Here we are in overcoats again, mused Joe, just like that first day of the game twelve years ago when we sat down on the floor in the back of Haj Harun's shop. Funny how things come around and come together. Speaking of which, Cairo, I'm glad you came. I wouldn't have thought of anything so fine as lobster.
I know you wouldn't have. You'd have been inside crouched over your turf fire nursing some dreadful stew.
True enough, and that would have been all right too, but this is much better. The kind of occasion a man can look back to when he's finishing up and getting ready to go the other way, no doubt off in some bloody unknown corner of the world by then, tottering around on useless legs and creaking in every joint and cursing the day he was born, certainly cursing another Christmas to be faced, for what's the sense of celebrating something and trying to be happy when it's all over and behind you and there's no more to come? And probably in his cups as usual on Christmas because that's a black day in Ireland, which is to say the pubs are closed, and alone at home in a dark mood shaking his head and muttering cross thoughts like the malcontent he is at the end of life, having seen what he thinks he's seen although most of it was a blur, when all at once he stays that glass on its way to his lips and peers down into it, right down into that muddy well of his soul, and takes a good look and says to himself, Hold on there you villainous trickster, what do you mean forgetting that beautiful Christmas years and decades ago when you were sitting on a rooftop in Jerusalem with your feet up, you and a friend feasting like lords with the Holy City itself spread out at your feet? Right there in front of you, you grumbling ingrate. And your man will have to admit it then. He'll have to stop cursing everything in sight and throw a smile back into his glass. Drink I may, he'll say then, but I've known those moments, I have, those beautiful rare moments and it's all been worth it because of them, all worth it and more because of those sweet rare moments, ah just the sweetest. Sure, that's what he's going to have to say in the end, coming around to the truth at last after a wicked and dissolute life. So will you raise a glass to that, Cairo lad? To this very moment and none other?
Cairo laughed. He uncorked another bottle of champagne and the pigeons took flight. The two of them watched the pigeons fly away and slowly return, swooping in ever narrower circles.
By God they're getting little enough rest today with all these champagne shots going off. But it's nice to see them circling overhead all the same, knowing their home and coming back to it.
Who's going to feed them after you leave?
Don't know, but I'll find some unemployed beggar or pious fanatic to do the trick, no shortage of hands like that in Jerusalem. Say Cairo, I was just thinking. Why'd you really suggest we let Munk win all our money?
Why not? Isn't it appropriate? The three of us began the game and we're dropping out, so he should be the winner.
That's fine with me as I said, but I still have this feeling.
What feeling?
That there's something more. Another reason. Let's admit it, Cairo lad, you're shamelessly sentimental.
So what's the other reason?
Cairo tipped his head. He smiled.
Family. That's the other reason.
Joe nodded. He cracked a lobster tail. Juice squirted over his face and he dabbed at it, licking his finger.
Do you tell me that?
Yes. Munk and I are cousins.
Joe waved the lobster tail toward the city.
Hear that, Jerusalem? You just see how it goes around here?
He turned to Cairo and grinned.
Now hold on there, go slow with me today. I'm feasting on a Christmas banquet and not thinking too clearly. Not making a little joke are you?
No.
Cousins, you say? You and the Munk are cousins?
Yes.
Well you wouldn't look to be cousins, that much I'm sure of. But if you say you are, you are. Some years ago I learned it's best not to disbelieve anything you hear around here. So all right then. How do you and Munk come to be cousins?
We had the same great-grandfather.
Joe whistled softly.
And why not, I say. I've always wondered why you had blue eyes. Well he must have been a wandering man. A fair-skinned Sudanese then? Or a dark-skinned Hungarian?
Cairo laughed.
Neither. He was Swiss.
Ah, of course he was, I should have guessed. Traditional neutrality and so forth, not wanting either of you to think he was favored over the other. Clever man he must have been too, keeping his options open in the manner he did, not about to limit his familial future by way of race or continent either. But who was this wandering ancestor with tendencies to father sons in lands as disparate as Hungary and the Sudan?
Albania was another.
Also a son in Albania, you say? I don't think I like that. The only Albanians I've ever heard of are the Wallensteins. Now you're not going to be telling me that nasty little Nubar Wallenstein is also kin to the two of you. Not so much, are you? Tell me it's not the case.
Cairo smiled.
I'm afraid it is.
It is? Then I'm afraid I just went overboard at sea in rough weather with nothing to hold on to. Or maybe what's worse, lost my bearings in a vast bog with the evening light sinking and me having no idea which way is out. Take pity, Cairo, which way is out? Who was this wandering Swiss?
His name was Johann Luigi Szondi. Born in Basle in 1784.
Why do you mention Basle?
Because that's where Strongbow's study was published and burned nearly a century later.
Stop it, Cairo, we'll just leave Strongbow out of this. Go back to this Luigi fellow. Who was he?
A highly gifted linguist with a passion for details.
Details? I believe it. He left enough of them scattered around. So he's born highly gifted, what next?
In 1802, as a student, Johann Luigi made a walking tour to the Levant and asked for lodging one night in an
Albanian castle. The master of the castle was away at war, the master's young wife was alone and friendly. Check an Albanian cousin. Later Johann Luigi became a doctor in Budapest and married Munk's great-grandmother, Sarah the First. Check a Hungarian cousin. Later still he traveled through the Middle East and Africa in disguise, and met my great-grandmother in a village on the fringe of the Nubian desert. Check a Sudanese cousin.
Check, said Joe, I'm suddenly tired. All this moving around and fathering sons at the beginning of the last century is exhausting. Before you tell me any more, can't we just sit still for a moment and contemplate the view?
Of course we can. In fact that's exactly what I was going to suggest.
You were?
Yes. Now let's allow about a hundred years to go by and position ourselves in front of a villa beside the Bosporus.
Why would we want to do that?
To contemplate the view, and also to consider a remarkable event. Tell me, how do you imagine it's known that young Johann Luigi made a walking tour to the Levant in 1802?
I think Luigi might have told his wife about it later when he married her, Sarah the First. She could have passed the information on down and thus Munk would have the fact tucked away today.
Correct. And the night on that walking tour when Johann Luigi stayed in an Albanian castle? Entertained by a young and friendly wife whose husband was away at war?
I think maybe Luigi didn't bother to mention that one to Sarah the First. No reason to alarm her after the fact, marriage being sacred and all. Merely an indiscretion in his youth, and only one night of it at that.
Cairo gazed out over the city.