He said their lives had been bitter with bondage and he knew their sorrows. And he spoke of a ransom of souls and he said an angel had been sent before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring them into a good land and large, flowing with milk and honey. . And lastly he spoke of a golden bell and a pomegranate. Upon the hem of the robe, he said, a golden bell and a pomegranate round about. .
Belle stared down at her lap. Alice half rose in her chair, tears streaming down her face.
I should have recognized the words, whispered Belle, but it all happened so quickly and it was so strange the way he acted, we didn't understand. He seemed a man possessed but he was speaking from the Book of Exodus, wasn't he?
Oh God, shrieked Joe, why did he do it? Oh God. .
Joe buried his head in his hands. Alice was kneeling beside him now, her arms around him. Belle raised her eyes.
But who was he? We were so sure he was you. Who was he?
A friend, whispered Joe, choking out the words. A man speaking to his people. . a dream, a beautiful dream, a golden bell. A man with the gift of faces and the gift of tongues who came and went as anyone.
. the wandering Jew in all of us. Liffy was his name. .
But why did he come here like that, Joe? Why did he do it? To save you?
Oh no, not me, much more than that. So much more. .
Joe broke down completely then, sobbing on the floor as Alice held him in her arms, rocking with him and stroking the dusty scars in his face that ran with tears.
***
After a time, when Joe had managed to recover a little, the three of them sat talking amidst the pale wicker shapes of that dilapidated mansion moored on the nighttide of the great river, speaking in low voices in the shadowy moonlight.
As best he could, Joe recounting what had happened. Being in the poor Arab bar when the hand grenade had come sailing in through the shabby curtain at midnight, instantly killing Stern. Joe stunned by the explosion and wandering in a daze through the sordid alleys, stopping to telephone Maud and eventually finding himself back beside the Nile, in the dingy public garden where old Menelik's secret crypt lay buried.
Descending the stairs once more and letting himself into the crypt and lying down on one of those hard park benches from another era. Feeling dizzy and exhausted and slipping into a deep sleep that stretched on through an invisible dawn and the invisible day that followed Stern's death, a fugitive from the light fitfully sleeping into the evening of the second night.
Waking up at last on the park bench with his body cramped and aching, the distant roar of Stern's death and a dim cry from the darkness still echoing in his mind. . a beggar. . a beggar. . Joe appalled by the murkiness of his suddenly strange surroundings and not even sure for one brief moment that he was still alive, above all wanting to escape from the gloomy crypt.
Noticing then that Liffy's small battered volume of Buber was lying open on one of the park benches, which wasn't the way he remembered it having been when he and Stern had left the crypt. Noticing also a small pile of clothes neatly folded near the door, beside them an old makeup kit that Liffy had often carried with him.
Joe realizing then that Liffy must have come to the public garden on the previous night and followed him and Stern to the poor Arab bar, where he had witnessed the explosion at midnight and subsequently followed Joe back to the crypt once more, letting himself in while Joe slept and keeping watch through the dangerous night, until daylight had come aboveground and it was time for Liffy to change into the final costume of his final role, while still Joe had gone on sleeping.
And what had that final costume of Liffy's been? What transformation had Liffy chosen for himself in the end?
A mystery to Joe when he had awoken in the crypt, hours after Liffy had left. Joe wanting only to escape, for safety using the emergency exit Stern had showed him, a low narrow tunnel thick with the dust of the past. Joe emerging chalk-white from the secret passageway and discovering that it was night again, fleeing wildly through the park in the exhilaration of his escape from death, a ghostly figure floating beside the river on the mild breezes of that clear Cairo night.
And furtive telephone calls made to the Major, a man Liffy had known, and stealing a dinghy and paddling downstream to the houseboat, where he had come rising up out of the currents only to find that Liffy had been there before him, disguising himself as Joe so the anonymous Monks from the desert would think their work was done and Joe would have another chance to escape, another chance to survive..
Liffy.
Joe still couldn't mention his name without breaking down. It was different somehow with Stern, because everything having to do with Stern had always been expected in a way. Stern himself had always seemed to know what his destiny would be, and it had been impossible to be around him without sensing that sooner or later. Joe had felt it long ago when he had first met Stern in Jerusalem, as had others before and since then.
But Liffy?. Liffy?
Joe turned away, too wrenched with pain to dwell on that vast multitude of faces and voices once conjured up in Liffy's sorrowing magic, and laughter, lost now to the world. It was too much for Joe so they talked for awhile of other things, and then Joe rose.
***
Well I'll be leaving now, he said. There are things I must try to do, and whatever way it turns out, I'm afraid we won't be meeting again.
Little Alice looked at him tenderly, and Big Belle's sad eyes were as strong upon him as ever. They watched as he went to stand on the small veranda one last time, gazing out over the river. Then he came back into the room to face them.
And where will you go from here? asked Belle.
Joe tried to smile.
To meet a man at the Sphinx, he said. I have no answers for him, but I might know the questions to ask at least.
And this time he did smile. Thinly, but he managed it.
I have to tell you I've never been able to handle good-byes, he said. I've just never gotten used to leaving people, even though I've done little else in my life. People have a way of slipping into our hearts and staying there, and we treasure them and don't want to let them go, and more than that, we never can let them go.
Once long ago I tried to live differently, but it never really worked. I used to pretend something could be over and done with, a place or a person, and I could move on and nothing was the worse for it. But I learned soon enough that was only a turn of words on the surface of things, mere childish pretending, and it was pain that taught me that, I'm sorry to say. Of course we do move on all right, but we don't forget nor should we, and nothing important is ever left behind, and no one we've loved ever goes out of our lives. They live on in other ways, that's all, in our words and our gestures, changing us and changing with us and even speaking to us in the quiet moments. Sometimes recognized, mostly not, but always a part of us, woven into the stuff of our lives.
And as for what's out there where I'm going now, well, when you look at it one way it's surely not much of a world, is it? We lose and we lose and that's all we ever do from the time we're born. Lose those who brought us into the world and lose the place where that was, the only safe place we ever know, and then we go right on losing other places and other people and the hopes and dreams that go with them, losing those we love and finding others if we're lucky, only to know we'll lose them too with time. Lose is all.
And that's one way to look at it surely, and all of it true and undeniably the way it is. But then there's also that other side to life, those moments that have a kind of grandeur to them, that speak of love so beautiful it takes your breath away. Rare moments that shine in the darkness, rare precious gems in the night, jewels of the soul beautiful and ancient. .