Singing and dancing in front of his oven and telling Joe not to worry about the date of birth on his army papers. Not to worry about apparent age here because nothing was as it seemed in the Holy City, everybody's Holy City.
Bread for brains? Joe had wondered. Simply gone the other way after six decades of sweating and dancing and singing in front of an oven in Jerusalem?
But he discovered the baking priest had been right about Jerusalem when he made his second friend there, a wizened old man who wore a faded yellow cloak and a rusty Crusader's helmet tied under his chin with two green ribbons, who appeared half-starved and tottered on spindly legs that seemed too weak to support him, a gentle knight named Haj Harun who roamed through the ages recalling the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor and other heroes of old, who remembered the building of Solomon's temple in his youth, and who for the last three thousand years had been hopelessly defending his Holy City against all enemies, always on the losing side.
On that day when they'd met in front of Haj Harun's shop, the old man had taken one look at Joe's Victoria Cross and decided that he was Prester John, the legendary priest-king of an ancient lost Christian kingdom somewhere in Asia.
Come right in, Haj Harun had said happily. I've been expecting you, Prester John. I knew you'd turn up in Jerusalem sooner or later in search of your lost kingdom. Everyone does.
Then Maud. An American and the first woman he had ever really known. Maud and love in the spring.
They met in Jerusalem in the spring and went down into the desert to be alone together. To a tiny oasis on the shores of the Sinai, and to Joe that month on the Gulf of Aqaba was the happiest he had ever known in his life. But Maud was different after they returned to Jerusalem. And she refused to marry him, even though she was going to have his child.
When the weather on the heights turned cool in the autumn he found a house for them in the warm Jordan valley, a little house with flowers and lemon trees near Jericho, another oasis it seemed to Joe, where their child would be born toward the end of winter.
But no, he hadn't found another oasis as it turned out. In Jericho he couldn't seem to do anything right, anything that pleased her. No matter what he did Maud seemed angry, often even refusing to speak to him.
Joe couldn't understand any of it. It was true he was away much of the time smuggling arms, had to be away, as a fugitive it was the only way he could find to make a living for them. And his absences especially seemed to infuriate Maud. That and his dream of finding the Sinai Bible, the original Bible with its treasure maps of the riches buried beneath the Old City, which he'd heard about soon after coming to Jerusalem.
The original Bible? Discovered in the Sinai in the nineteenth century? Just knowing it existed had been a curse and a hope for Joe, a dream as it had been for so many others before him.
So it became worse and worse in Jericho. Joe totally bewildered, only twenty years old, and Maud more distant than ever, afraid of something perhaps but unable to talk to him about it, ignoring him as he sat up alone late at night in the garden behind the little house, drinking until he fell asleep. Drinking until was time to leave once more to smuggle arms into Palestine.
And then toward the end of winter Maud left him. Abandoned the little house in Jericho without even leaving a note behind, not even that. Taking with her the son he had never seen. Born while Joe was away running guns to make money.
Money. That's what he needed, he knew that then. Money had kept him away from Jericho. If only there'd been money it wouldn't have turned out the way it had, or so he thought. And he wouldn't have lost the only woman he'd ever loved, or so he thought.
Money. The treasure maps of the Sinai Bible, the original Bible that was now buried somewhere in the Old City. To find it he needed secret control of Jerusalem, and since Maud had left him, the clues to the past that it contained had become his sole interest in life, or so he thought.
Years ago his father had prophesied that he would become the King of Jerusalem. His father had said it unintentionally, not knowing why he said it. But his father's prophecies were never wrong, so Joe knew he could become the secret king. He knew he could win the Great Jerusalem Poker Game and go on to recover the Sinai Bible. He only had to want it enough.
And he did want it enough, he wanted nothing else. Money and power and the Sinai Bible, they were everything to him.
Or so he thought.
A black day, thundered Haj Harun, suddenly bursting into the room and angrily stamping his bare feet oh the floor.
Black and blacker and blackest, he shouted. As black as the bowels of the devil. Black. Black.
Joe stirred and looked up in surprise. He'd never known the gentle old knight to speak so vehemently.
Listen man, why do you keep saying that in all this heat?
Gloomily Haj Harun stared at a wall and retied the two green ribbons under his chin.
Because I can't forget it, he said. I'll never forget it and it happened on a July day just like this one.
When was that?
Haj Harun frowned.
About eight hundred years ago? Is that right?
It could be. Which event are we referring to?
Haj Harun groaned. Joe could see he didn't want to say it, even the words seemed detestable to him.
And when the old man finally did say it, cringing as he did so, he spat out the words as if they were the most abominable curse in the world.
The Crusaders taking Jerusalem.
Joe paused, feeling sorry for the old man. He nodded grimly.
Ah, that occasion. And to think a moment ago I was imagining I had troubles. Just nothing compared to the unholy carnage you're talking about.
Haj Harun scowled at the wall.
I wonder if they still have the arrogance to celebrate their conquest.
Where?
In the caverns.
Joe raised his head. He smiled.
The caverns, of course. Why didn't I think of that before? It'd have to be a lot cooler down there. They used to celebrate, you say?
They did. Just shamelessly gloating over their brutal victory.
Well, well, cooler at least. Why don't we make a descent to that level and see what's doing?
At the bottom of the ladder that led down from inside the antique Turkish safe, Haj Harun's wizened smile suddenly flared in the solid blackness. He had lit the torch. Joe jumped.
My God man, don't scare a poor soul like that in the underworld. Who's to know whether you're real or not? You could be a caveman's painting or a ghost on the loose or just about anything.
No task, murmured Haj Harun, affords more happiness than being a servant of light. This way now to the Crusades. Just please don't make any noise, Prester John. We don't want them to hear us.
We do not, whispered Joe. And quiet I am in the tunnels of the past, reverent as well. Just please don't get too far ahead of me with that torch. You know where we're going but I don't. And as hot as it is up there above, I don't want to find myself left behind down here in some corner of history.
They walked down tunnels and made innumerable turns. Joe was becoming nervous.
Are you sure you remember the way?
Yes. We're close now.
How can you tell?
The smell.
There was a strange smell in the air. Joe had noticed it. Something very sour and growing stronger every moment. Haj Harun's faded yellow cloak floated around a corner and all at once they were in darkness.
Joe bumped into a wall.
Jaysus it's all over now, he muttered. Blind in the underworld with a ghost for my guide.