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kingdom in the east.
Ah yes, my lost kingdom, I almost forgot. But if I were to leave, and Cairo here too, wouldn't you still
have someone to talk to?
Haj Harun looked down at Munk. He smiled.
Of course, there'd still be Bar Cocheba. He'd understand.
Yes, said Joe, I'm sure he would. So will you do that for us, Munk? Will you?
Munk, stopped circling the table. He stood still, gazing at the two men at the table.
So that's it, that's what you meant. You were serious, this was the last hand. You're both leaving
Jerusalem?
Yes we're off, Cairo and me. I've been here long enough. After all I only came by accident because a
freighter in Cork happened to be carrying some nuns to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage, and I just
happened to be a nun at the time.
And you, Cairo?
After I spend my Sunday afternoon beside the Nile I'm going back to the Sudan. I'll find a village on the
edge of the Nubian desert, like the one where Johann Luigi Szondi met my great-grandmother. After all
I'm a good deal older than the two of you. I'm fifty-three and if I'm going to have a family, it's time to
start.
Joe?
Oh I'll just go ambling one way or another looking for Prester John's lost kingdom. The old country first I
think, I'd like to dig up the musketoon I buried long ago in an abandoned churchyard. Then the New
World I think, like the Sarahs. Out west maybe, you know how I've always wondered about the
Indians. Childish isn't it. Amazing how a man can grow older and still have the child inside him, but there
you are. And so too with the Sinai Bible that I wanted to find so much for so long, because of its treasure
maps don't you know.
Joe smiled.
Amazing isn't it. Treasure maps? That was the child inside again. But I've got a confession to be making
to you now, and it's just this. I know exactly where that Bible is, I've known for some time. And I won't
tell you right now how I found out, but I will ask you to keep that information to yourselves. You see I've
decided it should stay where it is for a while, until the right moment comes. Then I'll ask Haj Harun to go
and get it for me.
And when will be the right moment? asked Cairo.
Ha, said Joe. Can't say, can I. Don't know, do I. Not now I don't, but when that moment comes it may
well have to do with family. You're not the only one at this table, Cairo, who's thinking along those lines.
And the treasure maps you wanted so much? asked Munk.
Sure, said Joe, and there are such things, they do exist. But they're not to be found in books, I've learned
that. Time it took me, being such a young and innocent one and all, you Munk having ten years on me
and you Cairo having twenty, and Haj Harun, well just plain close to three thousand. But I did learn the
truth of the matter finally, and it's that the treasure maps around here are to be found in Haj Harun's head,
right behind those shining eyes, naturally, so, it's the only safe place for articles so precious, so rare. And
they've been there for a long time, ever since way back then when Melchizedek, the primary priest of
antiquity, was the first and the last King of Salem, City of Peace, reigning on this mountain long before
Abraham journeyed out of the dawn of the east with his flock and came to seek him out and receive his
blessing and father the sons called Ishmael and Isaac in this land, long before Arabs and Jews ever
existed with their troubles or even had names like that to divide them, long before then Melchizedek had
already dreamed his gentle dream here on the mountain, Haj Harun's dream, and in so doing given it life
forever, without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life.
On top of the antique Turkish safe, Haj Harun smiled shyly.
I told you that, he whispered. Those were my words. We were sitting out on a hillside east of the city one
evening, watching the sunset.
That's what we were doing, said Joe, and it was only this spring, and you pointed at the city as the sun
went down and said that. And you said you were Melchizedek, because you both had and have the
same dream, and I couldn't understand any of that at first and I said you were all mixed up, mixing up
time again. But you weren't. You were right. Time works your way and not the other, and it took me a
while to get used to the idea, to really know it, but now I have and do. Now I've learned the truth of it,
the truth of the treasure maps too. Peace is the treasure, peace to seek, Melchizedek's gentle dream on
the mountain. So a time will come for the Sinai Bible, gents, but it's not here and now. Here and now is
for you to pick up your winnings, Munk, and let me tell you we've made it perfectly respectable for you,
just very tidy and respectable.
Respectable?
Yes, your winnings. For my part, I knew you wouldn't want to be caught handling those dreadful religious
articles I peddle on the side, so I've arranged to sell the concession to that shifty-eyed Frenchman who
used to come to the game sometimes. All proceeds from the sale to go to you, to be paid in full over the
next year. And what's more, he'll be working out of Beirut so you won't even have to look at him around
here. I convinced him it was a more reliable business than dealing in stolen ikons, safer too, and he said
he didn't want to live in Jerusalem anyway. Bad memories, he said. Especially that time back in '29 when
Chief Sipping Bear wiped him out at this very table and sentenced him to work at an oven in purgatory,
with the baking priest as his parole officer. Didn't much care for that apparently, did not, said the
Frenchman with the shifty eyes.
As for pharaonic mummy dust, murmured Cairo.
Munk smiled.
Yes?
I knew you wouldn't want to be involved with that either. For philosophical reasons of course. It does
speak of a distant past, after all, and what you're looking to is a future, the more immediate the better. So
you won't have to deal with the pharaohs, Munk, neither in their powdered nor their mastic form. I've
found a man who is buying all my mummies, and the mummy operation in its entirety, for a very
handsome price. And he'll be headquartered in Alexandria, so you won't have to see him around here
either.
Have I also met this man by chance?
By chance, you have. He was in the game the same evening when the Frenchman fared so poorly against
Chief Sipping Bear. An elderly Egyptian landowner, cotton-fat, spastic when excited, said to be impotent
if his favorite hunting falcon, hooded, isn't perched on the mirror that runs the length of his bed.
I remember him, said Munk. The black English judge found him guilty of having made a fortune by
exploiting his workers. As I recall, the judge took away his cotton crop for the next ten years.
Precisely. Well now he's suddenly come up with the money to buy the entire mummy dust trade in the
Middle East. And although spastic at times, he does have a keen business mind. And although elderly, he
does have a large brood of what he calls nephews, who could and should be put to work. The falcon
problem, it seems, was merely an eccentricity of his later years.
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