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.
No, that can’t happen.
But it did all right, she took it.
No, she gives it, she never takes it.
Oh Jaysus man, there you go again talking about Jerusalem. This is a woman I’m referring to, a flesh and blood woman.
I see.
Well then?
Faith never dies, Prester John. If you love a woman you’ll find her someday. In my time I’ve seen many temples built on that mountain across the valley and although they’ve all fallen to dust one still remains and will always remain, the temple of the first king the city ever had. Yes I’m frightened when I think of Smyrna and what it may mean for tomorrow, but I also know that Melchizedek’s City of Peace can never die because when that gentle King of Salem reigned on that mountain so long ago, long before Abraham came to seek him out and receive his blessing and father the sons called Ishmael and Isaac in this land, long before then Melchizedek had already dreamed his gentle dream, my dream, and in so doing given it life forever, without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life.
Who’s that you’re talking about now? You or Melchizedek?
Haj Harun smiled shyly.
We’re the same person.
Go on with you, you’re all mixed up.
Haj Harun laughed.
Do you think so? Come let’s go back, she’s waiting for us.
They started down the hillside, Joe stumbling and falling in the darkness, Haj Harun floating lightly along the rough path that he had followed innumerable times.
Bloody eternal city, thought Joe, looking up at the walls rising above them. Bloody marvel how he keeps it running, lurking up there on the Mount of Olives at sundown disguised as a broken-down Arab. Keeping watch he is, guarding the approaches, a former antiquities dealer for sure, old Melchizedek the first and last king spinning his city through the ages with no end in sight. Riots and mayhem to come, fearful of Smyrna but still trying to take the long view, as Stern once said.
Madness all right, that’s what this place is, daft time spinning out of control, not meant for a sober Christian who just wants to make do with three squares a day and no heavy lifting and maybe a fortune on the side. But all the same who’d have thought a poor boy from the Aran Islands would one day be consulting in the shadows of Salem with the very same king who was handing out blessings here long before these bloody Arabs and Jews even existed with their bloody troubles?