***
Yes, Stern had remembered it all and left nothing out in the darkness of the bare little hotel room in Athens. And once he had even imagined reaching out and touching Eleni in the stillness, and she had looked at him the way she used to and they were young again and in love and the world was made for them, and they would go on forever doing all the wonderful things they had known on the shores of the Aegean, with wine and love and soft whispers in the shadows, and little boats in the harbor. .
A kind of prayer, then, down through the hours of that long night in Athens. And he hoped his whispers had reached Eleni and helped her in some small way as the darkness closed in and the end drew near. Nothing left out of his prayer, all the bright dark moments of love, the exquisite joy and the infinite sadness. .
It wasn't much but he hoped it had helped a little, for soon after that Eleni had slipped and lost her way, and the end had come for her.
***
Joe shook his head, stunned by this revelation from Stern's past.
Somehow it's all hard to take in, he said at last. I've just never thought of you as having had a wife. The way you've moved about and forever uprooted yourself, always traveling. . I don't know.
Stern groped for his glass, a clumsy motion, his other hand edging back and forth on the counter.
Well it was a long time ago and you never lose what you had together, but you go on as best you can, if you can. Everybody doesn't seem to be able to, and it's not a matter of courage or worth that decides it, or of being more or less of a person. I don't know what decides things like that. People come up with all sorts of answers but I've never found one that works for me. Eleni was a beautiful human being, that's all.
She had so much to give the world and she was no weaker than the rest of us, so why did it happen to her?
Yes, said Joe, it's always the same Why.
And what is that feeling anyway? asked Stern. The belief that there's a purpose to it all, or should be?
Stern moved his hand on the counter, edging it back and forth.
I've always envied people who have it, but I've never been able to see things that clearly myself. It all seems chaotic to me, and only in retrospect does life take on any kind of purpose or design. Of course that could mean I've just never been able to fathom it. Or it could mean the purpose and design aren't there, and it's only our need for them as dreaming creatures that casts some kind of coherency over life when we look back.
Stern shrugged.
When we do look back, he said, we always know there were certain moments that determined our lives, and certain things that did become inevitable for us, eventually that. . But when did it become so?
When did it begin, I wonder. .
***
Stern took out the worn Morse-code key he always carried and held it in his hand, feeling its balance.
Joe smiled.
Bit of the past still traveling with you?
What's that?
The Morse-code key. I see you still carry it.
Stern gazed down at the smooth slip of metal shining from years of being rubbed between his fingers, gently polished by the oils of his skin. His eyes were thoughtful, far away.
I didn't realize I'd taken it out. I seem to have become distracted lately, or maybe relaxed is a better word. There's been little chance for that since the war started.
Joe nodded. Sign both good and bad, he thought. Good, because it means he's leaning back and taking a look at things. Bad, because he feels none of it matters anymore.
Stern studied the key as if listening to something, then put it away.
There are no inanimate objects, murmured Stern. Everything around us whispers continually, it's just that we don't have time to listen. In the desert it's different. In the desert you have the time and you listen long and hard because your life depends on it.
Joe watched him.
Why these thoughts, Stern?
Stern frowned, moving awkwardly around on his stool.
I'm not sure. I guess I was thinking about home, the idea of a home, what it means for all the people who have lost theirs in the war and will never have one again. . I chose my life and I knew what I was doing, but it's still true you never get used to being homeless. You can get used to being away from home, whatever home happens to mean to you, that's easy enough. You can even do it forever, if you have to. But there's a difference between that and not having a home at all.
Well I can see what you're saying, Stern, but I'd never have thought you could consider yourself an alien out here. Not when you can pass yourself off as a native no matter where you go. What's more, as a native of just about any background or standing.
Joe smiled.
After all, you haven't always been a beggar in rags the way you are tonight. As I recall, some other incarnations of yours have been quite grand.
I guess.
Well?
It's what you just said. I can pass myself off as a native. But being one, feeling that you belong in a place, is different.
That it is, and that brings us back to a stranger in the bazaars and deserts, aloneness amidst the clamor and the silence. What's it all about, Stern? Why these thoughts tonight and what was the particular inanimate object you had in mind?
Stern frowned, moved.
A rug. I was thinking about a rug.
Joe watched him.
A rug, you say. Simply that.
Yes. Rugs always remind me of someone's home because that's where I've always seen them, in someone's home. Most of my life has been spent in places like this, bare rooms with bare floors and almost no furniture, not places for living. It's just a little thing, one of those innumerable details we almost never think about. One of those tiny physical details that define us eventually, strangely.
That old faded red wool hat of yours, Joe, that's a physical detail. The one you used to wear in Jerusalem when you were living alone in that odd little room on a roof in the Armenian Quarter. Do you still have that hat?
Yes.
With you here in Cairo?
Yes.
And you wear it?
Well I did all right, back when I was taking my ease in the Hotel Babylon and seeing the world with the help of Liffy's miraculous gift of faces and gift of tongues. Or when I was out back in the courtyard with Ahmad late at night, sitting in our tiny oasis and listening with him to the stars.
Why did you wear it, Joe?
Habit, I suppose. Reminded me of things, I suppose. Must make me feel comfortable wearing it.
And uncomfortable too sometimes?
Oh yes. The incarnations come and go and it's not always easy to recall where those other people in your body have been, and what they did and what seemed so crucial at the time. Of course some of it was crucial, all of it in its way, but is that what you meant about physical details? That my red wool hat is a way of reminding myself that a kid on the run in the hills of southern Ireland, and an obsessed young man playing longterm poker in Jerusalem, and the medicine man of the Hopi Indians, and an Armenian agent known as Gulbenkian in wartime Cairo, that these odd types are all related in some obscure way?
Moreover, that they all grew out of a boy who passed his childhood tossing around in a fishing boat on the tides off the Aran Islands? Tides and more, despite all? Despite even adverse winds and the peculiar sunspots of time? That all these boys and men and notions I've just mentioned, despite the years, still have something in common? Namely me, because they are me? Is that what you meant?
Stern laughed.
You have a way of putting it, Joe. But yes, something like that.