But I didn't do that, Joe. I didn't have the courage. I was thinking only of myself and I was angry because of all I'd lost in the world, and Stern seemed to represent that to me because he'd always been such an important part of the world I'd loved and lost, perhaps even the most important part. . . . Who knows.
Who can say.
So I should have heard him out whether I liked it or not, and then I should have taken him in my arms the way we used to do long ago when we were friends who held nothing back, who laughed and cried and held each other.
Ahmad's voice sank to a whisper.
But I didn't do that. Instead I told him to stop because I didn't want to hear what he was saying, and still he kept on trying in his halting awkward way, trying so hard to find the words that would let me understand. And then . . .
Ahmad hung his head. There were tears in his eyes.
. . . and then I turned on him. Shut up, I yelled. Shut up. And the strength went out of him and his whole body sagged, and there was a wretched yearning sadness in his eyes that no human being should ever have to know, a terrible sadness beyond any hope of redemption.
So I failed him, Joe, and you have to remember what it meant. For remember. Once there had been three young friends who were inseparable and who shared every feeling and dream, Cohen and myself and Stern. And Cohen had been dead for years and now I'd turned my back on Stern and left him alone. I had done that. I had destroyed a beautiful part of his life by taking away the one thing a poor man has, his memories, and I had cruelly shouted him down by yelling that those memories were dead.
Gone. And he was nothing and utterly alone. . . .
Ahmad was quiet for a time.
No, I didn't realize the enormity of it then, but slowly I began to understand it. Slowly it crept into my heart. And now when we sit here looking into this fire, here with the darkness all around us and the power of the night boundless in its domain, the two of us huddling beside this little speck of light, two tiny insignificant creatures suspended for the briefest of moments in a realm of infinities and blackness, here in these small flames before us I see his face more clearly than ever. A burning human face passing and soon to be gone, and I failed him.
By not accepting him for what he is. By not having the courage and the grace to do that, but instead, turning away. Fully aware of the haunted sadness in his eyes and yet turning away, turning away and leaving him alone in his torment, alone in his anguish, a friend whom I have always loved. A friend and more, a fellow human being.
Ahmad shuddered.
And that's Stern's Polish story, a tale begun one Sunday afternoon in a crypt beside the Nile, begun and never brought to its conclusion. And it's my failure and a failure of the world, and we will both have to live with it.
Yet I know better than to blame the world, for the world is a metaphor and an abstraction that doesn't exist. We all have our moment to be the world, to do what is right and give love when giving seems impossible and love seems an intolerable mockery. We all have that moment once, and I did, and I failed it.
Ahmad opened his powerful hands and gazed at them in the shadows.
It's the briefest moment in our lives. And the simplest. Yet with it, we build our heavens and our hells forever. . . .
***
Who knows what Stern's really doing? muttered Ahmad one night not long before first light, just as they were getting ready to leave the courtyard and go inside.
What do you mean? asked Joe.
Ahmad leaned over the embers, glaring down at them, his face working in agitation.
All I mean is, who really knows? Of course he has contacts everywhere, and of course he has long served many causes in one way or another, to one extent or another, and of course he works for the British. But could there also be something beyond all that, some higher cause for Stern? An even more secret campaign to be waged . . . in his eyes? Something so profound, perhaps, as to be unmentionable save before God?
Well in fact he has alluded to certain things with me since the war started, and now more recently I've sensed a thread to these bits and pieces of his concerns, which he drops in front of me without intending to. For one thing, the Jews in Europe are constantly on his mind. And perhaps . . .
Suddenly Ahmad became defiant and the words burst out of him.
Well does he have some sort of traitorous relationship with the Nazis, then? With these Mongolian hordes who are storming the gates of civilization? . . . Stern says there are whole communities of Jews disappearing in Europe, and he alludes to unspeakable atrocities, and he's haunted like Liffy by images of empty railway stations late at night, from which people have been shipped away to oblivion and worse.
And he says the Allies are doing nothing about it because the evidence isn't conclusive enough for them yet. And he says there's no time to wait anymore for a documentation of death, some kind of doggerel of statistics which will convince our bookkeepers in high places.
Well I know nothing about statistics, because that's not how I account for human beings. But many kinds of agents have passed through the Hotel Babylon since the war started, and some of them have escaped from Europe and some of them have been Jews. And I've asked them things and looked into their eyes to hear the answers, and I've seen blackness. So if Stern is involved with the Nazis, I know it must have to do with getting Jews out of Europe. There could be no other reason why a man like him would strike this terrible bargain with evil. . . . But as for what he gives the Nazis in return, God only knows. I don't even want to think about it. . . . His soul, probably.
Ahmad sank to a heap on the ground and covered his face. Great sobs shook him.
Don't you see, Joe? It's not like Stern to be mentioning these things in front of me, these bits and pieces about Black Codes and Rommel and all the rest of it. He's too clever and experienced for that. And if in front of me, in front of whom else? And how could he help but know the Monastery would have to hear about it sooner or later? . . . And take steps.
Ahmad stared at the dead fire.
But I refuse to believe Stern is acting this way because he knows it will get him killed. What I fear is that he may be cracking up, and that terrifies me because Stern has always been hope to me. Just knowing he's out there and will come back someday, the way he did when we were young and he went off into the desert, just that means everything to me.
In the shadows of the little courtyard, Ahmad reached out toward the dead fire.
Hope . . . hope. We can squander all of the gift of life and even more than that can be taken from us. But not hope. We must have hope or the heavens will spin silently and it will be as if we had never lived . . . a nothingness of nothing.
***
In the stillness of midnight Ahmad stirred and tipped his head, listening to a distant clock toll the long hour.
It's difficult to speak of all that is, he murmured. Silence is what I know best, whereas Stern . . .
Ahmad stopped and adjusted his flat straw hat.
What I mean is, the two of us have taken such different paths in life. Out of failure, I sought the secret adventures of order and the pale consolations of solitude, as did my father before me. But even though Stern's failures have been far greater than mine, because he dared to risk so much more, still he has never turned away from the chaos and futility of life. . . . What I have forsaken, just that has he embraced.