***
People change so, said Ahmad on another evening. It always astonishes me how much people can change. Stern used to talk about poetry and opera and the important things in life, but then these changes came over him and now he seems forever preoccupied. Busy. Rushing from one place to another with no time to think.
You still see him then? asked Joe.
Oh yes, he'll send a note around and I'll go meet him in the crypt and we'll have an arak together and talk about the old days. But the place seems so empty now when we're there together. I don't mind being there alone, in fact I rather like it. But when Stern shows up there on a Sunday it makes me sad somehow, and he must feel it too, I know he must. He talks about Rommel and codes and those things he has on his mind, and it's just not the same. It's lonely for both of us.
Do you mean old Menelik's crypt? asked Joe.
Yes, old Menelik's mausoleum, my workshop now. The place where I keep my printing press and do my forgeries. Of course Stern still has his key to the crypt and he doesn't need me to let him in, and sometimes he goes there by himself on a Sunday. I can always tell when he's been there because some little thing will be out of place, some little thing only Stern would think of. It's his way of letting me know he's paid a call . . . his way of telling me he remembers too.
Remembers what? asked Joe.
Ahmad sighed. He gazed at the fire.
Those Sundays of long ago. Those wonderful afternoons when we were all there together.
All of you?
Yes. Cohen and myself and Stern and the Sisters and the one or two others who would show up. In those days people of Menelik's stature always had a time when they were at home, as we used to say, a time when friends came to call. Well Menelik's at homes were Sunday afternoons and the crowd was always a young one. Of course Menelik was very old by then but he liked young people. The Sisters were an exception, but they've always been an exception in everything they've done.
A boyish grin crept over Ahmad's face.
Open tomb every Sunday, a charming social event with all the amenities observed. I can still see Menelik sitting majestically in his huge sarcophagus, which was also his bed in his later years, thoughtfully dispensing tea and wisdom as we sat around him in a circle. For all of us, it was the highlight of the week.
And you all had your own keys to the crypt?
Ahmad abruptly began to chuckle.
Keys? Oh yes, those of us who made up the inner circle. Menelik had arthritis and he didn't like to crawl out of his sarcophagus to answer the door.
Ahmad went on chuckling. Joe smiled.
What's that? What you were thinking of just now?
I was reminded of Menelik's underground stories, said Ahmad. They were really quite naughty, you know, shameless even. He claimed he'd picked them up from the hieroglyphic graffiti he'd been reading in pilfered tombs all his life. In other words, Menelik's dirty jokes were four or five thousand years old. He also added the disclaimer, sly man that he was, that the stories lost something in translation. But if they did we never noticed it. Quite frankly, he was a very funny man. Definitely on the ribald side, but funny.
Joe smiled. He nodded.
Off-color hieroglyphs from over the millennia, he thought. Inevitably a trifle coarse now. And keys to the crypt of the past once held by an inner circle, Stern still in possession of one of those keys.
And the others?
***
Ahmad grew somber, his memory jarred by his recollections of those long-ago Sunday afternoons in Menelik's subterranean home.
In the crypt, he murmured, back on those lovely afternoons in the tomb. And after an hour or so Stern would unpack his violin and that would be the sign for all of us to get ready. Stern would give us our note and we'd tune our instruments as Menelik sat in his sarcophagus, straightening the folds of the mummy's shroud he affected, a rapturous smile on his ancient face because that was what he'd really been waiting for all along, he so loved music. And then Stern would take out the old Morse-code key he always carried, his good-luck charm, and he'd rap it against the sarcophagus to get everyone's attention, and then he'd draw the first notes and Cohen and the Sisters and myself and the others would all join in, and off we'd go on one of our Sunday musicales . . .
Beautiful, murmured Ahmad. Harmonious and exquisite back before the war. The last one.
Ahmad shook himself. He poked the fire.
But you see how time interferes? How could any of us have imagined then that Stern would go on to do things that would land him in prison? Or that he'd risk his life escaping from prison?
When was that? asked Joe in a quiet voice.
In the summer of 1939 just before the war broke out. And that reckless escape was the prelude to what I've always thought of as Stern's Polish story. To me, a tale that sums up not only Stern but the very war itself. Desperate. Incomprehensible. A kind of madness. . . .
Ahmad began to twist and turn where he sat by the fire, as if he were drawing near to some uncomfortable truth about himself, some irrevocable confession.
It may be, he said, that I've given you the impression my failures in life have been of the material kind, but that just isn't so. My failures of the spirit have been far more profound and painful. And to what do I refer?
Ahmad gripped his fists together in a fierce pathetic gesture.
To Stern, of course. Doesn't everything always come back to him?
Ahmad's knuckles bulged and there was despair in his voice.
I committed a crime, he whispered. I've always been a sensitive person and I know there are certain things you don't do, especially to someone you love. When you act as I did with Stern, you shatter something deep inside a person. And when you do that. . . .
Ahmad faltered, clenching his powerful fists more tightly.
What I mean is, you can't humiliate someone you're close to, you can't do that, because it's more than we can bear as human beings. We can be defeated forever but we can't be insulted by someone we love, and the failure to give love when it's needed, needed, must always be one of our darkest sins. For in failing that we violate our very essence as human beings and cast ourselves out, and become no longer qualified to be called human. . . .
Again Ahmad faltered, and this time it seemed he would be unable to go on. He busied himself adding sticks to the fire, then carefully adjusted his flat straw hat to some new angle, then changed the subject.
Slowly slowly, thought Joe. But at least Ahmad was finally beginning to circle the forbidden subject Liffy had referred to as a betrayal of some kind, the cause of the old poet's irreparable rupture with Stern, now linked in some mysterious way with an adventure that Ahmad, his voice shaking with emotion, insisted on calling Stern's Polish story.
***
I know why they brought you to Cairo, Ahmad whispered one evening. No one has told me anything, but I know.
Joe looked at him and said nothing. Ahmad's face was troubled as he went on poking the fire, casting new shadows over their flowering oasis in the darkness. A shower of sparks shot into the air, once, twice, a third time. Ahmad watched them go out, then finally whispered again.
It's obvious, Joe, to me anyway. The Monastery called you in because they're afraid of Stern's secret connection with the nationalists in the Egyptian army, the Free Officers who want the British out of Egypt.
Ahmad glanced nervously around the debris-strewn courtyard. For several moments he listened intently to the night, then leaned closer to Joe.
Oh I've known all about that for some time, and I've always assumed the Monastery knew about it too and overlooked it for their own reasons, because Stern's so valuable to them. But now they must have this new fear that Stern has gone too far and joined the nationalists in some Egyptian-German conspiracy, some plot to turn the British codes over to the Germans. Well there's no use denying Stern could probably lay his hands on such information. After all these years of doing the kind of work he does, Stern has contacts at every level of Egyptian society, and given Stern's nature, a good many of those people must be indebted to him. But even if they weren't, Stern's knowledge of people is so great he could easily find a way to get what he wanted.