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Defender of the Jewish faith, said Munk.
Future?
Death in combat. Dying in revolt against the invincible Roman legions.
Is that so? Joe called up. Are the Roman legions really invincible? What do you see up there?
Haj Harun turned back to the wall. He smiled.
Only for a time, Prester John. After a time they lose.
There. You see, Munk, you see how it is? The Romans turn out to be vincible after all. Time it takes,
naturally. Time as it was or will be. Time is all.
Time is, murmured Haj Harun dreamily from his perch on top of the safe.
See anything more? Joe called out.
For Bar Cocheba, yes. I predict this game of chance will be very profitable for him. After all, there are
nineteen years in a lunar cycle.
Joe looked confused.
According to the Jewish calendar, whispered Munk.
And thus, continued Haj Harun, since you began this game in the Jewish year of 5682, Bar Cocheba
should do very well indeed.
Joe looked even more confused.
And why might that be?
Because that year was the first year of the three-hundredth lunar cycle, answered Haj Harun. And that
certainly sounds auspicious to me, given the fact there were three of you who founded the game.
Joe whistled softly.
Facts, gents, they're just dropping all over the place. And is that a proper lunar evaluation from the top of
the safe or not? Fate on target again as usual, there's nothing like it. But hold on now. I think I can hear a
less distant moment in time preparing to announce itself.
The chimes attached to the sundial in the front room creaked and began to strike at four o'clock on that
rainy afternoon. In all they chimed twelve times.
Midnight, said Joe. I think we better be adjourning in about an hour. Is the time limit agreed?
That's a good idea, said Munk. I'm rather tired tonight.
So am I, added Cairo, suppressing a yawn.
The other players, who had been heavy losers in the three hours since the session began, were on their
feet protesting. A wealthy French merchant from Beirut was particularly angry.
Fraud, he shrieked, shaking his fists. How do you know it's midnight? It could just as well be twelve
o'clock noon.
Could be but it isn't, said Joe, smiling. The chimes struck off noon an hour before you arrived. What time
did you think you got here?
I know when I got here, shrieked the Frenchman. It was at one o'clock.
Well there you are. The chimes have to be striking midnight, couldn't be anything else. Bets now anyone?
We've still got a good hour of fast playing ahead before closing time. Munk, isn't the bet to you?
I believe it is. And since Haj Harun has found lunar evidence for my success in this game, I'm going to
take advantage of it by tripling this wager our princely guest from Baghdad had just ventured. Gentlemen,
the stakes rise in the cause of lunacy.
Fine, said Joe, very fine. We're off again. No reason to hold back just because there are only three hours
between noon and midnight on a rainy day in February. That happens all the time in bad weather. But
spring will be coming soon and then we can make up for it.
-6-
St Catherine's Monastery
Choice is the arrow.
Early in 1913, Munk arrived back in the Middle East and traveled widely on his mission for the Sarahs.
Before the end of the year he was able to report to them that although there was evidence someone might
have owned the Ottoman Empire once, it was equally obvious no one owned it now, least of all the
Ottomans.
The old jade is tottering to her grave, he wrote in a letter to Budapest. Once stately, now exhausted, she
laments in the twilight, abused and humiliated on every side. Soon night must take her.
Munk sensed he was also describing the approaching collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, although
he couldn't possibly have guessed how quickly that would happen. Yet in the next few years not only did
the Empire of the Sarahs disappear but with it the once powerful House of Szondi, both swept away in
the First World War.
Young Munk watched it all from afar, no longer interested in soldiering yet still searching as always for a
role in life and pondering the question that had been with him since childhood, the mysterious force that
had driven his great-grandfather, Johann Luigi, a century ago.
Munk traveled alone during the war years, trading throughout the Middle East and sharing his
confidences with only one man, an unlikely friend yet also his closest during that period, a wealthy old
Greek satyr who lived in Smyrna.
Unlikely on the surface of it, for Sivi was then a man already in his sixties, nearly forty years older than
Munk. But he seemed to have known everyone in his time, having long been intimate with every manner
of Levantine intrigue, and despite his notorious sexual excesses he was a wise and gentle friend, who
adopted Munk as easily as if that had been his purpose in life.
So Munk found himself returning again and again to Sivi's beautiful seaside villa in Smyrna, an exile now
from a European era that would soon cease to exist.
It's almost over, he said to Sivi one afternoon in the spring of 1918. My family has lived in Budapest
since the ninth century, but with this war a whole way of life will disappear.
They were sitting in Sivi's garden and Sivi was pouring tea, elegant as always in one of the long red
dressing gowns that he habitually wore until after sunset, when he dressed for the theater or the opera.
He paused to admire the large ruby rings on his fingers. As usual a smile hovered around his eyes and
there was a touch of mischief in his voice.
How's this, young Munk? You're not surrendering to melancholy, are you? If I were you I'd look at the
matter quite differently. Ten centuries locked in the rain and mist of central Europe? Time to make an
escape, I should think, and what better season for it than this one? Ah yes, spring and the sea and a
distant shore. Exactly what's needed to stir unexpected juices. But you always said you wanted to get
away, and now you have. For good, certainly. Still, a touch of nostalgia perhaps?
Munk shrugged.
I guess so.
Of course, and there's nothing wrong with that. But if I may say so, this twinge of nostalgia you feel has
nothing to do with a place really, with a sudden longing for Budapest. It has to do with time, I suspect,
with having been a child there, innocent and protected. That rare condition can cause nostalgia in all of
us. Am I right?
I suppose. It's true I feel I'm getting old.
Sivi laughed wickedly.
As indeed you are, young Munk. Late twenties? An absolutely ancient age. I had a friend once who felt
the same way as he drew near thirty. His youth was behind him and suicide seemed the only answer. He
asked me to find him the necessary pills and I said I would, but it might take a few hours. In the meantime
I suggested he go out and buy himself a new dress and hat, I mean a quite extravagant dress, and
position himself in one of the better cafés on the harbor and wait for me there. I told him if he was going
to die he ought to look his best when he went.
So he bought the dress?
He did. But by the time I arrived at the café he was no longer there. It seems a handsome young Greek
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