Joe smiled and tapped his nose.
Oh is that all, is that all you had on your mind. Well shouldn't I cut this deck so you can get on with the deal?
Munk put the pack on the table and Joe cut it. The cards began dropping around the table.
Joe?
Hm?
Well what's the solution to that?
To what? Haj Harun recalling something that hadn't happened yet? Something that was still a couple of hundred years in the future?
Yes.
But that's the whole point, Munk. There's no solution necessary for Haj Harun. I mean the past is what's passed and it's all part of Jerusalem to him, and him defending it although always on the losing side, as you always are when defending the Holy City. A Babylonian king throwing someone to the lions? The Assyrians sooner or later charging up these streets with their lions? All just pieces of the same job, defending Jerusalem, a task he says is both immense and perpetual, which is why he fails. Jacks to open, did you say?
No.
Fair enough, I'll open anyway. Hey there, what's the cause of this laughter, Munk?
The idea of Haj Harun keeping the past in a safe.
No laughing matter, as you can see now. And you can also see why he keeps that safe locked. If everyone were to go rifling around through the past the way he does, recalling events before they happen and sorting out confusion to his liking, Jerusalem would be nothing but bloody chaos I say, not able to stand up and do a straightforward job as a Holy City. So it's no bloody wonder the old man keeps that sentry box on duty, on guard and locked so things will be clear for the rest of us. Now just look at these cards. I've no business holding royalty like this, but since I am I'll just add a little sweetness to the pot before we see what you're up to, Cairo lad.
— 4-
Solomon's Quarries
Ah yes, cognac brought to the Holy Land by the Crusaders to ease the pains of pilgrims. Well how's it taste then? Gone off a bit in eight hundred years?
On a hot July day in 1922, O'Sullivan Beare lay slumped against the wall in the back room of Haj Harun's shop. The poker table was bare, the game having been recessed because of the severe heat.
Listlessly he inspected the empty glass of poteen in his hand and decided it wasn't worth the effort to cross the room to refill it.
Haj Harun wandered in, barefoot as usual. An area of crumbling plaster in the wall caught his eye and he stopped to gaze at himself in a nonexistent mirror. He adjusted his rusty Crusader's helmet, muttering all the while, and re-tied the two green ribbons under his chin. He also did what he could to straighten his faded yellow cloak, mostly in tatters and hanging unevenly.
A black day, he muttered. Black. A black day for me. Black. A black day for Jerusalem. Black.
Is it now? said Joe from the corner. My sentiments exactly and no wonder in this heat. Just merciless, that's what.
Haj Harun jumped and looked down in surprise.
I didn't know you were here.
Well I think I am, although it's too hot to admit to more.
What are you doing on the floor?
Gravity pulled me down, I'm feeling grave today. Then too the stones down here are cooler than a chair.
Then too heat rises, so the lower you are the better, which is also in keeping with my lowly mood. Why don't you try it? It's not half bad.
I can't, said Haj Harun. I can't sit still today. I'm much too restless. It's a black day. Black.
I see.
Haj Harun nodded at himself in a nonexistent mirror on the wall and his helmet went awry again, releasing a shower of rust into his eyes. The tears began to flow and be went on muttering to himself as he drifted out the door.
Black, thought Joe, wiping his face with his sleeve. Black and that was half of it for sure.
It had been only a little over two years ago that he'd been fighting the Black and Tans in the hills of southern Ireland, and all because of something his father had said, his father who'd been the seventh son of a seventh son and therefore had the gift of prophecy.
It was too hot to move, too hot to be in Jerusalem.
Joe closed his eyes and went back to the windswept Aran Islands, to a cool June night in 1914.
It had been a party night, one of the few each year. As usual all the poor fishermen had gathered at Joe's house for singing and dancing and drinking, Joe's father being the undisputed king of the little island, both because he had the gift and because he had thirty-three sons, Joe at fourteen being the youngest and last and the only one still at home. What should have been a wondrous evening of prophecies together with tales of pookas and banshees and the little people.
But not so that June night in 1914. On that cool evening his father had stared into his mug without a word, gloomily stared at the floor without a word, until finally toward midnight he began to relate.
All right, said his father, all right now. If you want to know the shape of things I'll tell you what I see. I see a great war coming in two months time. And seventeen of my sons are going to fight in that war and die in that war, one in every army that makes up that bloody war. But that's not what eats at this old heart.
They're men now and can decide for themselves. What eats at this old heart is that not one of them is going to die fighting for Ireland. And that's our people for you, everyone's cause but our own.
Terrible, whispered the neighbors.
Terrible it is, said his father. But wait now, there's more. I also see a rising of the Irish nation in two years time, and then at last I'm going to have one son fighting for his country, a mere lad it's true but he'll be there all the same, that small dark boy you see standing perfectly straight in the corner behind you, his destiny now foretold.
And then, added his father, the lad having done his duty here, he's going to go on and become the King of Jerusalem for some reason.
Don't blaspheme, warned the shocked neighbors.
And none intended, said his father at once in embarrassment. I have no idea why I said that.
Nor did Joe. But in 1916 the Easter Uprising came as predicted and Joe was there helping to hold the Dublin post office before it fell, escaping then to the south and fighting alone in the hills of Cork for four long years before the Black and Tans tracked him down and he had to flee the country in the only way he could, disguised as a Poor Clare nun among a dozen Poor Clares sailing on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
To Jerusalem. Where he lay in a gutter outside the Franciscan enclave in the Old City, penniless and knowing no one, whispering into the dirt in Gaelic the name of the Irish revolutionary party, We ourselves, praying one of the priests who passed would be Irish and take pity on him.
As one did. The former MacMael n mBo, a whimsical man far advanced in years who in the folly of his youth had served as an officer of light cavalry in a British brigade in the Crimea. Who had survived a famous suicidal charge there when his mount fell, and as a result been awarded the first Victoria Cross ever given. Who now for the last six decades had been the priest in charge of the Franciscan bakery in Jerusalem.
Who are you really, lad? the elderly priest had asked Joe as he lay in that Jerusalem gutter, starving and exhausted. And to identify himself with the little breath he had left, Joe had whispered the legend of the O'Sullivan Beare clan.
Love, the forgiving hand to victory.
The baking priest had rescued Joe from that Jerusalem gutter and given him his old army uniform and his army papers so that Joe could move into the Home for Crimean War Heroes, a charity in the Old City.
The baking priest, eighty-five years old at least and dancing and singing in front of his oven as he baked his loaves of bread in four shapes, the four concerns of his life, the Cross for God and Ireland for home, the Crimea where he had given up war and Jerusalem where he had found peace.