Stern smiled.
But I still wouldn't say this is our last drink.
No? Well I'm glad to hear that, I never did like the idea of closing time. And how many carefree hours might we have ahead of us then?
Oh I don't know, said Stern. We could probably even manage a day or two if we stayed down here.
But how could we do that? Isn't this one place Bletchley's bound to look if we don't show up elsewhere?
I imagine, so I guess we only have hours. But we do have some time, so we might as well relax.
Well it may sound strange, Stern, but the fact is I am relaxed. I didn't get a nod of sleep last night but I feel as if I've been doing nothing else.
You stayed up all night with Belle and Alice?
Almost all night, but how did you know I was there? You haven't been following me too, have you?
No, but I have friends in the city who keep an eye out for me. . beggars. . fellow beggars. It's an occupation that allows a good deal of time for observation.
Joe nodded. . Stern's secret army, he thought. Some people have tanks, some have Monks, he has beggars. Must depend on which dusty byway you choose to sit in at the end of the day.
Beggars, are they? said Joe. And do you know what happened then on my way back from the houseboat this morning?
Stern laughed.
A dreadful commotion. You nearly caused a riot, shouting about Rommel's breakfast.
There was that as well, said Joe, but it wasn't the important thing. What happened was that I made a fool out of one of Bletchley's young Monks who was following me. Lost my head and humiliated him for no reason at all. I was terribly ashamed.
Stern looked at him.
Well you should forget that now, Joe. It's over and done with.
I know it is, and there's something else I wanted to mention. That letter you wrote to me about Colly's death. That was a beautiful letter, Stern, and I'll never forget it.
Well I'll never forget Colly. Along with many other people who knew him.
Joe nodded.
He was his own man all right, said Joe, and an unusual one. But you know, I did a little quiet asking into his death after I got here, and Bletchley gave me the impression you might have made a special trip to Crete, using an operation as an excuse, just to find out what happened to Colly. Any truth to that?
Stern moved awkwardly on the bench.
There could be.
Could be, yes. Could be, surely. But did you or didn't you? I don't think I caught your answer.
I did make the trip, said Stern.
I see. And naturally that was just a little thing. But what about Bletchley himself in all this?
I like him. He's a decent man.
Do you trust him?
To do his job, yes.
And his job is us, now?
In answer, Stern reached out and touched Joe's arm.
And more silence, thought Joe, just more and more of that shadowy shape that won't be. But he's got to start somewhere.
Well even if that's how it is, said Joe, there's still one thing that's been bothering me this evening in this cozy vault. That sign over the door! I know it's suggestive, but of what? And where'd it come from?
Stern turned and gazed across the crypt. After a moment he began to speak in a faraway voice.
The Panorama used to be a restaurant, he said. It was right on the river, a cheap place, mostly a refuge for off-duty dragomen. A dirty open-air restaurant with trellises and vines and banks of flowers, and a pool where ducks paddled and a cage with squawking peacocks, and strong dark wine by the flagon and huge platters of spicy lamb. A century ago three young men got into the habit of spending long Sunday afternoons there, eating and drinking and talking and talking, and they liked it so much they always went back when they could later in life.
Ah, said Joe, so that's the Panorama being referred to. I've heard of that restaurant all right, but I never knew its proper name. And the three young men in question would have been your father, once called Strongbow, and Menelik and the Cohen of the day, the one who was later known as Crazy, before they all set out on their journeys. And they kept going back to that restaurant for a full four decades, as I understand it, and that was the legendary forty-year conversation on the banks of the Nile that Ahmad used to talk about. That I also heard about years ago in Jerusalem, for that matter.
Yes, mused Stern, it did last on and off for forty years, right up until my father became an Arab holy man and disappeared into the desert. But then toward the end of his long life he decided he wanted to see Menelik one last time, Cohen being dead by then, and he traveled up from the Yemen to Cairo and he and Menelik returned to their same old restaurant one Sunday afternoon, not long before the First World War.
And they found that sign waiting for them?
Yes, said Stern. That sign and an empty lot.
Joe whistled softly.
So how did they celebrate then? Did they go look for the restaurant?
Stern shook his head, his voice far away.
No, they didn't do that, they didn't go anywhere. They were too old to drink by then and too old to have any particular interest in food, and they knew each other so well there wasn't much point in even talking anymore. So what they did was sit down in that empty lot and rest their backs on that sign and spend the afternoon enjoying the view. Now and then one of them would chuckle over some memory that came to mind, first one of them and then the other, and that was how the afternoon passed. Then when the sun began to sink they got up and left the place, Menelik to return here to his sarcophagus, my father to return to his tent in the Yemen. And for them, that was the end of the nineteenth century.
Joe whistled very softly.
And there we have it straight out, he said. And after forty years of honest raucous talk beside the Nile, there hangs the sign of a tale in time, deep underground and out of sight. And it is amazing when you think of it, how such an immensity of swirling moments can reside in a legend as brief in the telling as that one.
And sure the Panorama did move. . and sure it has and does.
***
Suddenly Stern's manner changed. A dark mood seized him, some violent memory from over the years.
He lurched heavily to his feet and began pacing around the crypt, oblivious to Joe and everything else, his eyes working feverishly in the gloom, his thoughts fixed on some distant landscape.
Joe watched him in fascination. It's strange, he thought, how much Stern can look like a beggar when he wants to, how easy it is for him to become the very poorest of the poor or anything else. . And it was frightening as well, for there had always been something profoundly disturbing to Joe in Stern's sudden transformations.
Joe sat quietly watching, waiting, as Stern moved restlessly through the shadows. . A gaunt face hollowed to the bone, so lean no more could be dug from it. Hard slender hands and scarred feet and a faded cloak made threadbare by innumerable beatings on stone, weathered by a relentless sun until it was as soft and pale as the sands of the desert. But for Joe, there was more to Stern than just his striking appearance. There had always been a hunger haunting the man that knew no bounds, a fierce and pitiless hunger that could never be satisfied.
Here, now, Stern was a beggar in a crypt. And he is that beggar, thought Joe. With Stern it's never just a disguise. As he limps there in his rags, he is that wretchedly poor man with nothing.
Yet, as Joe also knew, Stern was truly many men in many places, truly a vast and changeable spirit who had ventured so deeply into the byways of the human soul that every sound he heard there had long ago become but an echo from his own heart. A strange and mystifying presence who had touched many lives, yet there were so few of them that Joe knew anything about. Years ago in Jerusalem there had been one or two, and again in Smyrna, and now in Cairo there were a few others, friends of Stern whose lives had always been involved with his wanderings, some even for a lifetime.