by Tom Knox
‘You mean: we are meant to believe because there really is a God? You have become a believer?’
The surgeon shrugged, and gestured, once again, at the sublimity of the landscape around them.
‘You know, the villagers here, they were once so isolated, just sixty years ago, they thought they were the only people in the universe. Imagine that?’
But Jake didn’t want to imagine that, he didn’t want to imagine anything. He didn’t want to think of his own cold withered future, grey as the sands in Sovirom Sen’s Japanese garden. So he stared at the gorges and at White Buddha Mountain. He stared at the nothingness.
Fishwick was sighing. ‘I do really have to go. I am so sorry the surgery proved irreversible. All I can say is – have a little hope. Sometimes neurones can heal spontaneously, we don’t know why. The mind retains its many mysteries. Goodbye Jake.’
Jake watched him descend the steps, and disappear down a path that led to the rear of the laboratories.
The wind from the forests was mild. But his tea was cold. And the hollowness inside him was profound. Like a silenced bell.
Chapter 49
The days passed, the nullity abided. Jake dreamed of nothing. He stared at the sky. The day of their departure approached.
On the seventh day following the failed operation, Jake woke early and looked across the bed.
It was empty.
There was a note on Chemda’s pillow, in an envelope.
He took out the notepaper and read.
I know you don’t love me any more; and I know you can’t help it.
This is too painful for me: because I still love you. Goodbye.
C
He put the note back in the envelope; he dressed. Trying not to think. The very last truck was due to leave Bala this afternoon. He wanted to run outside and race down the valley. He didn’t know what to do.
Julia was sitting on the terrace.
‘Chemda has gone,’ he said.
She stared at him, and her gaze was searching. ‘I know. She told me last night. A villager was taking his fruit to Zhongdian market – at dawn. She went with him in the pickup. I’m sorry, Jake.’
Jake remembered his mother, abandoning him in the night. So this was another woman – abandoning him in the night. And he couldn’t blame her.
He sat down. Staring at his own hands, then at Julia.
‘What are you going to do? When we finally get . . . away?’
The Canadian woman sighed. Her expression was strained.
‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. Not any more.’
Jake said nothing. But the silence seemed to embarrass Julia, so he stood, straightened his chair, and continued his walk past the terrace tables.
The day was bright and clear, sharp and mountainous. The villagers were tilling their steep brown fields. One old woman gave him a broken smile as he walked the path to the stupa.
Positioned on a large high promontory of rock, the stupa overlooked one of the most spectacular stretches of the canyon. Down there were the heaven villages, much further down was the cascading river, a juvenile tributary of the Mekong.
The Mekong. The very concept threw up a kaleidoscopic series of recent memories. It seemed to Jake as though he had been following the great Mekong all these weeks, from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang to Phnom Penh to Yunnan. The mighty Mekong. And now he was near the source, where the crystal waters tumbled: violent and tragic.
He climbed the last steps and placed a hand on the stupa. Silence enveloped him.
The only noise came from the windhorses – the prayer flags fluttering in a stiff sunlit breeze. Each flag, of red and blue and faded yellow, was written with the wishes of the villagers, praying to the holy mountains.
Remorse fell like a silent snow. What had he done? He had lost everyone. His sister, his mother, now Chemda.
Everyone.
In a few hours the last truck would leave Bala village and take the long road to Zhongdian. And he would be on it. Running after Chemda. He was going to find her. He knew he would spend the rest of his life trying to find her, if that’s what it took. But he would find her.
A cooler wind kicked up. The little prayer flags fluttered in the silent breeze, petitioning the universe, filling the quietness. Arms of white snow embraced the rocky summit of Buddha Mountain: like a mother, folding a son in her love, and never letting go.
Chapter 50
‘What you did was very brave. Audacious!’
Officer Rouvier steered the car around a corner. Ahead of them, through the drizzle, Julia could see the distant stones of the Cham des Bondons, dark and elegiac. It was as if they had been waiting for her to return; as if they knew she was coming back.
‘I don’t know about bravery,’ she said. ‘I just did what I did. What I had to do. Thankyou for collecting me from the airport.’
The Frenchman smiled – and squinted at the pattering rain.
‘You have already thanked me twice, Miss Kerrigan. But I am still confused. What are you going to do now? You really want to spend the winter out here?’
He gestured at the bleak and rainy moors; the windlashed causse.
‘My college in London has given me another few weeks’ paid leave. Because of . . . Just because.’
He didn’t reply to this. They drove past a broken farmgate, where a brace of horses looked dismal and forlorn in the wet. Another lonely standing stone loomed through the mist.
Julia recalled her own ideas. Of Easter Island. The monuments to a violent and dying culture.
Rouvier spoke:
‘So you will go back to London in the spring?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. I like to think that I have choices.’
Rouvier agreed. Then he said:
‘You also have a very good brain, Miss Kerrigan. Your theory, about the caves and skulls, it was right!’
‘Ghislaine’s theory.’
‘No.’ He spoke firmly. ‘Yours. You do not know what he wrote, and you either discovered it again, or you made a better one. I am sure you made a better theory. So it is yours.’
The rain was the only sound, discreetly chattering on the car roof.
They were very near Annika’s old cottage now. With that realization she felt a reflux of fear, and grief, which she strove to quell. This is just a place. Just an old cottage. That’s all. Just an old house.
She spoke, quickly:
‘I’ve rented a small farmhouse for about two months, it’s in the next village from Vayssiere. Les Combettes. It’s very cheap in the winter.’
Rouvier nodded. ‘I’m not surprised. Most people escape in the winter, this is not Juan les Pins in August. They should be paying you for staying.’ He softly smiled her way. ‘It will be lonely out here?’
‘I don’t mind loneliness.’
‘But . . . Mister Carmichael?’
She shrugged.
‘Things change.’
‘Bien sur.’ He nodded, slowing the car as they took the last turn for Vayssiere. ‘I know this all too well. I am now divorced myself. Ah . . . this rain. Il pleure . . .’
‘Dans mon coeur, Comme il pleut sur la ville?’
Their shared laughter was gentle. He stopped the car a few metres from Annika’s front door. Julia glanced across. Yes, her car was still there. Where she’d left it, all those weeks ago, when they had quit the place to go and see Ghislaine’s body. She’d never got round to picking it up again. And now here she was. Picking it up again.
Like a chauffeur, Rouvier came round to her side of the car, and helped her out. Then he assisted: carrying her bags to her car, and stowing them on the back seat. Neither of them looked at Annika’s cottage window as they worked. The small window that gave onto the sitting room.
When her stuff was in the car, Rouvier stooped. And kissed her hand, in an unselfconscious way. As he looked up, he said:
‘If you get really lonely, you must call me. We can drink a pastis in the excitements of Mende.’
&
nbsp; ‘Thankyou. It might be nice to do that. In the big city.’
There was another exchange of smiles, tinged with sadness. Rouvier opened his door, started his engine, and he was gone.
For a moment Julia stood, tense, in the faint drizzle; sensing the presence of the past. Then she climbed in her car and she briskly drove to the next village down the road. Les Combettes.
It took her just two hours to install all her stuff in her rented cottage. The kitchen of the little house had a good view of the stones. So did the window above her desk. Julia ignored the view: instead she sat down, took out her laptop, and put it on the desk, alongside a small bottle of water.
Her fingers were poised. She opened a new page, and typed the words:
Some Speculations on the Origins of Guilt and of Conscience in the Paleolithic Caves of France and Spain
For a second or two she stared at the words on her white laptop screen. Then she erased the sentence, and gazed at the blankness, at the drizzle on the windows, at the lawns and moors. A shaft of bleak sunlight had pierced the clouds; it shone down on the fields, making the sodden feather-grass sparkle, momentarily: a sudden harvest of jewels. She tried again.
The Sad Hands of Gargas: on the Origins of Human Guilt and Religion in the European Ice Age
Nodding to herself, she took a sip of water, and then she added three more words:
By Julia Kerrigan
Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to the many authors I have read, over the years, in the various subjects pertaining to the themes of this novel. In particular I owe a huge debt to Karen Armstrong, Nic Dunlop, Dith Pran, Haing Ngor, David Lewis Williams, Jean Guillaine and Jean Zammit, Steven A. Leblanc, Roland Neveu, Dave Grossman, Jean Clottes, Robert Wright, Jon Swain, Philip Short, Steven Pinker – and dozens of others.
My great friends and colleagues Peter Dench and Dan White, brilliant photographers both, have always been ready to tell me – over a warm beer in London, or a cold beer in Bangkok – just how wrong I am about almost everything. Without them, this book wouldn’t exist in any sensible form. I am similarly indebted to my editors Jane Johnson, Joy Chamberlain and Josh Kendall, and also to Coralie Saint-Genis.
Above all, I am grateful to the many people who helped with my more difficult research in China, Cambodia and Laos.
I’ll not forget the Hmong family who helped me as much as I helped them, when we were all stuck in the Laotian jungle one long muddy night. And thanks to Paksan for not being embarrassed when I nearly blubbed at the beauty of the snow mountains near Zhongdian. And I owe a debt of gratitude to the Lozère tourist authorities in France, and the guide who showed me around miraculous Gargas cave on that sunny day in late September.
About the Author
Tom Knox is the pseudonym of the author Sean Thomas. Born in England, he has travelled the world writing for many different newspapers and magazines, including The Times, the Guardian, and the Daily Mail. His first thriller was translated into twenty-two languages; he also writes on art, politics, and ancient history. He lives in London.
For more information visit www.tomknoxbooks.com
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By Tom Knox
The Genesis Secret
The Marks of Cain
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © Tom Knox 2011
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 9780007344031
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780007344048
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