"Edward Whittemore - The Jerusalem Quartet 04 - Jericho Mosaic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Whittemore Edward)

Jericho Mosaic

By
Edward Whittemore
Also By Edward Whittemore
Quin's Shanghai Circus
Sinai Tapestry
Jerusalem Poker
Nile Shadows

Jericho Mosaic
Copyright ┬й 1987 by Edward Whittemore
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Whittemore, Edward. Jericho mosaic.I. Title. PS3573.H557J4 1987 813'.54 86-12806ISBN 0-393-02395-8W.
W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10110 W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 37
Great Russell Street, London WClB 3NU1234567890
For Larry and Sarah Whittemore
and Tom and Lois Wallace
Part
1
 ONE

Jerusalem in the early twentieth century was a vibrant little city only newly awakened from medieval obscurity
by the coming of the British at the end of the First World War тАФ a dream from antiquity suddenly stirring to
life after four hundred years of slumber under the stupefying decadence of the Ottoman Empire. With their
penchant for order and proper hygiene, the British briskly built hydraulic works and piped fresh water up to
Jerusalem, but many people in the walled Old City still drank from the cisterns of the past, those underground
reservoirs from other ages which never saw the light of day. For Jerusalem was a place where many eras still
crowded together, and where no event from history was too remote for a morning's gossip, since the very
ruins of that event might well be providing shade for the day's transactions of commerce and hope.
Stately Nubian doormen reigned in splendid solemnity at the entrances of hotels. Wily merchants hovered in
dim shops fingering the purses on their sleek bellies, waiting with patience for fate and guides to bring them
their quota of fools who would be as deaf as they were to the cries of beggars and holy men.
Preceded by a shabbily uniformed kavass clearing a way with his thumping staff, Turkish grandees in red
tarbooshes swayed by to assignations in flowering courtyards, already glassy-eyed from a nargileh or two of
hashish at breakfast. Fierce bedouin and European travelers haggled side by side over bunches of garlic and
sacks of dates, and over ancient coins bearing pale green profiles of Alexander the Great or some
heavy-nosed emperor of Rome or Byzantium.
Black-robed monks of a dozen nationalities swirled down alleys in peaked headdresses and round and flat
hats, disappearing along arcane routes devised in the Middle Ages, the Red and White monks of the Russian
church looking particularly frenzied as they delved ever deeper into the plots and counterplots of their
twentieth-century revolution at home.
The poor and the blind wandered among delirious lost pilgrims seeking the sites of old. Cripples in carts
peered up from the cobblestones as men chanted allegiance to obscure causes or dropped to their knees in
an ecstasy of prayer, or shouted out the virtues of the pots and beads and rags they had for sale.
In the Muristan where the Crusader Knights of St. John had been quartered and where the Roman Forum had
once stood, stringed orchestras played in front of shops to attract customers. And everywhere in the dark
recesses of the bazaars there were reaching and gesturing hands and wild rumors of forgotten magnificence
being whispered into eager ears, as Jerusalem seethed again with merchandise and fervor after a drowsy