The Map

by T. S. Learner

  The txistulari began a funeral march and the procession took off, the wheels of the cart creaking. What struck August as extraordinary was the fact that the mayor’s young sons were the only men in attendance over the age of twenty and under sixty. Carefully concealed in the shadows, he peered out and finally sighted Izarra and Gabirel walking among the villagers. They were the last of the mourners and Gabirel straggled along reluctantly, Izarra pulling him firmly forward by his arm. A police car, driving very slowly, followed at the back, its presence only adding to the oppressive atmosphere.

  August waited for them to leave the far side of the plaza. He calculated he had at least half an hour before they would return. When the sound of the procession faded, he dashed across the plaza, his camera equipment slung across his back, then ducked into the empty church through the side door he knew led to the old stone spiral staircase that wound up to the top of the bell tower.

  The morning breeze was more powerful at the top of the tower. Staring across the ravine hemmed in by the three steep mountain slopes, August could clearly see the broad bands of sunlight and shade travelling along the tops of the trees and over the snow-capped mountains as the wind chased the clouds over the valley. He leaned against the low parapet wall, his palm finding one of the many small pits that marked the stone. This high up he could smell the pine trees, their scent carried on the breeze, and the faint aroma of rosemary; early summer under the crisp spring wind. August looked down and noticed the old bullet holes made by ricocheting shrapnel, a reminder of the Civil War, even here.

  His mind flashed back to September 1937 to a small village in Aragon, holed up in another church tower fighting a fascist offensive. He was back there, pressed against the sandbags, the broad shoulders of the German sharpshooter – a friend and member of the communist Thälmann Battalion – silhouetted against the narrow opening as he returned the fascists’ fire, the sickening almost silent thud of a bullet as his friend’s head jerked backwards, his brains a red stain on the opposite wall. In the next second August, with no thought but survival, pushed the dead body of his friend aside, to take his place at the window.

  He was still haunted by that image of himself, devoid of emotion. Crouching against the tower’s wall, August’s senses were filled with the same stretched back alertness, the acrid odour of gunpowder, the metallic pungent smell of death, the rattling of his gun fusing with the aching muscles of his shoulder; everything narrowing down to one point – what he saw through the rifle’s sights.

  A sudden breeze loosened some crumbling brick. It cascaded down onto August’s shoulders, jolting him back to the present. He stood slowly then with meticulous intent began assembling the tripod.

  The Rolleiflex sat on the tripod like a small box-shaped cyclops, the long extended eye of the Leica lens dominating the camera like some great phallic extension. August stared down into the viewfinder. The image, criss-crossed by faint lines allowing the photographer to position and focus, was of the area of forest he felt sure contained the break in the tree line he’d seen on the walk with Gabirel. He moved the camera right and then slightly left, and the boxed-in perspective changed; now there were more trees caught within the frame. August peered closer. There appeared to be a thin white line in the treetops and trunks. He straightened up and lifted the binoculars to his eyes, looking out in the same direction, panning across the mountainside.

  He found it. The same break in the forest. He looked over at the hillside, and the farmhouse – a picturesque doll’s house from this distance – came into view. He glanced back up the mountain – the break looked to be at the distance he had calculated at the library. It had to be it. Lowering the binoculars, he bent over the camera and started focusing: immediately the treetops came into sharp detail, many of them mature oaks, interspersed with taller, more elegant silver birch. But what was most fascinating was the way he could now clearly see that the break wasn’t just a small area of growth that had died or been burned away. It was a definite clearing. Could this be the location Shimon Ruiz de Luna had written about? The first of Elazar ibn Yehuda’s sacred locations that lay between the silver birch and oak beside the Goddess’s cave? He looked through the camera again, calculating where the sacred cave might be that Gabirel had shown him. It was definitely near the clearing. In which case, why hadn’t Gabirel shown August himself? The youth had certainly seemed nervous when August wanted to walk down in that direction. Had he been hiding something?

  August took a photograph, just for his record, and after checking again through the binoculars, took out his notebook and made a sketch of the area, marking the distance between the farmhouse and the clearing, heavily concealed by forest. If I hadn’t known where to look, I would never have found it. It was as if it had been deliberately concealed. He wondered if any of the other villagers knew about its existence. He was so engrossed he failed to notice the sound of the txistu and the drum had returned, floating over a cool gust of wind. The procession was winding its way back through the plaza towards the graveyard at the back of the church. He had to hurry. He packed away the tripod and glanced down at the square. The snaking line of people and vehicles had almost reached the church. August gazed down the length of the procession looking for Izarra and Gabirel. He found them, and to his horror the boy was staring directly up at August as he walked, his gaze meeting August’s straight away, as if he expected August to be up the tower looking down at them. But how? The youth’s unnatural ability to second-guess where he was and what he was about to say swept through August like a premonition. Could he really trust Gabirel? The rest of the mourners, including Izarra, stared straight ahead, oblivious. August pressed himself against the wall, waiting for the boy to betray him. Instead Gabirel, his face impassive, dropped his eyes and continued walking. August exhaled.

  §

  The monk walked across the mud-caked plaza, making his way into the church to ring in that evening’s prayers. Shimon didn’t have much time. Watching the young priest stride past a farmer herding a small group of bullocks out of his way, Shimon smiled. There was such tranquillity in this village; it was as if it belonged to another world. He turned and stared out from the bell tower, over the town’s plaza towards the mountainside. He had Elazar ibn Yehuda’s manuscript opened out in front of him. The three mountains the ancient physic had written about reared up on three sides, and there were remnants of the pagan settlement he’d described established around the river that coursed through the steep valley. A settlement unmarked by the event of Christianity, Yehuda had written, a group of tall, war-like peoples who worshipped gods of the mountains and rivers, instead of Christ, a tribe that spoke an impenetrable language unlike any he had encountered in the region. The Romans had called them Vascones and appeared to have a grudging respect for the people, who had soon proved themselves both sea merchants and mercenaries. The people of his wife, Shimon thought, marvelling with some pride at the strangeness of their union – a Jew and a Basque. He turned and looked back down across the plaza and the village – here he could see the archaeological blueprint of the original settlement echoed in the buildings atop them: the church tower built on the site of the wooden tower described by Yehuda, now making up part of the wall around the settlement, the plaza where once stood the market and meeting place. It had to be the same setting.

  Shimon turned back to the mountain slope. He was convinced Yehuda’s sacred location was here somewhere. Bending down, he put his hand into his satchel and found the eyeglass he had bought at great expense in Gazteiz when he was working as a successful physic – a time that now felt as if it belonged to another man’s life, when in fact it had been only a few years earlier.

  ‘Shimon! Shimon!’ Uxue’s voice sounded up from the base of the tower. He leaned out; she stood below with a small group of women, a large basket of fruit and vegetables balanced on her head, as was the local custom. Smiling, she waved up, and he waved back, recognising two of the women as Uxue’s aunt and cousin. Since arriving a few weeks
earlier, she had blossomed, as free from fear as she had been in months. It was not surprising – they had been welcomed by her uncle with an immediate unspoken acceptance that involved no questions and no suspicion. After travelling for days in disguise, avoiding as much contact with people as possible and approaching starvation, the hospitality had felt like a kind of heaven and the isolation of the place made it safe – at least for a while. Uxue had even spoken about staying in the village. Her uncle owned a plot of virgin land on the slope of the mountain and he’d offered it to her. It was tempting, their very own sanctuary to spend the rest of their days in, perhaps even raise a family. But Shimon knew, even if Uxue stayed, he would have to leave sooner or later. The chronicle compelled him to keep searching, to pursue Yehuda’s treasure. The search itself was now an obsession – in Shimon’s mind it had become the last duty he must complete for his father, as if by solving the enigma he would put his father’s tortured spirit somehow to rest. He had no choice. He had to keep looking. He had to string the clues together.

  Turning back to the mountainside, he lifted the eyeglass and searched the terrain, looking for something that indicated concealment, a clue that would tell him someone was trying to hide something. The treetops appeared uniform – mainly oak and birch. But halfway down the slope, below a large jutting stone ledge, it changed. Here he could see that the trees were younger, smaller and finer in shape, and some were pine – trees that did not belong to the region. As though someone had deliberately cleared an area, then replanted. The question was why? He was interrupted by a sudden fury of wings. He had disturbed a starling, which shot by him and out into the sky – a free agent.

  §

  A starling shot out from behind a stone ledge almost colliding with August and his tripod. It was nearly three o’clock and the last of the procession had dispersed, the villagers heading home for their siesta. August, still at the top of the tower, waited until he saw the priest disappear into a small side door at the far side of the church building – the residential quarters of the cleric, no doubt. Now the plaza fell eerily quiet. A skinny dog with a limp half-ran half-hopped across the empty square towards the fountain and cocked its leg to piss against the war memorial. August packed up his camera equipment and began the descent down the stone stairs. If he hurried, he would get back to the farmhouse while Izarra and Gabirel were still sleeping and he would be able to set off towards the forest without them noticing.

  The merchant unrolled the Arabic scroll and smoothed it down on top of Tyson’s hotel room desk. He stared across at Tyson, waiting for instructions. Tyson was pleased. The merchant, an old patrician-like man with a high, domed forehead and large heavy-lidded black eyes, heralded from a once-aristocratic family in a doomed Middle Eastern country that had recently shaken off its colonial overlords and become socialist, leaving the merchant and his family with little but heirlooms and antiquities to sell. He had been one of Tyson’s more reliable suppliers of objets des sciences occultes for a good number of years. He was almost a friend and certainly one of the few people in the world who had an understanding of just how intense the CIA operative’s interest was in the subject. He was also very expensive.

  Tyson leaned forward. At the bottom of the scroll was an inked stamp, an ancient seal, a drawing of a gardenia floating over a red citadel with ‘Alhambra’ written in Arabic underneath it.

  ‘Are you sure it’s authentic?’

  ‘Absolutely, found in the Alhambra. The text dates from AD 810, about a hundred years after the demise of Caliph Al-Walid the First, and was the property of one of the Umayyad emirs of Córdoba, handed down to him no doubt by a disillusioned courtier. It is an account of the relationship between the Caliph and Elazar ibn Yehuda, his great physician as reported by an earlier emir.’

  They were interrupted by the ring of the large green telephone sitting on the other side of the desk. The merchant glanced queryingly at Tyson, who let it ring, then, realising it wasn’t going to stop, picked it up. He knew from the click at the other end of the line that it was a direct call from HQ. He turned his back on the merchant.

  ‘Hello?’ he murmured into the receiver.

  ‘The light is green. Kissner will be in the city of the bull by Friday, high alert.’

  Tyson waited for a second, calculating the US general’s movements and itinerary – the meetings with the Spanish were all organised. He could afford to keep his distance.

  ‘I will inform my end.’

  ‘And, Tyson, keep your eye on the classicist. We can’t afford any bumps on the highway, understand?’

  ‘Understand.’ He replaced the receiver, then swung back around to the merchant, who’d kept his face expressionless.

  ‘Would you like me to translate?’ the merchant asked, pointing to the letter.

  ‘Please.’

  He unfolded a pair of reading glasses and perched them on the high narrow bridge of his nose, then looked closely at the yellowed parchment over which Arabic seemed to run in a series of skips and arches, both ornate and hurried. ‘This is the pertinent section I believe.’ The merchant began to read, in a slow ponderous voice, ‘“It was said that the great physician and philosopher Elazar ibn Yehuda took his own life before the order the Caliph had made (in his great wisdom) for the physician’s execution had even reached the dwelling of Yehuda. It was as if the physician had received warning or a premonition of his own execution and had decided to take destiny into his own hands. This event disturbed the Caliph greatly. He became convinced that the ‘pearls of wisdom’ Elazar ibn Yehuda claimed to have left across the Caliph’s great conquered land of Andalusia truly existed, and that, if followed, they promised a path of great wisdom leading to great treasure. Many expeditions and soldiers were sent out to discover the Jew’s path, but none proved fruitful. And so it was that the Caliph (in his great wisdom) decided the physician must have lost his sanity and that the ‘pearls of knowledge that led to great treasure or enlightenment’ were little more than symbolic of the great journey towards spiritual enlightenment the physician himself had aspired to, and most likely had Jewish mystical meaning both foreign and obscure to a righteous man of the Koran. Just before he died, the Caliph declared the treasure to be non-existent.”’ The merchant stopped and glanced across at Tyson.

  ‘What do you think?’ Tyson asked him.

  ‘It is not my place to have an opinion. However, I can tell you I have heard of recent discoveries in the northern town of Girona, of a medieval Jewish settlement, where they have found kabbalistic texts speaking of secret places, in which the Tree of Life has been made manifest, places where heaven touches the sky, and angels can descend and man ascend – but I should warn you that not all the angels named in those texts were good, some were fallen. One of the texts referenced the map of Elazar ibn Yehuda.’

  ‘So Las crónicas del alquimista existen de verdad,’ Tyson concluded, and the merchant smiled, knowing if he was to stay alive it was probably safer not to confirm or deny the existence of the chronicle.

  12

  August figured he had another two hours of light before nightfall. He’d left the farmhouse in his hiking boots and armed with a long knife he’d collected from the barn to use to clear his path if necessary. When he’d returned to the farmhouse it had been quiet and the shutters of the bedrooms were pulled shut. He assumed both Izarra and Gabirel were sleeping. No one had seen his arrival or his departure.

  He hoisted the rucksack onto his back – it held his camera and the map he’d been composing with each new piece of information. He was confident he would find something in that clearing, but what it would actually be was another question. Shimon Ruiz de Luna had only referred to it as the first of the sacred places, the first piece in the puzzle. But August had the same sense of growing excitement he used to get before a battle – that seductive combination of fear and anticipation.

  Using a young sapling he’d whittled into a walking stick, he continued along the same path Gabirel had led him up two da
ys before. The path was narrow, almost overgrown, and August guessed only Gabirel and Izarra ever used it. Under the canopy of branches and leaves, it was reduced to a green underworld, and it was damp. A tiny stream ran alongside, making many of the small rocks underfoot slippery. August paused, resting on the stick, and took out his pocket compass. He’d been walking north-west for over half an hour – by his calculations he should see the cave and the chapel over the next small hill.

  Sure enough, five minutes later the path broadened into a natural clearing, the trees giving way to several ancient boulders, beyond which August could see the dark mouth of the cave and the stone wall of the chapel. He climbed atop one of the sarsens, and turned his back to the mountain to gaze down the valley into the thick forest where Gabirel hadn’t wanted to lead him – it looked forbidden and mysterious. He lifted the binoculars and searched for contrast, for any variation in the foliage. To his surprise he found evidence of younger forest growth. The density of the trees, many of them keener in development and more vigorous than the ancient bent oak and birch trees immediately surrounding him, made it difficult to see anything. But as he was close to despairing, he came upon a chink of light glittering through the green patchwork. He checked the compass again – it appeared to be in roughly the same place as the clearing he’d seen from the tower. He jumped down from the boulder and began slashing his way through the thick undergrowth towards the light. The branches caught at his clothes and brushed his face, and he smelled the pungent scent of the cut leaves. The feeling of being both hidden and yet exposed, so very vulnerable, came flooding back to him. It was like a sixth sense, something he’d learned hiding from Franco’s troops during the retreat of 1938, when he’d woken injured only to discover he was marooned behind enemy lines. For a week he’d survived, walking and hiding along the banks of the Ebro. Then he’d had to make himself an animal. Half-delirious with thirst and hunger, as well as the smouldering of a wound, he hadn’t found it difficult to lose the last vestiges of what made him human. For one night he’d had to immerse himself in water, his head hidden by a floating log, waiting for a Fascist battalion to march past on the bank overhead. He’d stopped caring whether he lived or died, the last of his conscious thought plunged into the necessity of staying invisible. This had saved him.