Cohen laughed. Friendly fellow, thought Joe, and so far so good. He poured more arak for himself as Cohen gestured at the buffers and grinding wheels in the workshop.
Religion aside, do these tools speak of great wealth to you?
No they do not, said Joe. But there used to be a saying in Cairo, I'm told, which explains that. A little madness is a dangerous thing. Remember the Cohens. . . . Which saying was as accurate as can be, for what happened in Cairo in those days was that old Crazy Cohen's son, who was partly practical and only a little mad and therefore known as Half-Crazy Cohen, what happened was that Half-Crazy went on to spend the entire family fortune while in the company of a great friend of his named Ahmad and two beautiful young women known as the Sisters. Some of the fortune went to the racetracks and the casinos, and some of it for champagne to fill alabaster cups of pure moonlight when the four of them were out carousing on the Nile, so long ago. . . . Such madcap living by your grandfather in his youth, in other words, said Half-Crazy Cohen, that all the Cohen fortune got spent. So that later when your father came of age he had to find a trade to support himself, and what better trade to turn to than the one that got the Cohens started in Egypt in the first place? Lenses. Nothing grand about it but honest work all the same, so back your father came to this very house where your great-grandfather had started and resurrected a faded old sign in the shape of a pair of giant spectacles, a symbol of eyes that can see, the sign we find hanging out front tonight. . . . And that, I believe, is the tale of the Cairo Cohens over the course of four generations and more than a century, stated in its essentials. Rags to riches to rags it goes, and whoever said we all begin the same and end the same knew what he was talking about.
Cohen smiled, opening a silver cigarette case. He offered it to Joe, who took a cigarette and struck a match for both of them.
Are you also an itinerant Irish historian, Joe?
More so on some occasions than others, but it's really the present that interests me, so let's head that way and consider the time when your father was a young man in Cairo, before the First World War. Now at this point old Menelik Ziwar was living in retirement in a crypt beneath a public garden beside the Nile, using a gigantic cork-lined sarcophagus as his bedroom, where he was known to be at home on Sunday afternoons, as they used to say, meaning he was ready to welcome friends and serve them a bracing cup of underground tea. And since so few people had ever heard of old Menelik to begin with, we shouldn't be surprised to find that most of his guests were the children of former friends.
A suggestion of a frown flickered in Cohen's face, even though he was still smiling. Joe pretended not to notice it.
So for one, said Joe, there was the grandson of his old friend Crazy Cohen, your father. And there was the son of an old friend and fellow dragoman-in-arms named Ahmad, the son also Ahmad. Then there was the son of the great explorer Strongbow, the child born to the Jewish shepherdess Strongbow married late in life, young Stern. And of course the Sisters from their strange houseboat, older than the other guests and the only ones who had known Menelik in his prime, long-term residents on the Nile who never wanted to miss a good thing near the river and seldom did. And that was the inner circle gathered around old Menelik's cork-lined sarcophagus on Sunday afternoons back before the First World War.
There were some others who dropped in now and then, but we don't have to concern ourselves with them tonight.
For the first time Cohen stopped smiling. But his composure was still remarkable and Joe admired him for it. Stern's influence, thought Joe. There's no mistaking it.
And after these friends had tipped away their tea, Joe went on, they would unpack their musical instruments and get ready for the weekly concert that was so dear to the heart of old Menelik. For as that wise living mummy used to say in his five-thousand-year-old tomb—I wouldn't, dream of trying to pass eternity without the music of life. Eternity, old Menelik used to say, just doesn't work without music.
Examine anyone's notion of the great beyond, even the vaguest, and you'll hear melodious strings soaring in the background, or at least a lute being plucked. . . . Thus the concerts those friends always put on for old Menelik when they came to call, Stern quite naturally the leader. Stern tuning his violin and using his old Morse-code key to tap on Menelik's sarcophagus and get everyone's attention, old Menelik himself ecstatic at the prospect, the music soaring as everyone joined in their separate moods. . . . Stern and Ahmad and your father and the Sisters. . . . Your father thoughtful as he played his oboe, that very oboe we now see resting in a place of honor in its case on the wall behind you.
Joe paused.
But your father never had a chance to teach you to play it, did he, David?
No, said Cohen. He never did.
***
Joe sipped arak. Cohen was still as calm as ever, so calm Joe was inevitably reminded of Stern. And in fact from the very moment he had entered the house Joe had felt Stern's invisible presence, which was heartening to him. It meant Stern was loved and cared for here and Joe was grateful for that. But he still had to make it possible for Cohen to trust him enough to talk about Stern, and that wouldn't be easy because Cohen would never say anything that might bring the least bit of harm to Stern. Joe was certain of that and it only increased his respect for Cohen.
Well, he thought, I've made what connections I can with the past and now there's nothing for it but to bring us up to the here and the now and pray he'll tell me some little thing. Pray is all.
Joe reached down for the cylindrical leather case he had brought with him. He unzipped the case and let it fall away, holding up Ahmad's spyglass and extending it to full length.
Cohen, puzzled, stared at the spyglass and then at Joe.
***
And now, said Joe, we come to another excellent and stirring device, also made here in Cohen's Optiks.
Used for enlargement or its opposite, and also useful for just plain seeing things. . . . I hope.
Joe put the large end of the spyglass, the wrong end, to his eye. He gazed through it at Cohen.
It's true, he said, that the world looks exceptionally neat and tidy this way. Ever wondered why?
Why? asked Cohen.
Because small things always look tidy. That's why we try so hard to reduce things and put them in categories and give them labels, so we can pretend we know them and they won't bother us. Order, it's called, the explanation or an explanation, the reason for and the reason why. It's comforting to us, naturally it is, who wants to live with chaos all the time? . . . Well not much of anyone in fact, because it suggests we're not in charge and can't understand everything. So we have this little game we play, rather like children lining up their toys on a rainy afternoon and giving each toy a name, and then calling them by these made-up names and telling them what they are and why. . . . And sometimes we pretend we can do that with life, lining up people as it suits us and telling ourselves what they do and calling it history.
Like children with their toys, making it more comfortable for ourselves by pretending we order the chaos when we hand out names.
Joe lowered the spyglass, collapsed it, put it back in its leather case.
Know what, David?
What?
Life isn't like that. It's just not like that at all and neither is Stern and what he does. A label just won't do for Stern. Ten or twenty contradictory adjectives might be accurate, but how much would that help us to place him?
Joe shook his head.