Edward Whittemore - Sinai Tapestry

Stern shook his head sadly.

Don’t keep telling yourself that, it only makes you bitter and it might not have been that way at all. It could have been something else altogether. Was she older than you?

Ten years, your age. How’d you know that?

Just a guess. But look Joe, ten years is a long time. Perhaps something happened to her during those ten years that separated you, something she was afraid of, still afraid of, something that had hurt her so much she didn’t dare face it again. People cut off love for all kinds of reasons but generally it has to do with them, not with somebody else. So it might have had nothing to do with you at all. Some experience from the past, who knows.

Joe looked up. The anger had returned.

But I trusted her don’t you see, I loved her and it never even crossed my mind not to trust her, not once, never, I was too simpleminded for that. I just trusted her and loved her and thought it would go on forever and ever because I loved her, as if that were enough reason for anything to last. Well from now on there’s no bloody room in me anymore for believing in things and fooling myself about them lasting forever. The baking priest has been baking the four boundaries of his life for sixty years, laying out his map, and sure you’ve got to do that, sure you’ve got to find the four walls of your own chances and I’ve done that now, they include me and no one else, just me.

But Joe, where will that lead you?

To what I want, being in charge of myself. What do you mean?

Stern spread his hands on the table.

I mean being in charge, what’s that?

Nothing going wrong. Nobody throwing me out of my country, because I won’t have a country. Nobody leaving me, because I won’t be there where they can leave me. Not giving anybody a chance to hurt me ever again.

That can still happen, Joe.

Not if I have the power it can’t.

And the glory?

Never mind the sarcasm. As a matter of fact though I don’t give a damn about glory, being out of sight is fine with me as long as I have power. Tell me, who’s going to be the richest oil merchant in the Middle East when he comes of age?

Nubar Wallenstein, said Stern wearily.

That’s him. So what are you doing about it?

Waiting for him to come of age.

The hell with the bloody sarcasm, can’t you see I mean what I’m telling you? I’m serious about this. I’m making plans now and before long I’m going to be playing a winning hand in this game they call Jerusalem.

Stern shook his head. He sighed.

You haven’t got it right, Joe. You just haven’t.

Joe smiled and signaled for two more cognacs. He took one of Stern’s cheap cigarettes and rolled it from one side of his mouth to the other.

Haven’t I now, Father? Is that the judgment today from the confessional? Well all I know is I’ve got it the way it is around here, pretty much the way it is. Maybe not the way the good book says it’s supposed to be but still the way it is. So why don’t we stop being sentimental on Christmas Eve and get down to talking about guns and money?

He raised his tumbler.

Doesn’t bother you does it, Stern? It shouldn’t, don’t worry about it. Until I find something better to do I’ll run guns to your Arab and Jewish and Christian country that doesn’t exist and be happy doing it, what do I care that it’s never going to exist. And you’ll get good value from me, you know that. Just no more shit about somewhere being someplace because it isn’t, I don’t have a homeland anymore. My last home was in Jericho with a woman who left me.

He grinned.

Cold in Jerusalem wouldn’t you say? It seems to be snowing in the land of milk and honey, do you see it now. So here’s to your kind of power and mine. Here’s to you, Father Stern.

Stern slowly raised his glass.

To you, Joe.

In the spring of 1922 Stern was in Smyrna to meet with his principle contact in Turkey, a wealthy secret Greek activist. The man’s chief interest was in seeing Constantinople returned to the Greeks, for which a Greek army was then fighting Kemal and the Turks in the interior. But he had been working with Stern for ten years helping him smuggle arms to nationalist movements in Syria and Iraq, ever since his and Stern’s aims had come to coincide during the Balkan wars.

In fact it was Sivi who frequently provided Stern with the money he was always so desperately lacking, the same Sivi who had once befriended Maud and helped her with money after the death of her husband Yanni, his much younger half-brother.

In addition the notorious old man, now seventy, was the undisputed queen of sexual excess in Smyrna, where he always appeared at the opera dressed in flowing red gowns and a large red hat spilling with roses to be plucked off and tossed to his friends when he made his entrance into his box, his ruby rings flashing and a long unlit cigar firmly fixed between his teeth. Because of the reputation of his father as one of the founding statesmen of the modern Greek nation, because of his own eccentric manner and wealth and because of Smyrna’s importance as the most international city in the Middle East, he was an extremely effective agent with influential connections in many places, particularly in the numerous Greek communities found everywhere.

He lived alone with his secretary, a young Frenchwoman once educated in a convent but long since seduced by the sensual air of Smyrna society and the salon Sivi ran there. Stern’s meeting with him, as usual, was at three o’clock in the morning since Sivi’s entertainments ran late. Stern left his hotel ten minutes before that and strolled along the harbor to see that he wasn’t being followed. At three he slipped into an alley and walked quickly around to the back door of the villa. He knocked quietly, saw the peephole open and heard the bolt slide. The secretary closed the door gently behind him.

Hello, Theresa.

Hello again. You look tired.

He smiled. Why not, the old sinner will never meet me at a decent hour. How’s he been lately?

In bed. His gums.

What about them?

He says they hurt, he won’t eat.

Oh that, don’t worry about it, it happens every three or four years. He gets it into his head his teeth are falling out and becomes afraid he might have to make a public appearance without his cigar in place. It only lasts a week or two. Have the cook send in soft-boiled eggs.

She laughed. Thank you, doctor. She rapped on the bedroom door and there was a soft thump on the other side. Stern raised his eyebrows.

A rubber ball, she whispered, it means come in. No unnecessary words. It seems opening his mouth to fresh air might hasten the ravaging of his gums. I’ll see you before you leave.

Sivi was sitting in bed propped up by an immense pile of red satin pillows. He wore a thick red dressing gown and a swath of red flannel that entirely covered his head and was tied under his chin. The large olive wood logs crackling in the fireplace gave the only light in the room. Stern pulled aside a drape and found all the windows locked and shuttered against the mild spring night. He stripped off his jacket in the oppressive heat and sat down on the edge of the bed. He felt the old man’s pulse while Sivi sniffed at a pan of steaming water on the night table.

Terminal?

Surprisingly, no. In fact the flesh isn’t even cold yet.

Don’t joke about it. I may well go within the hour.

How can you breathe in here?

I can’t, it’s one of my difficulties. The oxygen to my head has been cut off. Who did you say you were?

A laborer. I load tobacco on the pier in front of your villa.

The one to the left or the right?

Left.

Excellent. Keep up the good work but watch out for your back. Heavy lifting can damage the back. Is it day or night out?