Edward Whittemore - Jerusalem Poker

Because things are changing, Joe.

So they are, so they always are. Changing in Jerusalem, changes in the Old City. How about you. You're going to carry on with what you're doing?

Yes.

No offense, but you know by now it can't work.

Maybe.

Not maybe. You know. The point is you're going to continue doing it anyway?

I have no choice.

Joe leaned forward and placed his hands flat on the table. He gazed at the bulging veins that hadn't shown a few years ago.

No choice, Stern? No choice?

Stern nodded slowly.

Yes. It seems it's that way sometimes.

Joe closed his eyes and shook his bead. Stern was speaking very quietly.

Joe? That time in Smyrna?

I hear you.

The smoke and the fires, you remember?

We had to get to it, didn't we. Shared it and had to get to it. Yes, I remember.

And Sivi going mad.

Going all right, going and never coming back. A September Sunday in 1922.

And Theresa beating her head on the floor and screaming Who is that?

I hear it. I've heard it more than once since then and I hear it now, poor little one.

And Haj Harun?

Yes, trailing his great long bloody sword up there in the garden, weeping and wandering around and around lost in the flowers, lost in the smoke and the flames, just lost, that old blessed sack of bones.

Tears my heart it does, him and his tattered yellow cloak and his rusty Crusader's helmet, standing there in the garden holding up his sword, preparing to charge the Turkish soldier who found us hiding there.

Been dead before he took a step of course, the rifle aimed straight at his middle, but there he was ready to defend the innocent, defending his Holy City of life in terrible Smyrna with an old sword, awful it was, that moment, I died for him a dozen times before I got the pistol up and shot that soldier in the head. And you know what he's been asking me recently? If we shouldn't arm ourselves because of the way the Arabs and the Jews are going at each other here. The two of us I mean, imagine that. The two of us standing up together to defend Jerusalem. What do you say to something like that? It's daft and all too real.

And the other thing, Joe. The other thing up there.

Joe rubbed his eyes. He emptied his glass.

Yes that too. All right, we've got to do that too. The little Armenian girl on the quay that night dressed in her Sunday best, her Sunday black, because it was a Sunday. Maybe eight years old and raped and bloodied within a breath of her life, lying out there all alone in that hell of screams and smoke and dying.

Dying, that's all, the fires on one side and the harbor on the other and no place to go, no place to take her, just dying in unbearable pain. And what you did, Stern, was what I should have done, and I wish I had done it so it wouldn't be tormenting you now. Please, she said in Armenian, and you told me what it meant but I didn't do anything so you did, and I should have done it but I was too angry at you and Maudie and the whole fucking bloody world. Mad at myself I mean, let's keep it honest. So after all, Stern, what did you do but end a dying child's pain? Ended the torture. There was no way she could have lived through that night

Joe?

I tell you Haj Harun did the same thing and that's why he was weeping in the garden. It happened outside the garden. There was an old Armenian man who'd had his eyes torn out and he was walking into the flames, finished. Strands of bloody tissue hanging from his empty eye sockets. Tears of blood, Stern.

Immovable tears. For the love of God, he was screaming, kill me before I burn. And Haj Harun did.

Gentle harmless old soul that he is, he raised his sword and swung it and after that I had to take him by the hand and lead him back to the garden or he never would have found it, he was crying so hard. And Stern, he's been on the losing side for three thousand years defending the Holy City, everybody's Holy City. You're always on the losing side in such a game but he goes on. Always. Losing is all. So what did you do that was so bad? Stern's hands were shaking. He reached out and gripped Joe's arm.

I'll tell you what I did. I took a knife. I slit her throat.

Oh Christ man, screamed Joe, it wasn't your fault.

Stern's chair went crashing backward onto the floor. He lurched to his feet and stared at Joe with wild eyes, backing away from the table. Backing away and stumbling clumsily across the room.

Wait, called Joe, you can't just go on running. We'll talk. Don't go on running.

Stern stared, a trapped animal backing away, big and hunched and shapeless. He knocked over a chair and kept on backing away, hit a table and backed into the door, frantically groping for the door handle behind him, trapped, trying to escape.

Stern, for Christ's sake. Wait.

The door banged open. An empty frame of darkness, snow swirling across it. Joe felt the blast of cold air all the way at the back of the room. He sat there looking at the night and the snow in the empty doorway.

Don't go on running. Once, in this very room, Stern had said the same thing to him. A dozen years ago that was, before Smyrna. Strange, thought Joe, how the words that were meant to help were always the same. Someone said them to you when you were sinking, trying to help, and then a dozen years later you were saying the same words to them. Saying and saying, going around, it never ended, But you just couldn't help running sometimes, just couldn't, you ran away from yourself, just had to, trying to survive in the cold and the darkness. Everyone a victim now or then, everyone, trying to survive.

How long could Stern manage with his morphine? Taking morphine and living with his hopeless dream of a homeland that could never be, Arabs and Christians and Jews together, trying to believe. How long?

Running.

The door banged closed. Wind gusting in the alleys and sucking it closed, sealing the light from the darkness, the warmth from the cold, swirling snow in the land of milk and honey.

He was vulnerable, Stern, and that's why people loved him. Bulky and shapeless and going down yet trying to believe, and that's why people loved him. Everybody longed to believe and wanted to reach out to the man who tried to. But everybody didn't make it. Everybody couldn't. How long for Stern?

Running.

The Arab at the front of the shop was snoring again under his newspaper. Joe pushed back his chair and dragged himself wearily to his feet. He'd tried, but it hadn't worked out. A small step at first, then nothing.

But maybe someday Stern would recall that small step, maybe sometime it would help him just a little as he sank and sank with morphine in his hopeless dream.

Yes, Stern. That too was one of God's secret names.

The proprietor of the shop looked dazed as he staggered over to the table. He managed an oily smile.

Why not? thought Joe. Time for him to collect a tip if he can. More important to him now than the snow and the silence, the darkness, has his troubles like everybody else making a living, making a life. Best he can do. Eyes out of focus and teeth rotting in his head, on the limp and looking to ingratiate himself, best he can do.

Want a woman, sir?

No thanks.

A boy?

No thanks either.

Someone else? It's cold tonight.

I know it.

Snowing, cold. Not a night to be alone out. there.

I know it.

Hashish?

No.

So what do you want?

Nothing, nothing at all. Here. Keep it.

The Arab looked down at the handful of bills. His smile spread.

You Jewish?

No.

Christian?

Born that way, yes.

Merry Christmas then.

Right. Thanks.