Abruptly Belle hoisted the bottle of gin and drank again. She sighed and placed the bottle back on the table.
But why didn't you tell us you were that Joe? That Joe, just imagine. . Well all right then, all right. On to business.
Belle's knitting needles began to click in the stillness. Alice glanced at her sister and straightened her shawl, going through a final flurry of flutters before subsiding quietly into an alert position. Belle cleared her throat
Are you ready, Alice?
Ready, Belle.
Belle gazed at Joe.
Stern's in trouble?
Yes.
You think it's serious?
Yes.
How serious?
Joe looked at her and then at Alice.
I'm afraid it's the end.
Belle's fingers stopped moving. She stared through the open French doors at the river, her jaw set.
I refuse to believe that, she said. Please begin with your questions.
***
I'm on unsure ground here, said Joe. I've got some bits and pieces but I don't have an overall shape to what I'm looking for. You might say it's the same as it used to be for Menelik back when he was digging up the past and everything he found was partial and broken and dusted by time, and he had to try to put it together so that it would make some sense. To see who the people of that particular dynasty were, and what they had been up to. A little bit like that maybe. I suppose we all have to delve into the Egyptologist's craft now and then, and there even seem to be some hieroglyphs involved. A code, so to speak. Things I can't decipher because there's no Rosetta Stone for this one.
This one? asked Belle. What's that, this one? What is the code? What does it cover?
Stern's life, I guess you'd have to say, I suppose that's what it really is. And since you know Stern as well as you do, you can understand it's not a simple matter to sift the sands through your fingers and come up with something with a shape to it, a coherency that translates into words. The end result has to be simple enough because Stern's just a man. But that's only once you know how to read the hieroglyphs.
A Greek word meaning sacred writing, murmured Belle.
Joe nodded.
Yes, Greek. Like a good many things in this part of the world.
But the writings the word denotes are much older, mused Belle.
Much older, said Joe. So my task is a little bit the same as Menelik's used to be. Of course the best thing would be to talk to people who aren't here, but you can never do that. And it's also true that what Menelik dealt with happened four or five thousand years ago, while what I'm looking for happened yesterday or a month or a year or two ago, but it's the same thing really. Ancient history always begins yesterday, doesn't it?
Or even with your afternoon nap, murmured Alice. Sometimes everything that happened before then is like a dream, little shards of this and that. And Menelik, bless his soul, would have been the first to say so.
True, said Joe. The evidence never is in, not by half. So, like Menelik, I have to blow the dust off the shards and nudge the bits and pieces around and see if I can make a picture out of them.
Belle's patient, said Alice. She's always been clever at jigsaw puzzles. I have no patience at all but I can sense patterns sometimes. They just come to me.
Well? said Belle
Joe nodded.
Yes. There's this, for example. Rommel knows things he shouldn't know and it has something to do with codes. British codes. It's as if Rommel could read them. The important one may be called the Black Code, and somehow a Colonel Fellers may be involved, he's the American military attaché here in Cairo.
Because Stern said recently to someone, first thing in the morning, that Rommel was probably enjoying his little fellers at that very moment, over breakfast.
Arab boys? asked Alice.
Too simple, declared Belle.
Oh.
The little things over breakfast, said Belle, have to refer to the American colonel.
Oh of course.
Belle closed her eyes to concentrate. A few moments later she opened them.
Nothing. Alice?
Alice was staring dreamily across the room toward the door. They followed her gaze. Belle sniffed thoughtfully, quietly.
Is it the door, Alice?
No, the doorstop.
Belle and Joe studied the doorstop. It was made of wood and hand-painted, a small upright tableau depicting two vivacious young girls from the nineteenth century, smiling in long curls and flowery hats and voluminous dresses, carrying parasols. The clothes and the sky had been done in delicate pastels, faded now by three-quarters of a century of Egyptian sunlight. The painted earth at the bottom of the block of wood, the weight of the doorstop, was richly dark and blackened by the passage of time.
We must have worn a dozen petticoats in those days, said Alice. How old were we when I painted that?
Fourteen, replied Belle. We were in Rome.
That's right, and I painted a lot of them one summer, trying to make a little money. I used to go around to the tables in the pensione at teatime and sell them, remember? But that's the only one left now, the only one we brought to Egypt. Just look at those hats, Belle, and those ridiculous dresses. How did we ever move around dressed like that?
It was clumsy. We were very restricted.
Oh we were, we were. I used to hate wearing all those petticoats. And just look how rich and black the earth is, not red and sandy the way it is here. Oh how strange this is.
It is strange, Alice. I wonder what brought all of that to mind just at this moment?
I have no idea, I can't imagine. But didn't we think we were very grown-up when we could dress like that?
Yes, petticoats and everything.
That's right. And we were only fourteen years old, and the Italian men were always. . and now Joe has mentioned a Black Code and the black in that painting seems to remind me of something, Belle.
Something having to do with sex in Rome.
Sex way back then, dear? That's a rather extensive subject, I'm afraid. Or are you thinking of something we might have heard about more recently?
Yes, more recently. Within the last year, perhaps. Oh that's maddening, it's right on the tip of my tongue.
Why do we have to be so old and have so many things to remember? But you must know what I'm thinking about, Belle. Sex. Rome. Can't you remember?
There are hundreds of incidents to remember, dear, but which one of them is on your mind now? Maybe it might help if you narrowed things down. What kind of sex was it, exactly?
Italian sex. Seduction. Age leering at youth and innocence corrupted. A poor young cleaning woman just in from the country and a suave older man spending money on her and giving her an evening beyond her wildest dreams, and then taking her back to his candlelit flat overlooking the Piazza Navonna and whispering bella bella and making fantastic promises while pulling off her petticoats and exacting a few concrete promises in return. Oh just think, Belle, think. I know you can recall it.
Suddenly Belle's knitting needles clicked once.
Of course. That's it, Alice, you've found it.
Little Alice smiled shyly. Big Belle turned to Joe with a triumphant expression.
Isn't she a marvel? The Black Code is some kind of American cipher which the Italians managed to get their hands on in Rome. They stole it from the American Embassy with the help of a cleaning woman who was on the night shift. That was five or six months ago, around the beginning of the year, and the Americans still don't know about it, apparently. Now one would assume the Italians passed along their discovery to their allies, the Germans. What's the job of a military attaché, exactly?