Authors: Robert Stone
"One day," Majoub said, "we'll drive over to Alexandria. There one can still have wine."
"For the time being," said Sonia.
"Last ID case I had," Ernest said, "the poor bugger claimed a soldier ate it. Laughed out of court, right? But we asked around and what do you think?"
"Some smartass kid ate it?"
"You got it. Scarfed the thing, lamination and all. So the bloke loses his job."
"Funny," Nuala said without humor.
"Well, it is kind of funny," Lucas said, "in a dreadful sort of way."
"Funny," said Nuala, "unless it's you."
Lucas raised his glass in salute. "Someday," he proclaimed somberly, "somewhere, somehowâeverything will be funny for everyone."
O
NE DAY,
with De Kuff and the others safely sequestered in Ein Kerem, Sonia was cleaning Berger's old apartment in the Muslim Quarter when two young men who claimed to represent the Waqf, the Islamic religious authority, arrived. Sonia offered them coffee, which they sternly declined. Both wore djellabas and white religious caps. One was short and dark-complexioned, the other sallow with a thin fringe of beard that served to frame his face. The pale one had large, expressive eyes and a prominent nose. Taken together, his features had a fey, slightly grotesque fascination. Sonia was immediately reminded of photographs she had seen of the young Frank Sinatra. She thought the man might have learned his antique English in India or Pakistan.
"Here was a madrasah," he explained to Sonia. "Here also lived al-Husseini, the beloved. And Sheikh Berger al-Tariq, of blessed memory, who was your friend. We thought you were as we are, a believer."
"We made allowances," said his companion, the dark one.
"We're here to learn," Sonia said. "To pray and to study. This is why I came. This is why I invited my friends."
"Which," asked the Sinatra-like man's companion, "is your husband?"
Before she could improvise a respectable answer, the man spoke again. "If you are here to study and to learn, you, the friend of the beloved Berger al-Tariq, then surely you must know that the study of studies, the end of learning, is Islam."
Everyone kept silent. The second man uttered a quick blessing.
"I have no husband," Sonia said. "I live without my family. I also loved Berger al-Tariq, whom I bless, but he was not my husband. I revere Islam and so do my friends."
The two men watched her for a moment.
"What is it," the dark man asked, "that the old man tells the Christians? Why do they crowd around him?"
"They even come here," the pale one said.
"He has had a vision," Sonia said. "He speaks to everyone. Not only to Christians."
"To Jews?"
"Yes."
"To believers?"
"He reveres all faiths. He adds nothing of his own. He encourages Muslim belief."
"But he is a Jew," said the man with the face like young Sinatra. "We are told this. And you," he said to Sonia. "You as well."
"Abdullah Walter was born a Jew. A great sheikh. The friend of al-Husseini. This was his house. I am his follower. My friends believe as I do."
"As the house of al-Husseini, it should be the property of the Waqf," said the dark man. "But it is owned by a Christian, an Armenian who follows the Pope of the Franks. And inhabited by Jews."
"To me it's Berger's house," Sonia told them. "Everything here honors him."
"The old man speaks before the Christian church that was the mosque of Salah ad-Din. We see him there."
"We think there is irreligion," said Frank Sinatra. "Irreligion in the house of al-Husseini. We also think the house will be taken by the Jews."
His voice was measured, but Sonia saw his faint tremble of rage and knew that the cause was lost. The Waqf was nominally a force for moderation, answerable to the Jordanians. But plainly there would soon be trouble.
When it grew dark, she turned on the electric light and began sorting through the things that she felt an absolute need not to abandon in the move. Much would have to be left behind, although she had done her best to disperse Berger's property among his relatives and taken what she could herself.
After nine, when it was completely dark, the telephone rang. She had been going through Berger's uncompleted writing projects, half listening to the singing and dancing from a bar mitzvah celebration that reverberated distantly across the massive network of stone steps and walls that divided her chamber in the old mufti's palace from the Kotel plaza.
"Hello?"
It was Chris Lucas, wanting to see her.
"Do you mind coming here, Chris? If you think it's not safe, I'll meet you somewhere else."
"Forty minutes," Lucas said. "I'll walk it."
He hung up before she could caution him not to come from the Kotel side. In fact, that was how he came, on the theory that if Lestrade could use the old Cardo road, so could he.
The African boys were gathered around a lamp in the courtyard as he went up the stairs. One of them had a Game Boy in his hand.
"Were you followed?" she asked him.
"No more than usual," he said. He had never thought of himself as being followed in the city.
"This may be our last evening here, Chris."
She told him about the visit from the Waqf and that she thought it would no longer be possible to stay.
"I should have brought some champagne," Lucas said. "To cultivate beautiful memories."
"I'll have memories, all right." Then, from the way she looked at him, he thought she had grown angry with him. "I had a fantasy. I thought of us living here."
"You mean you and your growing band of pilgrims? Dangerous work, Sonia. And a little overcrowded."
"I meant you and me, Chris. The two of us. When things come to pass."
"Oh," he said, "you mean in the Age of Miracles. The New Order of Ages. Like it says on the money."
"Don't laugh at my fantasies," she said. "Not if you want to be in them."
He reached out and drew her to him and kissed her. "I'm not in a position to laugh," he said. He ran his hands over her and held her close, unwilling to let her go. He felt hopeless and desperate, as though there were no way to keep her. "I would if I could."
"Holy shit," she said. "Must be love."
"That's how I see it," Lucas said.
She stood facing him and rested her hands on the front of his shoulders, his collarbone, and patted a rhythm. "Chris," she said, "the Rev doesn't even want me to see you."
"The hell with him, then."
"At least that's what Raziel said. He says the Rev feels that if you won't wait with us, you don't deserve our company."
"If I won't sing alleluia, I don't get a pomegranate. And naturally you let these people control your life."
"It's how religious communities sometimes work. If I were part of a Sufi community in New York, it would be the same."
"Hey," Lucas said, "if you'll actually come with me, I'll join up. I'll play the tambourine, dress as Santa Claus, eat with my hat on, you name it. But I have conditions too."
"Such as?"
"Such as you've got to sing for me sometimes. And I get to keep working on the book. When it's done we go back to New York."
"I don't want you to pretend to believe, Chris. I want you to open yourself. Then we can be together. Really."
"Ah, Sonia," Lucas said. He laughed and ran a hand through his thinning hair. "What are we going to do? Because I really do love you. Maybe," he said, "we better take it by the day."
She slid away when he tried to embrace her.
"I think we both have empty places in our lives, Chris. Don't you agree with that?"
"I thought we could help each other with that."
"I do too. I do. But there's more to things than you and me."
"I'm not used to believing too many things before breakfast, Sonia. That's the difference between you and me."
"But you were religious. You told me."
"I was a child. I also believed in the tooth fairy."
"I wish I could hold you down and whup you," Sonia said. "And when I let you up, you'd see."
Lucas sat down on Berger's stained, carpeted bed and poured himself a glass of the late master's plum brandy.
"Let's hear it from you, then, Sister Sonia. How does it look to you? What's happening? What must I do to be saved?"
"It's simple," Sonia said. "Well, OK, it's not simple. But we've just had the twentieth century, right? We tried everything. Philosophy. Making life into art. Everything got further and further from how it was supposed to be."
"You mean there was a plan the whole time? Everything was supposed to be a lot better? Someone obviously fucked up on a major scale."
"Yes. We did. Sure there was a plan. Why else is there something rather than nothing?"
"Because it happened that way."
"Some things are better than others," Sonia said. "Some things make you feel good, some don't. Don't tell me you've got a problem with that."
"Not me."
"What makes you feel good is being closer to the way things were first created. They were created as God's word. He stepped aside and made a place for them and for us. The secret of that is in Torah, in the words themselves, not just in what they mean."
"A lot of people believe that," Lucas said. "It doesn't have to come between us."
"Over the years a man comes to speak the words of Torah and change our lives to the way they were meant to be. Moses came. Jesus. Sabbatai Zevi. Others too. Now it's De Kuff."
"Oh, come on," Lucas said. "De Kuff is just a manic depressive. He's manipulated by Raziel."
"No, baby. Raziel only found him. The ones like De Kuff are always men of great suffering. Always despised. Always struggling."
"So what now?"
"Now, the Rev has to struggle like Jesus on the cross. The prophets say that his struggle takes the form of a war, but it's a war without weapons. When it's over, it's like we'll be home. The whole world will be home. My parents knew that. They just didn't know how it was done."
"I'm not telling you you can't believe that, Sonia. I just want to be with you."
"But first they need me here, baby. To bear witness."
Eventually, he coaxed her to him.
"We'll take it by the day," he said. "If you need me, I'll be here."
"You still think I'm crazy," she said.
"I don't know what's crazy and what's not. I'll tell you what," he said. "I'll listen to the Rev if you go talk to Obermann. Try looking at things his way."
"Obermann?" She laughed at him. "Obermann is just a cheap seducer. The biggest cocksman in town. What am I going to learn from him, other than the obvious?"
"Well, he's a Jungian," Lucas suggested meekly. "Anyway, this is the city of seduction. Everyone's pitching."
"And meanwhile the two of you write your book?"
"It won't spoil the process, will it?"
"I don't know."
"Anyway, the book might turn out very differently from the way I expected," Lucas said. "I might end up seeing things your way."
"You're bribing me with hope."
"I'm bribing myself. I'm trying to keep my own hopes up."
And that was it, he thought. It was all a series of rooms one never found one's way out of. You had to be content with that, or die, or go completely crazy.
They had just gotten into bed when the door opened to a key and a dark young woman dressed like an American entered the apartment. Someone they could not see followed behind her.
"What a pleasant place," she said. "How very nice."
When she came upon them in the bedroom she betrayed no embarrassment whatsoever. She had a bright, unfriendly smile.
"How about this?" she said to someone in the next room. "The grand mufti's very own digs. La-di-dah."
"Just a little portion of them," Lucas said. "Would you mind telling me who you are and what you're doing here?"
The person with the woman was a young man who wore chinos and a kippa and carried an automatic rifle.
"We're prospective tenants," he explained. "We're interested in the apartment." He had the same smile as the woman. "We have a use for the premises and we wanted to get a jump on the competition. Just look around before you give it back to your Arab friends. Or your Christian-Hebrew, Hebrew-Christian friends. Or whatever they are."
"Next time," Lucas said, "make an appointment."
"Next time," the young man said, "you won't be here, smart guy."
They really did look a lot alike, Lucas thought. They might have been brother and sister.
The woman wandered around, writing in a notebook as if she were taking inventory.
"Great place," she said again, leaning into the bedroom again with her unpleasant smile. "Thank you so much for letting us see it."
"Yeah," said the young man as they went out, "thanks a million, kids. Have fun."
From the sounds on the stairs outside, there were other people with them. It had been a reconnaissance in force.
"Obviously," Sonia said, "we're sitting on some prime real estate."
"I have the feeling," Lucas said, "that it's just been priced out of our range."
"I guess we don't want to be here," Sonia said, turning on her stomach, "when the Waqf and those people start fighting it out over the place. Poor Mardikian. I wonder if he'll get his price."
"He'll probably be leaving town," Lucas said. He reached up and turned off the old-fashioned beaded lamp. "Anyhow, 'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.'"
But it was not as simple as that. Somehow, in spite of the force of his passion, he could not make love to Sonia. It was what he had wanted more than anything, and now he found it beyond him. To be sure, there were a thousand exculpatory reasons. The confusions between them, the peculiar midnight raid. A man could be forgiven. But for some reason, Sonia took it badly. She wept and punched him and hid herself beneath the pillow. He got out of bed and started getting dressed to leave.
"No, no, please," she said. "Please don't do that. I don't know what's got into me."
"I'm sorry. This happens to me sometimes."
"It's because of things..."
"I guess it is. Those two characters. The whole mess."