The Tower

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Philip instinctively drew back, dazzled by that vision.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s better that you do not know my name,’ replied the woman in Arabic, ‘but tell me how I can reward you. Your flaming weapons and your courage have saved us.’

  Philip struggled to control his emotions. The chase, the pain in his arm and the vision of her face had induced a kind of rapturous shock. Meanwhile, El Kassem had convinced the group that it was best to take shelter at the spot where he and Philip had built their fire, and he led them there. He got off his horse and blew at the nearly extinguished embers until the flame was rekindled. The woman took care of Philip: she washed out his wound with vinegar, stitched it with silk thread and bandaged it.

  Philip couldn’t take his eyes off her. ‘The only reward I ask for,’ he managed to say, ‘is to be able to see you again.’

  ‘That is not possible,’ replied the woman in a calm but firm voice. His eye caught hers for an instant and he thought he saw a trace of sadness there. ‘Ask me for something else.’ Her manner of speaking made it clear that she was accustomed to the privilege of granting favours.

  The fire was crackling now and the men were sitting in a circle all around it, putting together what food they had: bread, dates and goat’s cheese. Philip remembered the cheese and biscuits in Lino’s case and added those to the supper. As he stole a glance at the woman, who was sitting to the side with her back against a stone, her head still uncovered, his gaze was attracted to the pendant hanging between her breasts. It was a gold charm, a little winged horse on a kind of cylindrical pedestal. The words of Avile Vipinas immediately sprang to mind: ‘His tomb is shaped like a cylinder and is topped by a Pegasus.’ No, it was absolutely impossible that a chance meeting in the Middle Eastern desert could provide the key to a clue left so long ago and so far away.

  ‘You can’t continue your journey in the dark,’ said Philip. ‘You’ve seen how dangerous it is here.’

  The woman spoke softly to her men and Philip was struck by the sound of their language. An intonation he’d never heard before. It sounded very vaguely like Coptic, but he couldn’t be sure.

  ‘What language were you just speaking in?’ he asked her.

  The woman smiled. ‘I can’t tell you that either!’ But her gaze lingered on Philip’s face and her eyes shone with amber light in the reflection of the flames.

  The men found a place to stretch out, removing blankets from the horses’ saddles. One of them took a place further up the hill behind a rocky outcrop to guard the others as they slept. El Kassem moved to a solitary spot and lay down, but Philip knew that his slumber was as light as the air and his senses were always alert. He would wake instantly at the slightest sound, at the merest odour carried on the wind.

  Philip remained alone near the fire, poking at the embers. The woman sat down next to him. ‘Does it hurt?’ she asked, brushing his arm with a light touch.

  ‘It burns, a little.’

  ‘You’re lucky it’s a flesh wound. It will be better in a few days. Keep it uncovered in the desert and bandaged in the city, then you’ll heal more quickly.’

  Philip turned to look at her. Her face and the curves that he sensed under her long linen tunic seemed the purest and most perfect expression of beauty that he had ever contemplated. Her straight, shining hair framed the face of an Egyptian goddess, barely touching her smooth shoulders; her long, slender fingers moved lithely to accompany her words.

  ‘Today was the first time you ever found yourself in combat, wasn’t it?’ she asked after a little while.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did it feel?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. As if I’d taken a drug. Killing is as easy as being killed. Your heart beats like mad, your thoughts come as quickly as your breath. Please, tell me that I can see you again . . . I can’t imagine never seeing you again. I would have died for you today, if I had to.’

  The woman’s gaze changed suddenly, lighting up like the sky at sunset. She stared into his eyes with sorrowful intensity, as if a moment’s look could make up for abandoning him. ‘Don’t torment me,’ she said softly. ‘I must follow my road. I have no choice. I must face my destiny, as difficult as it is.’

  She fell still, lowering her head, and Philip did not have the courage to disturb her silence, or dare to touch the hands she held in her lap. She looked up again and her eyes were shining. ‘But if I were one day given the gift of freedom, then, yes . . . I would like to see you again.’

  ‘Freedom? Who is holding you prisoner? Tell me, please. I’ll fight to free you!’

  The woman shook her head and smiled. ‘Nothing is holding me prisoner except my fate. But let us forget these sad thoughts now and drink together.’ She took from her sack two cups of silver, masterpieces of ancient art, and poured some palm wine, fragrant with spices, into the cups from a flask. Philip drank with her from that marvellous cup, from her deep, dark gaze, from the starry, silent sky, and it seemed as if he had never lived before that moment. She brushed his face for an instant with a light caress and he felt heat rising to his face and tears to his eyes. He stood and watched her walk away, as lightly as if she were not touching the ground, and vanish into the darkness.

  PHILIP WOKE the next day with his head confused and aching, saw that the sun was already high and that his horse was indifferently nibbling at the grass sprouting between the rocks. El Kassem was standing in front of him.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ he cried. ‘Why didn’t you stop her from leaving?’

  ‘If she wants you, you will find her again,’ said El Kassem. ‘If she doesn’t want you, you could search the world over and never find her.’

  ‘But I have to find her,’ snapped Philip, and there was desperate determination in his voice. He gathered up his things quickly and packed them onto his horse under the puzzled but impassive gaze of El Kassem. As he was about to jump onto the saddle, Philip realized that his companion was watching him without moving.

  ‘Aren’t you coming with me?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t come here to run after a woman. If you want to find your father, I’ve told you who you must contact. I’ll see you again when you have recovered your reason.’

  Philip wanted to answer but El Kassem’s words rang with harsh condemnation and gave him no way out. He simply said, ‘I haven’t given up our search, El Kassem, make no mistake. But I have to find her.’

  He spurred on his horse and flew away across the valley at a gallop. Traces of the little caravan were still visible and he thought that his speed would lead him to her, but his hopes were soon dashed. Before long, the trail he was following was lost in the close, confused web of tracks left by the caravans and herds heading into the city. When he found himself within sight of Aleppo he cursed his naïvety. He had been preceded by a tide of camels, sheep and goats, of people pushing overladen donkeys or dragging carts loaded with all sorts of merchandise.

  He stopped and got off his horse, certain that El Kassem would not be long catching up, but he waited in vain. He stood for hours near the city gate, attracting the curiosity of all those who passed, until he finally gave up and entered the city alone, on foot, leading his horse by its halter. He had no idea of how to find a place to stay. He decided to follow a group of camel drivers and ended up shortly thereafter at a caravanserai where they accepted his French francs in exchange for a stall for his horse and a room for himself.

  His quarters opened onto the upstairs gallery and consisted of a room with flaking plaster walls that might have once been whitewashed and a straw mattress lying on a bed of bricks. The boy who accompanied Philip left him an old lamp in exchange for a few coins and the dim light it cast revealed the bedbugs and cockroaches that would be keeping him company for the night. He shook out the mattress, beating it as best he could to get most of the parasites out, then tried to treat his wound with some methylene blue that he kept in his haversack. He reapplied the bandage, pushed a bench up a
gainst the door so he’d be sure to wake up should anyone try to get in and fell back onto the mattress as his fatigue finally got the better of him. In that filthy place, without the support of El Kassem, and with no hope of seeing the woman who had unsettled his soul and his mind, he felt terribly alone. He dozed off, drained of all energy, and soon fell into a leaden sleep.

  FATHER HOGAN POURED the steaming coffee into cups and handed one to Father Boni. The priest half-closed his eyes as he sipped the boiling liquid, then set the cup down and finished his story.

  ‘The sons of Tubalcain prospered in that boundless land, but they built no cities – other than the one on the mountain – or other stone structures, except for the Fortress of Solitude. It was from there that the attack on the Guardian Angel was unleashed on the night of the Scorpion . . .

  ‘The text is quite difficult to interpret at this point, Hogan . . . What I could understand is that they somehow succeeded in reining in the energy generated by a conjunction of the stars and combining it with an artificial device they had created to produce an explosion of indescribable power. The result was disastrous: the basalt barrier cracked and crumbled, flames spewed forth and cut a path through the desolation as a shrill whistle tore through the air, devastating the land of Delfud. A whirlwind raised a huge cloud of dust and sand and the whole countryside became an arid wasteland. The current slowed in the rivers and the great lakes evaporated. The shores were covered with vast stretches of salt, scattered with thousands and thousands of skeletons, bones bleaching under an ever more relentless sun.

  ‘But this disaster did not subdue the sons of Tubalcain. They did not give up. They built canals and dams to distribute the waters and cisterns to gather the rain whenever it fell. They grew plants more resistant to drought and used them to produce food. They tamed animals that could withstand hunger and thirst. But all of their efforts did nothing but prolong their agony.

  ‘Sure now that their race was doomed to vanish for ever, those among them who knew the secrets of science concentrated all their knowledge into a single mind that shot up towards the highest heavens and disappeared into the abyss of the firmament.

  ‘On the earth remained only the Tower of Solitude, all alone in the middle of an endless desert . . . Even the Garden of Immortality had been destroyed. The basalt barrier collapsed, and the sands covered everything. They say that a single pool of clean water survived, so cool and fresh that not even the sands could prevail over it, but that those who chanced upon it could no longer find the road of return. In other words, anyone who reached it never came back. Since there was nothing left to watch over, the Guardian Angel sheathed his sword and fell asleep.’

  The priest fell still, listening to the bell of St Peter’s slowly chiming the hour. Then he continued.

  ‘Those who had survived were tormented by the scarcity of their resources and by the unbearable heat. Some of them set off in search of lands where they could give birth to a new life. They took the forefather – “He-who-must-not-die” – with them so they would never forget their origins and never lose the hope of achieving knowledge.

  ‘Others refused to leave their lands and settled around the Tower, the only trace of their past greatness, but God punished them by taking from them their faces and their human expression. They became the “People-without-a-face” and they sought refuge under the ground.

  ‘Those who had left in search of a new life walked for months and months under the blazing sun. They carried in their souls the memory of boundless plains, of the majestic flow of their lost rivers, of the flight of birds and the galloping of herds, of their parched lakes that had once reflected the golden clouds of the sky . . . At first, they fed upon the animals that fell to hunger and thirst, and they drank their blood, and then they fed upon each other, taking those who collapsed along the road, overwhelmed by weakness and hardship.

  ‘Thus they pushed on until one day they found a valley confined between two arid slopes. On the bottom of the valley a great river flowed between palms and sycamores, fig and pomegranate trees. They drank that water and ate of those fruits and regained their strength, so that their race multiplied and spread throughout the valley. They hunted wild animals and built villages with reeds from the river and mud from the banks, saving the stones to build a tomb for “He-who-must-not-die”.’

  Father Boni dropped his head and was silent.

  ‘It’s a legend,’ said Father Hogan. ‘Dreadful, fascinating, but a legend nonetheless.’

  ‘It is an epic tale,’ said Father Boni. ‘That’s different.’

  ‘That may be. But even so, what changes? We’ll never succeed in knowing if there’s a glimmer of truth in all these ravings. The book clearly has great value, but only from a literary point of view. If it’s authentic, and if it’s true that it’s older than the pyramids, older than Sumer and Accad, that’s where its value lies. We’ll announce its discovery at a big conference and let the philologists and linguists have a go at it.’

  ‘Listen to me, Hogan. I have proof, do you understand? Proof that the signal we’re receiving is the last voice of the civilization that produced this text. We can’t make it public until we’ve understood the message that’s coming from space. And maybe not even then. The signals we’re receiving are only the prelude. Something much, much bigger is on the way, a message the likes of which man has never received, in all of his existence.’

  ‘Greater than the evangelical message, Father? Greater than the message of Christ?’

  The old man hung his head and when he lifted it again all his anguish and bewilderment were plain on his face.

  PHILIP GARRETT WAS ROAMING the bazaar of Aleppo, with its gabble of shouting and chattering voices, amid the dust lifted by the trampling of countless feet and the hooves of mules and asses laden with goods. At every corner he found another souk with dozens and dozens of stands, some of which were so small they seemed like boxes. Merchandise spilled out everywhere and the odours that wafted on the air were so strong they could knock a man out. An olfactory orgy of pungent spices, fragrant incense, cedar and Aleppo pine resins, the stink of the excrement and urine of the pack animals, the stench of the tanneries. There was a dominant smell in each souk coming from the goods on display, but the mix of odours in that enormous covered and mostly closed space was often impossible to identify.

  He found himself all at once in the spice market and he wandered from one shop to the next until he found a tiny, anonymous emporium where an old man with a long white beard was crouched between the multicoloured bowls and sacks.

  Philip looked at him closely, then said, ‘I like the odour of sandalwood, but it’s difficult to make it out in the midst of all these smells.’

  ‘If it’s sandalwood you seek, you must come to where it is kept separately from the other essences. My name is Enos.’

  The old man had got to his feet and, making a little bow, turned towards the rear of the booth and disappeared behind a curtain. Philip stepped over the sacks with their rims rolled down, full of ginger and coriander, saffron and curry, and hurried after him. They went down a narrow hallway that soon opened onto a little courtyard, surrounded by tiered Moorish arches, with a gurgling fountain at its centre.

  The old man turned to him. ‘Are you Desmond Garrett’s son?’

  ‘Yes, I am. My name’s Philip. Do you know where my father is?’

  The man shook his head and frowned. ‘Your father is searching for the man of the seven tombs . . . Do you know what that means?’

  ‘No. I come from a place where we study only what we can explain and we seek only what we can touch with our hands. But I know that my father has long travelled different roads. I don’t know if his search has a meaning. Who is the man of the seven tombs?’

  ‘No one knows. It is a mystery that my people have been pursuing for millennia. Many have died terrible deaths over the centuries trying to get to the bottom of it. The man of the seven tombs has fierce, cruel servants who protect his hiding places, bu
t when the last of his tombs is destroyed, his evil influence will cease for ever.’

  The old man approached a curtain and pushed it aside, then opened a cupboard in the wall, extracted a scroll and unwound it on a rosewood book-rest. ‘It is written that when the evil enclosed in that fortress of death is reawakened, it brings grief, war and famine upon mankind. It visits a violent fever upon humanity, a fever that grows for years and years until it reaches a peak . . .’

  A golden light filtered in from outside through the lacy iron of the double-arched windows and shone on the old man’s white hair and beard.

  Philip felt a jolt of emotion. Could this Enos be speaking about the same ‘Immortal One’ that Vipinas the Etruscan haruspex had warned about before dying of suffocation in his home at Pompeii? A being enclosed in a tomb topped by a winged horse?

  In just two days, since Philip had passed through the Gate of the Wind, he had already come into contact twice with a dimension that had never even crossed the threshold of his conscious mind before, as he had always considered superstition unworthy of his attention. So El Kassem had been wrong: Bab el Awa was not a door which opened onto nothing; it was a gateway to the infinite. The pit of his stomach churned with the sensation that all of his convictions were about to crumble.

  ‘I know,’ said the old man, ‘you think it’s all just ancient legends . . . You’re a man of science, aren’t you?’

  Philip hesitated, no longer sure what to think of the science he had always trusted in. ‘I want to find my father,’ he said slowly, ‘and save him, if I can, from the dangers that threaten him. He’s exploring a world that is alien to me. I haven’t even thought of such things since I was a boy. But I need to know if something still binds us together, to know if he really does need me, why he wanted me to follow his tracks after having disappeared for ten long years. Tell me, please. What do you know about the man of the seven tombs?’