He laughed harshly.
. . you know, in hopes I won't come back.
She frowned at the remark, thinking how his humor had become bitter lately in a way she didn't like, but Stern seemed not to notice her frown. His eyes were moving around the square as he took out the old Morse-code key he always carried and began to turn it over and over, his other hand holding her shoulder.
What is it, Stern?
. . oh. Well you haven't noticed anyone around, have you?
No.
. . and the family next door to you, the grandfather, he hasn't mentioned seeing anyone?
No, but are they watching me too? Is that what you mean?
. I'm afraid they may be, so I'm told. . but not that closely and there's no danger involved, it's just something to do with me.
She looked at him. None of it made any sense to her, but of course there was no reason why it should.
Stern had always been careful never to talk to her in any detail about the work he did for the Monastery.
Yet lately he had been alluding to his work more openly, which she found disturbing in itself.
. . so it might be better, he added, if you didn't say anything about this at your office. It doesn't concern the Waterboys and they don't know anything about it, so why upset them? And you've seen nothing yourself so there's nothing to hide. Of course if something should seem out of the ordinary, it might be wise to mention it to the grandfather next door. He's around all the time and he knows everyone, and he would. . but anyway, it's strictly between the Monks and myself and. .
Stern didn't finish. He smiled his mysterious smile and changed the subject and they talked of other things, Stern drinking heavily all the while. Then too quickly midnight was near and their moment together was over. Once more it was time for Stern to leave.
I know you have to rush, she said, but there's still one thing you haven't told me tonight. How are you?
The question cut through Stern's restlessness. He slumped forward and looked down at the table, a weariness coining over him, his powerful eyes still for once, even his hands at rest.
. . tired, Maud. . exhausted. But it's not so much the physical part as. . it's strange, you know. I always thought the body was supposed to give way first, especially when you have the kind of habits I do. But no, it seems the other illusions. . it's not so much the armor of the soul as. . well anyway, I'm going to be away for about two weeks, so. .
She reached out for him and he held her tightly, silently trying to say all the things he hadn't been able to say in words, smiling as he stepped back and squeezed her hand a final time, quickly then moving off up the square. . the restless stride and a nod or a word here and there to the late stragglers of the evening, turning and waving to her, the great dark head against the midnight sky of the city as he reached the corner and looked back, catching a final glimpse of her. .
Gone. She took a deep breath, gazing after him. How odd it is, she thought. For years the partings were always so hectic for us, wrenching in some painful way. But now when there's a war and the danger is greater than ever, it's almost quiet between us. Peaceful even.
Why? she wondered. Because so many of the decisions are no longer ours to make? Is that really the only way for life to be less tormenting? To have its choices taken out of your hands, its decisions taken from you?
***
She sat up late that night on her little balcony, the way she always did when Stern was leaving again. Two weeks this time, he had said, but who knew what that meant? Who could ever know with a man like Stern who was forever leaving on some dangerous new mission for the Monastery?
Mission. The Waterboys always used that term and so did the Monks. Everyone else always spoke of going on missions, but Stern never did. Somehow it was too grand a word for him and he spoke, instead, of traveling. . A man on his travels. . I have some traveling to do.
Stern. . Joe. . how very different they were in so many ways, yet the two of them had once been very close, years ago in Jerusalem. Joe had often talked to her then about his great friend Stern, and she remembered how surprised she had been when she and Stern had finally met much later, in Istanbul, after all three of them had taken their separate paths.
She didn't know what she had expected, probably some kind of genie after the way Joe had talked about him. Certainly not the Stern she had come to know, so much like other men when she saw him as she had tonight, hunched over a table in a small café and talking of little things, laughing and silent by turns, the two of them so much like everybody else in the way they reached out for each other and quietly held on as best they could, enjoying their brief moments together. Stern in the shabby suit of a clerk, pushing back his hair and joking about ledgers and making light of working late at the office. . Save for his restless eyes and his hands that were never quite still, the same as anybody else passing an hour in the little square at the end of her alley. Tonight at least for a moment. . the same as anybody else.
And Joe? Why had she thought of him tonight? Or did she always think of him at this time of the year especially. . remembering their long-ago trip to the Sinai and their month together in a tiny oasis on the Gulf of Aqaba. Brilliant waters and sands that burned and the stunning sunsets of the desert bursting over them, and the breezes of the all-healing sea, the eternal stillness of dawn in the beginning of love. .
Yes, that must have been why she had thought of Joe tonight. It was the time of the year and Stern leaving once more as Joe had left so often when he worked for Stern long ago in Jerusalem. . some coincidence of little things in her mind. The tricks of memory mixing the years together as she sat up late on her narrow balcony, gazing out over the great restless city and thinking of many things but above all of Stern.
The voice, the eyes, the incessant touching. . could it really be that he was finally coming apart like the world itself? Stern with his lifelong dream of a great peaceful new nation in the Middle East the vision shaken in the monstrous slaughter of the First World War only to be shattered in the madness of the Second World War. Nothing left for Stern now because no one wanted to hear of his hopeless dreams, not the Arabs and not the Jews. . no one. And yet Stern had known all of that for years, so why did he go on doing what he did? Why did he struggle endlessly when there was no end for what he sought?
In the darkness Maud suddenly laughed at herself, laughing at her own musings.
Why does he? . . but why do any of us? Why do we go on trying when what we hope for will always be beyond us? When we can never more than touch the lives of others in passing? When even our own life must forever be tentative and incomplete and out of reach, no more than a shadow of what we long for?
So perhaps it wasn't that hard in the end to understand why people felt so strongly about Stern, even men like the waiters in her little square, chance acquaintances who knew almost nothing about him. Quite simply, they saw in Stern something they wished they had been able to see in themselves. A refusal to accept the pathetic limits of life, a defiance to the pathetic failures of hope. .
We have to be more, he used to say. It's no longer enough to be what we were. We're dreaming creatures who have learned to reach beyond ourselves, unlike any other animal, who can therefore decide what we will become. And no matter how it terrifies us, there's no other way for us to be now. .
.
And the great dark head thrown back as the mysterious smile came over his face.
. . so it isn't true any longer that we can just create ourselves. Now we must. Our childhood as a race is over and there's no going back, no escape into barbarism, no way to lose ourselves in the mindlessness of our animal past. Now we have to be free in order to be at all. The child within us prefers its instinctual cage, and the wars of this century are the final tantrums of our childhood's end, but the wars can't go on and on and we all sense that. Our killing toys have become too clever and our killing fields have become the entire earth, and now we either have to put aside our childish ways or refuse to, and in refusing, renounce life. I mean destroy ourselves utterly. .