeth?

His shoulders suddenly sagged in the doorway. He leaned against the wood and sighed.

Yes I know it, Ein Karem. I've been to the village. And yesterday was St Elizabeth's feast day. You chose that day to come here, to come to me. Why?

Because that's where I've been living, Joe. Since Smyrna, for the whole last year, that's where I've been.

There's a leper colony there and I've been working in it. Joe? Please? These hands that held you last night wash lepers. Wash lepers. They're not good enough for anything else. Joe? Could you forgive me for what I've done in life? I know God never will, but could you? I've been wretched for so long, and I know I don't even have the right to walk in these streets where He came to suffer and die for us.

Yesterday evening when I entered the gate I thought I'd be struck dead. But I had to come and tell someone here and you're the only person I dared to speak to, because you've never really known me.

I've been terrified of Jerusalem for so long, Joe, you can't imagine, no one can. And I'm weak and I've done one awful thing after another in life, and I've suffered for it, but that was why I went to Ein Karem.

To be near Jerusalem, to be able to look up at it, the Holy City that will never be mine. Oh Joe, please? I know what I did to you last night was horrible, but if you say you'll forgive me I'll go away and you'll never see me again, I swear it. I'll go away and never bother you again, Joe. Only here, now, just once let me be forgiven here. Just once. Please?

He stood in the doorway. The new sun was touching the domes and the spires and the minarets with gold. The tears were running down his face and his voice was choked.

Yes, little Theresa, poor tormented little one. Of course I forgive you.

With His words, Joe? Could you please? I'll go and you'll never see me again. In His city? Please?

Joe nodded. They weren't his words to give but he repeated them anyway because there was no one else to speak them, no one else to utter the healing words. So he looked at the floor and whispered what Christ had said to the woman in the house of the Pharisee.

Thy sins are forgiven, thy faith hath saved thee. Go in peace.

A scream, an almost silent scream that cut through him with all the pain of Smyrna. Joe looked up, he looked at the bed. Theresa was sitting with her hands up in front of her, staring at them and screaming silently.

Joe stared too. Punctures had appeared in, her palms. Christ's wounds. She was beginning to bleed.

Joe got up from the wall and paced back and forth.

I don't know how long I stood there, Cairo, right there in that doorway. It seemed forever. And she didn't move either. She sat there naked on the bed with the blankets falling open, her hands in front of her, staring, watching the wounds form, watching the blood come out, both of us watching it happen, not believing it and watching it happen. I don't even remember whether either of us spoke after that or how I got her down to Father Zeno or why, but I did.

She was in some kind of shock and I wasn't much better. He bandaged her and put her to bed and prayed beside her all day and all night. He asked me not to say anything about it and of course I wouldn't have anyway, we were both pretending it might have been anything.

But it wasn't, Cairo. It wasn't anything. The wounds went away in a few days but they came back the next month and the month after that, and they have ever since. Ever since that night we made love in there ten years ago.

What does Father Zeno say?

Only that he hears her confession and I'm to tell no one what she said that night. She never goes out anymore, she prefers it that way. She has a room down there somewhere, I don't know where, and she keeps to it most of the time, and after the wounds come she doesn't see anyone, not even Father Zeno. I respect him. What he's doing is best for her.

Do you see her?

Never.

Would you like to?

I don't know. I did the first three or four months she was there. She seemed to want it, to need it. We wouldn't do much, hardly even talk, just sit together in the courtyard in the evening. But then one evening Father Zeno met me and said she couldn't see me then and it would be better if I didn't come anymore.

Did he say why?

No.

Did you ask him?

No.

Cairo nodded. Joe sat down again. The moon was gone now and the domes and spires and minarets of the Old City were waning in the soft starry glow of midnight.

You know, said Joe, I don't think I'm going to be in the game much longer.

How's that?

I'm not sure, but it's been almost twelve years now, hasn't it. Twelve years in December.

The last day of December, said Cairo. You were sitting in that coffee shop feeling bitter because you were a few months away from your twenty-second birthday and already eighty-five years old, and I came in with Bongo to get out of the wind, and then Munk turned up with his samurai bow and his three-level watch, and that's when it all began. A cold winter day with snow definitely in the air.

Yes. You know I was doing some thinking when I was down in Aqaba this time. Thinking it might be time to move on. Thinking that what I've been telling myself I wanted for the last dozen years, well maybe it's not what I want at all.

Joe waved his arm toward the city.

The things that happen here, what can you say about them? They happen, that's all. Have you ever heard of something called the Sinai Bible?