Not much at all. Because the truth is Stern's as complex and chaotic as life itself. And he's human and he's going to die.
Joe stared hard at Cohen. He smiled.
And yet I know there'll never be an end to him.
***
Joe looked down at the spyglass on the floor.
Good workmanship, that. Made by your father for his friend Ahmad. The same Ahmad who is now a forgotten desk clerk at a Biblical ruin called the Hotel Babylon.
Cohen stared down at the spyglass, confused, unsure of himself.
But why. . . ?
Why did your father make it for Ahmad, you mean? Because Ahmad was the very king of the boulevards in those days, and a king should have the wherewithal to survey his kingdom. So the spyglass was a joke at the time, but now Ahmad uses the spyglass when he goes up to the roof of the Hotel Babylon on Saturday evenings to look for his lost homeland, like the Jews of old. And he takes his trombone with him and he wears his only suit, a flower in his buttonhole and a smudge of polish on his shoes and his dyed red hair slicked down with water, and he peers through his precious spyglass and pretends he can see the great city where he once ruled as king, alone there in the night of his captivity, a desperately yearning and haunted captive of the past.
Cohen lowered his eyes. Joe spoke very softly.
Your father died in the First World War, I know that. He was in the British army. The campaign to take Palestine?
Yes, whispered Cohen.
A young man, then. About your age?
Yes. It was a freakish accident. The Turks had evacuated Jerusalem but a deserter was hiding in the hills and fired off a round. One shot and then he threw up his rifle and surrendered. An illiterate man, a peasant. He didn't know his army had already left the city.
Your father and Stern were the same age?
Yes.
And after that Stern saw to your upbringing, is that it?
Cohen raised his eyes and gazed at Joe.
Why do you say that?
Because that's the kind of thing Stern would do. It's Stern's way.
Cohen dropped his gaze. He spoke with great feeling.
If it hadn't been for him we wouldn't have been able to stay together. He supported my mother and made it possible for us to keep the shop, and then when my mother died he took care of Anna's and my education. . . . Just everything.
Cohen picked up the silver cigarette case.
This was my father's. He had it with him the day he was killed. Stern gave it to me when I was a child. I don't know how he ever recovered it.
Cohen held out the case to Joe. There was Hebrew lettering engraved in the corner.
It was a present from Stern to my father on the day he enlisted. Do you read Hebrew?
No, but I can read that. Life, or your father's first name. Or both.
Cohen took back the case. He looked at Joe uneasily.
Shouldn't you tell me why you're here?
Yes I should, said Joe, and I think I ought to start at the beginning, back when I was much younger than you are and didn't know the smallest part of what you know about the world. Back when Stern and I first met in a mythical city.
Cohen watched him. He smiled.
Where did you say you met Stern?
Joe nodded.
That's right, you heard it correctly. I met him in a mythical city.
Slowly then, Joe smiled too.
And now like a child with his toys, shall we give it a name? Shall we call it Jerusalem?
***
Joe spoke quickly. When he had finished he leaned back and sipped from his glass, giving Cohen time to absorb it all. Cohen sat with his elbows on a workbench, his chin propped up in his hands, deep in thought.
I like him, thought Joe, continually recognizing little things that reminded him of Stern. I like him and why not, he could almost be Stern's son.
Finally Cohen moved.
But why not get in touch with him? Speak to him directly?
Could you arrange that?
Yes. He was here yesterday but that was a personal call. There's a way I can leave a message for him though, and he'd contact me within twenty-four hours. Isn't that soon enough?
It might be, said Joe, but I'm not sure that's the way to go about it. You know how Stern is. If I spoke to him now he'd probably thank me for the information about Bletchley and then be up and on his way, not wanting to cause me any trouble. He'd keep his problems to himself unless I could show him I was already part of the game.
Well do you trust this man Bletchley? asked Cohen.
To do his job. And his job right now is Stern.
But you don't know what part of Stern's work he's interested in.
True enough, said Joe. All I really know is that Bletchley's deathly afraid of something Stern knows, or something he thinks Stern knows, same thing. Yet Stern's been working with Bletchley's people for years and why this suspicion about him all of a sudden? What triggered it?
Joe shrugged in answer to his own question.
No matter. There are any number of possibilities and an informer's just one of them, but that's neither here nor there now. Bletchley's made it clear he's not going to tell me why he has a case against Stern, and that's something Stern wouldn't tell me either. So I have to find it out myself, elsewhere, or I won't be able to help Stern because he wouldn't let me. He'd try to keep me out of it, and I didn't come here for that.
But what is Bletchley after? asked Cohen. Could it have anything to do with Stern's work for us?
Joe shook his head.
Not strictly speaking, not Palestine or the Jewish Agency directly. The British concern is the war and it has to be something to do with the Germans. Just for openers, let's begin with Stern's Polish story.
Cohen looked puzzled.
Do you mean the time he disappeared just before the war broke out?
Yes. I assume you know he escaped from a prison in Damascus in order to get to Poland when he did, but did you know that escape almost cost him his life?
No. I had no idea it had been that dangerous.
It was. Didn't you notice his thumb later, when he got back to Cairo? The way he'd ripped it up?
Yes of course, but that was an accident of some kind. He explained it to me but I don't recall exactly . . .
Not an accident, said Joe. He did that clawing his way out of prison, and the strange thing is he'd been due for release within twenty-four hours. But Stern just doesn't take chances without a reason. Did he ever talk to you about that trip to Poland? Why he had been in such a desperate hurry?
Cohen frowned.
All I really remember is that he was very excited.
Excited?
Yes. As if he had taken part in something very important, almost as if there had been some kind of priceless breakthrough. You know how quiet Stern is about what he does. Well that time when he finally turned up again, he could barely contain his excitement. I remember Anna mentioning it, saying how wonderful it was to see him as his old self again. So exuberant and lighthearted, so enthusiastic. It was the way we'd always remembered him from before.
Before?
Yes. Back before all the changes came over him during these last years. Back before everything began to weigh on him so heavily.
Ah yes, thought Joe, back when Stern was so lighthearted and exuberant. Back when he was his old self
. . . .
And for a moment, Joe found his own memories slipping back through the years.
***
Of course it wasn't just that Stern had changed since David and Anna were younger. It was also that the two of them had ceased to be children and had learned to see more deeply, to sense Stern's complexity and the contradictions in what he did, what he believed in.
Then too, as children they wouldn't have known about his morphine addiction and all that implied. As children they would have seen only Stern's kindness and love, not the despair that went with it in the bare rented rooms where he passed his nights in one dreary slum after another. Not the worn old shoes, sad reminders of journeys to nowhere, of the battered suitcase which held all he owned in the world, tied together from year to year with the same old piece of rope which was forever being carefully knotted, carefully unknotted, when it was time for him to move yet again. As children they would have known a very different Stern, as had Joe's own son, Bernini. When Joe had seen him in New York, Bernini had talked a great deal about Stern as he always did, recalling Stern in a very particular way from his childhood. . .