Next he favored the idea of a remote oasis, a dot in the desert so small it supported only one family, surely an ingenious hiding place.
The hydrogen valves hissed and his balloon swelled. On the tip of the Sinai peninsula he hovered over a tiny clump of green. The woman and children ran into the tent and the man raised his knife to defend his family against this floating apparition from the Thousand and One Nights.
Twenty yards above the ground Stern’s head appeared.
Any old books down there?
He changed his mind. It wasn’t a place he should be looking for but a person. Wallenstein had found a wandering holy man and fixed the dervish with his eyes, whispering that here was the true holy of holies. The dervish must carry it until he was ready to die and then pass it on to another holy man in a similar way, for this bundle or ark was the manifestation of God on earth carried by secret bearers since the beginning of time and henceforth to the end of time, letting it fall being no less a matter than letting fall the world itself.
Stern went into the deserts and bazaars asking his question.
What sacred object do you carry?
Rags were unwrapped and treasures appeared, slivers of wood and crumpled flowers and thimbles of muddy water, carved matchsticks and cracked glass and smudged slips of paper, a live mouse and an embalmed toad and many other manifestations of God, in fact just about everything except what he sought.
And you? Stern wearily asked once more.
I have no need for graven images, answered a man disdainfully. God is within me. Wait and tomorrow at dawn you will see the one and true God.
Stern spent the night. The next morning the man rose at an early hour, ate a meager breakfast and moved his bowels. He went through the mess and came up with a small smooth stone which he reverently washed and anointed with oil, then swallowed again with a triumphant smile.
Tomorrow at the same time, he said, God will appear again if you wish to return and worship Him.
And so Stern went on telling more stories and pouring more vodka and lighting more cigarettes, laughing at himself and making Maud laugh until long after midnight.
When he left she went around the room picking up ashtrays and sweeping up the ashes that had fallen everywhere as his hands flew and he talked and talked. In the kitchen she stood holding the empty bottles, gazing down at the sink. All at once she was exhausted.
She understood now why he had never made love to her, why he had probably never made love to anyone, why the sexual encounters in his life could never have been more than that.
Removed, anonymous, quickly over, and Stern alone in the end as in the beginning.
Never with someone who could know him. Never. Too, fearful of that.
He had already been tossing for several hours, his sleep torn by the grinding of his teeth. The only rest he ever knew was when he first lay down and now, two hours before dawn, even the tossing was over. His jaw aching, he reached for the blankets thrown off at his feet and lay shivering in the dark.
At last a gray light came in the window. Stern slid open a drawer by his bed and took out the needle. The warmth rolled over him and he fell back on the bed.
I’m slipping beautifully, he thought. Every night a dozen new chapters for the secret lost book he dreamed of finding, exquisitely beautiful episodes, nothing would ever come of them.
Once more he was a boy floating high in the night sky above the ruins of Marib among the breezes and stirring stars, above a distant drifting world, far above the Temple of the Moon suddenly seen in the sands. For minutes it lasted, all the minutes of his childhood in the Yemen with his father and his grandfather, wise and gentle men waiting for him to grasp their mysteries.
I’m slipping beautifully, he thought as the gray in the window faded to whiteness and he slept again under the morphine, the other hour needed for life.
He awoke feeling numb and drowsy and threw cold water over himself. No dreams now, only an empty day, but at least he had survived the harsh coming of the light.
18 Melchizedek 2200 B.C.–1933
Faith never dies, Prester John.
ON A SPRING EVENING in 1933 Haj Harun and O’Sullivan Beare sat on a hillside east of the Old City watching the sunset, the light shifting slowly over the towers and minarets and changing their colors, softly laying shadows along the invisible alleys. After a time the old man sighed and wiped his eyes.
So beautiful, so very beautiful. But there are going to be riots, I know there are. Do you think we should get guns, Prester John? You and me?
Joe shrugged. You and me, the old man really meant it. He actually believed the two of them could do something.
Ever since Smyrna I’ve been worrying about it, Haj Harun went on. Does it have to be the way it was up there? They had their lovely city too and all kinds of people living in it and look what happened. I just can’t understand why the people of Jerusalem are doing this to each other. And it’s not as if we were facing the Romans or the Crusaders, it’s the people inside the walls who are doing it. I’m frightened. Will we have to get guns? Will we?
Joe shook his head.
No, no guns, they won’t get us anywhere. I tried that when I was young and it’s a useless interim game. Use guns and you’re no better than the Black and Tans and that’s not good enough.
But what do we do then? What can we do?
Joe picked up a rock and scaled it out over the hillside toward the valley separating them from the city.
Jaysus I don’t know. I talked with the baking priest about it and he doesn’t know either. Just nods and goes back to baking his. loaves in the four shapes. Doesn’t dance anymore either, which is a bad sign. But these troubles in the city can’t be all that new to you and Jaysus that’s what makes me wonder. How have you been putting up with it all these years?
Putting up with what?
What the bloody people have been doing to you. Throwing stones at you and knocking the teeth out of your head and clawing you with their fingernails and stealing what little you have, beating you and insulting you and calling you names, all those things. If that had happened to me someplace I’d have left it long ago.
I can’t leave. You don’t seem to understand.
No I don’t and I wonder if I ever will. Look, Smyrna was bad all right but there’s something else that’s been on my mind since then, worries me and worries me and just won’t go away. All this time I’ve been looking for the Sinai Bible and now I’m beginning to wonder. It has to do with that, you see, with a promise I made myself then. Jaysus I’m just plain confused. Can I ask you a question?
Haj Harun reached out and took his hand. The lights were going on in the Old City and in the hills. Joe looked up and saw that the old man’s eyes were shining.
Prester John?
Yes all right, well it’s just this. I loved a woman once and she left me but you see I’ve learned I’ll never love another one. It seems that’s it for me and what’s a soul to do then? What’s a soul to do?
Simply go on loving her.
So I seem to be doing but what’s the sense of it? Where does it lead?
The frail hand tightened on his and then was gone. Haj Harun knelt in front of him and held him by the shoulders, his face serious.
You’re still young, Prester John. Don’t you see it leads nowhere? It’s an end in itself.
But that’s a hopeless way to do things.
No. As yet you have little faith but a time will come.
Faith are you saying? I was born with faith but it’s been going these years not coming, going and going until it’s gone now.