Edward Whittemore - Jerusalem Poker

Exactly four, said the old priest merrily, right as right you are. And those four shapes are none other than the Cross and Ireland, and Jerusalem and the Crimea, and what do you think of that?

Here the pilgrim made his second serious mistake of the day. He didn't slam the door and run. Instead he stood there, and shook his head, and said he didn't know what to think of it.

Well the Cross for obvious reasons, said the old priest, still doing his jig, and Jerusalem for equally obvious reasons. And Ireland not only because I was born there but because it's the most beautiful land there is so far as lands in this world go. And the Crimea because I was in a war there once and survived a disastrous cavalry charge there, and as a result of surviving that folly I saw the light and found my vocation in the Church, God's orders being vastly superior to man's at all times but especially so when you've seen service in the Light Brigade. So that's all of it and for the last seventy years I've been serving God soberly here where you see me, in front of this very oven turning out delicious loaves of bread shaped in the four concerns of my life. And after seventy years of such service, I suppose it's not surprising that I should be known to all who know me as the baking priest.

Nubar's head jerked back.

The baking priest. The man who had rescued O'Sullivan Beare when he first arrived in Jerusalem as a fugitive. The mysterious priest whom Nubar's agents had never been able to trace or identify. Was he real or had O'Sullivan Beare made him up?

Nubar had never known until this moment. And with that secret now out in the open, who could imagine what else might follow?

Nubar giggled happily. He congratulated himself.

At last it was all coming together.

In his excitement Nubar snatched up his canteen. He gargled with a mouthful of fiery mulberry raki, chewed some wood off the canteen, lit a soggy Macedonian Extra. He knew success would be his in the end. He'd always known it.

The informer in Jerusalem, meanwhile, was continuing his leisurely account of the conversation between an anonymous pilgrim and an elderly Franciscan known as the baking priest.

Since it was August, the bakery was hot.

Frightfully hot? asked the baking priest. He then said that although he was naturally accustomed to the oven's heat, he could well understand how it might be uncomfortable to others. For this reason he suggested the pilgrim should feel perfectly free, if he wished, to take off his clothes and hang them on the hook by the door.

And here was the pilgrim's third serious mistake of the day, and by far the most disastrous.

He should have realized, as he later told the informer at the fruit juice stand, that the bakery was so unbearably hot his sanity couldn't survive there for long. There was no question that he should have bolted at once, realizing the folly of listening to a man who was nearly a hundred years old, who had been merrily dancing in front of an oven in Jerusalem for seven decades, baking the same four loaves of bread.

But the unfortunate pilgrim, sweating heavily and already dazed, did as he was invited to do. He took off all his clothes and hung them on the hook by the door.

Naked then, he promptly collapsed beside a large water jar, too weak to do anything but splash an occasional handful of water over his burning head, utterly defenseless against any fancy the Franciscan might choose to conjure up as he capered around the room, distributing loaves of bread to its four corners.

On a pilgrimage, are you? sang the old priest. Well let me tell you there be odd events here, odd events within and about our Holy City, and none stranger than the epic tale of a long-term resident of Jerusalem who saw a genie in the last century and God in this one. Know about him? Probably not, but my source is unimpeachable, being the former terror of the Black and Tans in County Cork, and with such noble service behind him we can do nothing but believe him down to the last syllable.

The old priest fixed the helpless naked pilgrim with a maniacal stare. Maniacal, yes. There was no other word for it. After seventy years in front of that hot oven, the old priest's eyes glowed with a disturbing and unmistakable luster.

Are you ready then? said the old priest to the pilgrim. What's that, you are? Good. Well here's how this oddest of odd epics goes when properly told. But before we begin I suppose we should give it a name for itself and that would have to be God and the Genie. And then when you consider the man who saw them both, whose very own epic it is, you just might want to ruminate further and let your imagination go and sense that we have a Holy Trinity on our hands. Just might, I say. No one would want to go all the way with such a thing and claim it for sure. All right then. Our headlong charge is coming up, so hold on now. Tighten your reins, lad, sit tight and smartly. We're about to cover some ground in a breathtaking breakneck gallop as daring as any the world has heard since the plains at Balaklava thundered to the gallant hoofbeats of hopeless heroes. Ho, I say. Ho-o-o-o-o-o-o.

But before I report on what came next, wrote the informer, I think I should mention a funeral that was held in the spring in Haj Harun's back room. It was for Cairo Martyr's little pet, the albino monkey with the bright aquamarine genitals who was in the habit of curling up on Martyr's shoulder and pretending to be asleep, until his name was spoken.

The pet died of old age, in its sleep, and the funeral was quite an event. Szondi and O'Sullivan Beare and Haj Harun joined Martyr as pallbearers, since it seems they all had great affection for the little fellow and sadly mourned his passing. In fact the poker game was closed down for two weeks in tribute to the pet, whose grave is known only to the four of them, the burial party having set out with great stealth one dark moonless night, carefully on the lookout to see that they weren't being followed.

I include this information, wrote the informer, because it may have some significance I don't understand.

Bongo, screamed Nubar.

And immediately regretted it, for the syllables somehow seemed to feel at home in the confines of that subcellar and the echoes twanged around and around Nubar's head even after he had clapped his hands over his ears, bongobongobongo.

If the report went on like this Nubar knew he was going to get upset, possibly even angry. A quick cable to the fruit juice stand in Jerusalem was needed.

FLASH FROM HERE. ARE YOU MAD? HALT ALL FUTURE REFERENCES TO ALBINO

MONKEYS. COLOR OF GENITALS UNIMPORTANT. I NEVER LIKED THE IDEA OF THAT

FREAKISH BEAST FROM THE JUNGLE. UP UNTIL THIS POINT YOU WERE DOING WELL

BUT NOW YOU'RE BEGINNING TO SLIP. GET BACK TO THE EPIC TALE AND NOT

ANOTHER WORD ABOUT THINGS THAT DON'T MATTER.

NUBAR

TOP BONGO.

No. Wrong. Was his mercury poisoning causing his brain to substitute words inadvertently? Or had that loathsome name jumped into the cable because it was echoing around his head?

Either way it was dangerous. He had to be careful. Using the wrong words could lead to confusion in the ranks, even chaos. His absolute authority might come into question. In his mind he crossed out the last line of the cable and wrote TOP LEADER instead.

But that seemed too brief. He pondered the problem for a moment and decided on a longer ending.

GET BACK TO THE EPIC TALE AND NOT ANOTHER WORD ABOUT THINGS THAT

DON'T MATTER.

NUBAR

THE TOP ALL RIGHT AND ALSO JUST PLAIN NUMBER ONE,

SO YOU BETTER GET USED TO THE IDEA FAST.

Nubar scratched himself and turned pages.

The man referred to as a long-term resident of Jerusalem, the witness to the events in the epic, was described by the baking priest in such a way that the informer knew it had to be his neighbor in the alley, Haj Harun. No one else in Jerusalem wore a faded yellow cloak and a rusty Crusader's helmet tied under the chin with two green ribbons.