But you're Irish, aren't you, Mr Gulbenkian?
That's right, and more so on some occasions than others. The weather seems to affect it, like an old wound. When it gets very dark out you begin to feel this stiffness at the base of your skull, and pretty soon it sneaks up toward your eyes, a sort of creeping paralysis of the mind, and drink seems to be the only way to waylay it.
Would you like a drink? asked Cohen.
Don't mind if I do, now that you mention it.
Cohen reached into a cupboard and brought out a bottle and a glass.
Is arak all right?
Thanks. Just by itself is fine.
Cohen poured and placed the bottle on a table beside Joe.
An Irish Gulbenkian, murmured Cohen. That's remarkable.
Joe raised his eyebrows as he sipped, his face lighting up with a kind of hope.
Do you think so? Still, we're much better at wishing and dreaming for things than at having them happen.
Like most people, I suppose.
Then you're not really soliciting charitable contributions for Armenian refugees from Asia Minor?
Well I'm doing that too in a way, over the long haul, but I admit tonight it was just a bit of amiable subterfuge meant to get me in the door. Cover, Liffy calls it. Secret agents are always using one kind of cover or another, according to him. Again, like most people. But you used the word remarkable, and that's true, that's what they were all right, all three of them. Strongbow, old Menelik, your great-grandfather Cohen. Just a remarkable triumvirate back when they were young, before they went their separate ways. Back when they were about your age, it must have been.
Joe sipped again, his face thoughtful.
In those days, he said, those three friends used to get together every Sunday afternoon in a cheap Arab restaurant they'd found for themselves on the shores of the Nile, a pleasant filthy place they'd taken a liking to, and there they'd feast and drink and carry on, telling each other all the things they were going to do in this world. And when the afternoon was coming to an end and they were as drunk as lords, over the restaurant railing they'd go, just leaping into the Nile to drift away on the great swirling currents with contented smiles on their faces, enjoying the last good rays of the sun and belching and bubbling and snoozing ever so happily, just effortlessly pissing away their troubles so to speak, lords of the noble Nile for a moment in their youths. . . .
Cohen's long thin hands drew graceful shapes in the air. He smiled and shook his head.
I'm sorry but you must be mistaken, he said. You must have three other men in mind, because I know for a fact my great-grandfather always dined at home on Sunday. It was a family tradition.
***
That's right, said Joe, he never did all of it. Cohen started out in the restaurant with his two friends, but already being a family man, he didn't spend the afternoon carousing there but went home to have Sunday dinner with his fine young wife and young son, as you say. Then when Sunday dinner was over he'd suggest a pleasant walk down by the river, and in the course of this pleasant stroll the family would pass a felluca tied up, ready for hire, and the son would beg for a little sail and Cohen would kindly agree, and the whole family would climb on board for a lovely cruise in the late afternoon.
Well it would just so happen that while they were out there sailing on the Nile, Cohen would spot a couple of belching bubbling bodies floating by on the great river, his good friends Strongbow and Ziwar dead drunk on the currents of time, and the felluca would take a turn or two and Cohen would pluck his friends out of the water and lay them out on the floorboards to sleep it off. And a good thing it was, too, for if Cohen hadn't done that then Strongbow and Ziwar might have gone right on floating down the Nile and out to sea and been lost to history forever, which would have been a loss for all of us. So that's how those Sundays worked and that was Cohen's Sunday role, an essential one, because without him those other two wouldn't have been around to see Monday. . . . Your great-grandfather. A faithful friend.
He was a good family man, murmured Cohen.
Oh he was definitely that, said Joe, like all the men of the Cairo Cohens. And he was also on his pious way to becoming the patriarch of his clan as well as a hugely wealthy man, after first being viewed as crazy. For it seems he had two mysterious dreams one night, the first depicting seven fat cattle coming up out of the Nile and being eaten by seven lean cattle that followed them, and then right on top of that another dream, this time of seven full ears of corn being devoured by seven lean ears.
Cohen smiled, relaxing and enjoying himself.
Do I hear an echo from the Bible? he asked.
And so you do, replied Joe, and of course messages from God were often said twice in those days so nobody would get them wrong. Well knowing the good book as your great-grandfather did and the history of his people in Egypt and all, and being himself in Egypt, he didn't need a prophet to tell him what his two dreams were all about. So the very next morning this Cohen put aside the lenses of his trade and headed out into the fields of Egypt to buy grain. He'd decided to give up grinding glass, you see, in favor of grinding grain.
Cohen drew some shapes in the air, a quizzical expression coming over his face.
Right, continued Joe. And at the time there happened to be plenty of grain in Egypt, yet here was this Cohen going deeper and deeper into debt to buy up all he could and store it away in warehouses. And he went on doing that for seven years and naturally everybody in the country got into the habit of calling him Crazy Cohen, for who in his right mind would fill up more and more warehouses with grain when all the fields were heaped with it already?
Well obviously no one who's sane, that's who. Obviously only a Crazy Cohen, a ward of God who'd been snatching messages out of thin air, thinking he'd been chosen to hear them. But he carried on in his delusions, Crazy Cohen did, never forgetting for a moment his back-to-back dreams in sevens, and lo and behold and surprise of surprises, all at once there was a terrible turn to the harvests in Egypt that wouldn't let up, with the result that almost no grain grew in Egypt for another seven whole years. And during that second stretch of seven years, the lean stretch, all that stood between Egypt and starvation was Crazy Cohen and his demented pious foresight, and his warehouses.
Joe leaned back and smiled.
Chosen, it seems, he was. And thus by keeping the faith and keeping his mind on my namesake, he made a stupendous fortune. . . . A pious gambler. Your great-grandfather.
Cohen nodded thoughtfully.
Your name is Joseph?
More commonly, Joe. Also O'Sullivan Beare. But my coat isn't many-colored, as you can see.
Cohen nodded again.
Do you also have eleven brothers, Joe?
More, I'm afraid. Or at least I used to. Over the years a lot of them seem to have fallen off roofs in the New World, while drunk. Thought they were reaching for the stars, don't you know. Queer place, the New World. Some people actually believe it's that.
Cohen gazed at Joe and drew a circle in the air.
So history comes around, he said, and that much is history. But I don't see what any of it has to do with us.
Right, said Joe. History hiding its real intent behind a cover, like secret agents and most people. Now let's just recall those three young gents who were such close friends in the nineteenth century, said Strongbow and Ziwar and Cohen. Of the three of them, Ziwar was a Christian and Cohen was a Jew, and Strongbow, although born an Englishman, was on his way to becoming a Moslem holy man. So already, to those of a religious bent, we have something of a representative gathering for this part of the world.