by Ted Riccardi
“Indeed, I should like to very much,” I replied. “Doch dieser Schwelle Zauber zu zerspalten, Bedarf ich eines Rattenzahns,” said I, quoting old Goethe.
Van Ruisdael smiled: “‘To break through this magic door, I need a rat’s tooth.’ So said Mephistopheles. Let us see what magic doors we must break through, then.”
Van Ruisdael explained that he would be visiting a couple of newly discovered sites outside the city and would be gone for several days. I would be welcome at any time after that. We continued to talk, and by the time we parted, most of the guests had left.
“I trust that you two had a pleasant and interesting talk,” said our host.
“Yes, indeed,” said Van Ruisdael. “Your friend here is well informed, an excellent archaeologist.” He then bade us all good evening. My eyes followed his huge bulk as he made his way to the door.
When we were alone, Maupertuis turned to me and said: “A brilliant mind, that one. But he knows no limits and takes great chances with his life. On two occasions now, I have had to go into the remote interior of our islands here to rescue him. He is fearless and will do anything for his science. He has no family, no close friends. His life is devoted to his work and his work only.”
“It is a devotion which I greatly admire,” I said.
“He must have sensed that, for you are the first person in whom I have seen him take other than ordinary passing interest.”
Maupertuis took out an old silver pocket watch and said, “It is late, and I still must prepare a document for the Maharajah’s signature in the morning. Sleep well, my dear friend.”
I watched the Baron as he slowly made his way up the circular staircase. I retired shortly thereafter, thinking that for the first time since I had left India something unusual was about to take place.
It was only towards the end of the week that I heard from Van Ruisdael. In a short note, which I received early one morning, he informed me that his trip had been unusually successful and that, if I were still of a mind, I could come over the following day at around four.
Finding Van Ruisdael’s quarters took longer than I expected. He lived off the Marleboro, in a boarding house called the “Peacock Throne” on one of those winding alleys behind the bazaar. After passing through a long series of low archways, one eventually came to a dead end. There, to the right, was a small wooden sign board with a peacock carved on it.
I knocked on the gate and was immediately ushered in by a servant, who took me to his quarters. The courtyard just the other side of the gate was beautifully cultivated. Flowers bloomed everywhere, and the small hotel, which is what it was, was very tidy, unlike the rest of the city.
Van Ruisdael occupied a small white cottage at the back of the larger house towards the far end of the garden. It was a small stucco building, with a green tin roof. There was a narrow porch, which ran the circumference of the house. High walls gave his residence almost complete privacy.
When I entered, Van Ruisdael was seated at his desk in a very large room that served as both his parlor and his study. There were books and papers almost everywhere, and where there were not, there were bones, and specimens of every conceivable variety. In a quick glance at the shelves on the walls I noticed several large fossils, including the thighbone of an ancient ass, the skull of what looked to be an early ape, and several large specimens completely unfamiliar to me. One shelf contained enormous seashells, presumably of creatures long since vanished from the surrounding oceans. Van Ruisdael was apparently sorting through some of his latest finds, for there were boxes everywhere, some half opened, in which I could see the fruits of his recent explorations. He rose to greet me and wasted no time in bringing me to a comfortable chair near his desk.
There was a troubled look on his face but excitement in his eyes, a contradiction set deep in the expression on his face, as if he had found something of the greatest scientific interest, but at the same time mysterious and deeply troubling.
“It appears that your explorations were successful,” I said to him, pointing to one of the open cartons.
“Beyond my wildest expectations, my friend. Just a few days’ walk from here, I came upon a field of enormous richness in an unexplored area. Every conceivable kind of ancient form is to be found there. Look at this, a hitherto unknown form of suinus selvaticus, an ancient wild boar, and this, a humanoid skull, of unknown age and form. There is no end to it: an area of remains that covers several square kilometres that will need the most careful scrutiny.”
Van Ruisdael became breathless as he talked, and beads of perspiration appeared on his forehead as he continued to move his great bulk animatedly through the room, with far more grace than I had at first thought possible. He continued to expatiate on his findings, throwing new ideas out as fast as he could utter them. There was much in his talk that I immediately had to reject as the first sketches of a mind hard at work, but I could not deny his genius: I was in the presence of a first-rate mind at work on material of the utmost scientific importance.
His face suddenly darkened. He turned towards his desk, picked up an object from it, and handed it to me.
“Look at this,” he said. “What do you make of it?”
As soon as I saw it, I realised why he was disturbed. It was a large tooth, exactly the same as the fossil specimen of the giant rat that he had shown me a few nights before.
“This is the same as the fossil,” I said, “only it is modern. There is something wrong. If the fossil is what we think it is, then the creature has survived to the present from prehistoric times. But there is no other evidence for this. And no one has ever seen or described such a creature. Perhaps we have a coincidence of forms. This may be the tooth of a different animal, perhaps a member of another family.”
“The fact that no one has ever seen or reported such a creature is no argument against its existence. I agree that it is strange that such a creature would have survived and its existence still be largely unsuspected, but it is not impossible.”
“Let us eliminate whatever is impossible,” I said, “and whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the solution. In this case, there is no absolute impossibility, but a near one. The idea of a giant-sized rat surviving in its prehistoric form would go against the entire evolutionary trend of the species. Yet, we cannot rule it out. Do you intend to return to the field where you found it? If you do, I should be most happy to accompany you. Whether this turns out to be as interesting as it seems or not, I would at least get to see the field as a whole and the place of this rather incredible series of finds.”
“I would be most happy if you accompanied me, Redfern, for reaching the find spot entails a very difficult trip. It lies about fifty kilometres to the east of Solo in a deep depression in the central mountains. I do not know if any Dutchman has ever penetrated so far before, but I would prefer not to return alone this time. One never knows—a slip, a slight misstep, and one is down a precipice or into a chasm. A broken leg, or even an ankle, and one is doomed. And, besides, who knows what we will find?”
With the greatest alacrity, I accepted his invitation, and we made arrangements to depart early the following morning. A tonga was arranged to pick us up at dawn, which was to take us with our supplies to the next large town, Bulayo. There we would begin the walk towards the fields themselves.
The ride to Bulayo proceeded without incident. We passed through wide paddy fields and then entered the town. There we were met by two porters who were to carry our supplies. It was now about ten in the morning, and the sun already beat upon us relentlessly. Having given instructions to our guide, we began the trek, upwards and eastwards towards the foot of the central mountains. We were to pass over this first range to the valley that lay on the other side. It was here that the field that Van Ruisdael had discovered lay.
The path that we took first went through a large and dense forest. It appeared to be a well-travelled track, for it was clear of obstacles, and the undergrowth had made no inroads in it.
Our progress was rapid for the first three hours, and we reached a clearing near the top of the range at around one in the afternoon. There we rested, shaded by some large trees, and waited for the porters to prepare our food.
“Another hour or so upwards,” said Van Ruisdael, “and we shall be at the top. From there you will be able to see our destination, the richest field in the world.”
It was after we reached the top that I realised why Van Ruisdael had been so reluctant to return alone, for the descent lay along a steep and rocky path that passed along the valley that stretched some two thousand feet below. One misstep and one easily fell straight down into a deep gorge cut by an ancient river. The valley itself, however, was a lush lowland, forested in part, in others filled with large rocks of what I took to be basalt.
Van Ruisdael pointed to a yellowish patch on the side of the hills opposite to us. “There it is,” he said, “our destination. With luck we should be there by nightfall.”
The descent was arduous, Watson, and I remember several times feeling that I should rather not tempt the gods so often in steep places. Except for blistered feet, however, we made it to the bottom without incident. There, after a rather harrowing cross over the gorge on a narrow footbridge, we began our trek through the valley, proceeding always in an easterly direction. We passed through a thick forest, slashing our way through, until, towards dusk, we reached the place that Van Ruisdael had pointed out on the ridge. Yellow earth, patches of elephant grass—it was exactly how he had described it to me. Night came almost instantly as the sun flashed gold behind the blue mountains in the west that we had just traversed, and we could see no more. We decided to set up our camp and retire early. The porters cooked our simple dinner and we prepared for bed.
Van Ruisdael impressed me again with his physical energy and agility despite his great bulk. Silent for most of our journey, he now began to speak excitedly of his plans for the morrow.
“We have our work ahead of us,” he said happily. “Tomorrow we shall begin our investigations. I have already measured the field and laid out our plans. In the morning we shall discuss them in detail. Our workers should be here by five. Local villagers, they are the people who helped me on my initial visit. Let us now get some rest.”
In the early morning, just before five, the workers arrived, all residents of a local village save one, a fat, sweaty Javanese, who appeared to have engaged the others. We spent the next several hours with them, explaining the schedule of work, and the tasks that lay immediately ahead on the next day. The fat Javanese was named Uru, and it was he who acted as interpreter when needed. He spoke English, Javanese, and the nameless dialect shared by the others.
The next three days were days of deep engagement with the tasks at hand. Van Ruisdael had previously chosen the exact site where we were to work. It was promptly cleared and the excavation began. A trench was laid out, and the relentless work of marking each specimen as it came forth, noting its size, nature, and location, became immediately absorbing. The workmen, five in all, arrived each morning at daybreak, worked well, long, and in harmony, Uru giving the necessary directions to them. Van Ruisdael and I supervised, and he alone almost effortlessly organised the packing of the specimens that we were to take back with us. We took a long break from one to three during the heat of the day; otherwise we worked constantly until nightfall.
It was only after the first three days that Van Ruisdael and I began to discuss the pattern of the finds. It was clear to us that the site was a peculiar one indeed. “Disturbed” is the word often used, and the anomaly of many of the finds continued to perplex us. There were incomparable riches for science embedded in this field, of this there was no doubt, and much of it was destined to extend the frontiers of paleontological knowledge far beyond their present confines. But, my dear Watson, over and over we found the rather sinister problem that had presented itself in Van Ruisdael’s study: we had found again not only teeth, but various other remains of the large Sumatran rat in fossil form, in a variety of strata, together with a variety of other paleontological specimens. But in a group of surface finds, the exact same species of rat was met in unquestionably recent, and unchanged, form. In fact, the number of recent finds was far larger than the ancient ones.
“This large rat exists,” said Van Ruisdael one evening, “and continues to exist even now. This is the inescapable conclusion that we must face: the Sumatran rat has suddenly re-appeared after a long absence from the fossil record. But how can this be?”
“I remain as perplexed as you,” said I, “but we must continue to search for a rational explanation. It may be that its reappearance here is due to some recent event, and that the continuity of its record lies elsewhere and can be supplied from other sites. But the gap remains enormous. The oldest of these surface finds can be no older than a century at most. There is something else, however, that is equally if not more disturbing, my dear professor.”
“And what is that?” he asked.
“It is this: that the Sumatran rat, whether of the prehistoric or more recent record, was apparently always killed in the same way. Have you noticed? The available skulls record a blow to the head that despatched the giant rodent almost instantly. We are apparently in a killing field, where the rat and other animal corpses were brought after death. If that is the case, then we are faced with an even more insoluble problem: how and why were they killed, for killing them was no mean feat. This was a fiercesome creature, of the greatest agility and ferociousness. How was it killed? And, perhaps most perplexing of all, by whom?”
My words seemed to disturb him, and he seemed doubtful, ready to take my words as supporting his own theories and also unwilling to continue the discussion.
“Redfern, my dear Redfern, we are speculating without knowing, but your words tend to confirm my hypothesis. Is the rat wild, or domesticated? Perhaps it is both. If the oldest ones were killed in a uniform way, then perhaps they were killed by some early humans in sacrificial ritual after they were captured and raised for a time. Perhaps, as you say, we have stumbled upon a sacrificial field. It is in such ritual that we have the beginnings of religion—all later religion, the great temples, the great sculpture, and the great texts—all stem from these early original sacrifices. But enough, we must do our work, then analyse, and theorise, but only after we have all the evidence.”
“Nevertheless, the rat is with us now,” I said, “whatever its history. And it is not alone.”
“You are right,” said he quietly. He spoke no more, but rose up silently, and went to his tent.
I sat for a few moments longer at the fire.
It was cool now, and I watched the dying embers. What Van Ruisdael did not want to contemplate was the obvious: that nearby, perhaps, in some hidden place, the giant rat and the humans around it lived still, bound in some mysterious and as yet unknown relation.
Entering my tent, I lay down but could not sleep. I continued to be disturbed by the perplexities of the finds. Except for the usual jungle noises, it was quiet. It was only at about two in the morning that there was a complete silence except for the occasional rustle of the wind in the trees. Unable to fall asleep, I rose, thinking to read by my lantern for a while. But first, I thought, I must have a look round.
I could hear Van Ruisdael blissfully asleep. There were clouds and a few stars, and a moon covered with mist, but there was enough light to walk by. Our guides were sleeping softly and almost silently. The nearest path that I could see went up a hill in the direction opposite to the dig. It was a path that I had not taken so far and I decided to climb it.
It was only when I reached the top that I realised how close we were to the sea, perhaps less than half a mile. I found myself looking through a cleft in the mountains to a small cove over which the moon had spread its silver light. I could hear the faint sound of the moving sea as I stood watching.
It was then that I noticed a light blinking on shore. It flashed several times at regular intervals of a minute or two. The
n I saw an answering signal, distant, on the ocean. I decided to go nearer.
As I approached the place of the first signal, the light at sea came closer, and I realised that a small boat had just landed. I head the splash as several people left the boat, and the low murmur of voices. Someone said in accented English, “Quiet, no lights now. Not until we reach the rocks. We are very close. Someone might hear.”
The group moved close to me, to some rocks just to my left, where they lit a fire and talked. There were five men: four Europeans and one native. The native I recognised as Uru, our foreman. It was he who spoke first.
“Tomorrow night, no later. That is the time. There will be no moon. Come in the dark. Wait.”
“Very well. How many will we be able to take?” said his interlocutor.
“Maybe two hundred, maybe more.”
The light moved towards the European speaker, obviously the leader of the group, and I recognised to my amazement the Swedish captain of the Mathilde Briggs, the ship on which I had travelled to Batavia.
“Good. We shall be here then. We shall come in plenty of time. Do not fail us, Uru. You have done well in the past.”
As he spoke, he handed Uru a bag of what appeared to be coins. Uru grabbed it greedily, and clutched it to his chest.
The captain and his men rose, went to their canoe, and began their return to their ship, now a dark shadow on the moonlit horizon. Uru slipped away into the night, and I made my way back to my tent.
In the early morning, the men were there, including Uru. They told us that they would work as usual that day, but only until four. When asked why, they answered that they had an important festival to attend that night. Van Ruisdael, disappointed at the delay, was forced to acquiesce.