by M. J. Rose
“The water that’s all around you and supporting you is time, and you’re floating through it easily and without effort, able to remember things you thought you’d forgotten, able to see them in your mind’s eye. I want you to remember something that happened to you when you were a little boy…something that was fun and that made you happy.”
She watched his face and saw the first hint of a smile. “Tell me what you’re remembering. Where are you?”
“The bookstore. My mother is with me in the bookstore.”
“How old are you?”
“Nine.”
“Do you like it there?”
“Yeah, my mom lets me buy as many books as I want.”
“Wow, that’s great. You’re really lucky.”
He nodded so enthusiastically that a lock of his hair fell into his eyes, but he was oblivious to it.
Despite her years of experience, when someone first slipped into the past and started to recount events as if they were still occurring, she was amazed anew at the power of the human brain to keep so many memories stored in such precise detail and how the right conditions made them so accessible.
“How many books are you going to buy?”
“So far I’ve only picked out one—The Secret Garden.”
Bellmer allowed Ryan to enjoy the memory a few moments longer. She wanted to regress him slowly from one age to the next so the slide from his present past to a deeper past, to the life before this one, was a gentle passage. Step by step she took him back to when he was an even younger child, then a toddler, and finally to when he was an infant.
“Now, I’d like you to think about another time, a time before you were James…before your mother was your mother and your father was your father…to a different lifetime. Will you try to do that?”
He didn’t respond.
“I’m right here, James, and I’m staying right here with you. If you are willing to try what I’m asking, we might be able to find out what’s compelling you to keep drawing these portraits.”
He didn’t respond.
“Let the water take you back to where you knew the woman with the dark hair who you drew this morning. Picture her in the place where you knew her.”
Iris watched her patient’s face muscles relax and then tighten. She was no longer sitting opposite James Ryan but someone from his past who was angry and uncomfortable.
“Hello,” Dr. Bellmer said softly.
“Who are you?” he asked aggressively.
“I’m a doctor. I’m here to help you. What’s your name?”
“Telamon.”
“Do you mind if I ask how old you are?”
“I’m thirteen,” he said proudly.
“And where do you live?”
“Delphi.”
“What year is this?”
“The first year of the games, of course.”
“What games?”
“The Pythian games.” He sounded surprised that she didn’t know.
This wasn’t the first time she’d run into the problem of dating a period when the soul had lived in a time before Christ. Many ancient civilizations didn’t keep numbered calendars and the only way to pinpoint the year in ancient Greece was to find out what was happening historically.
“Who is your ruler?”
“Kleisthenes.”
The name sounded vaguely familiar and she made a note of it.
“Do you go to school?”
He looked slightly confused. “I’m not a priest. I’m apprentice to the sculptor, Vangelis.”
“How long have you been his apprentice?”
“Since my father died. He was a builder of temples and I was going to be apprenticed to him.” There was pride in his voice.
“What happened to him?”
Telamon, for Iris had already begun to think of him that way, shrugged as if to make light of what he was going to say, but his voice was now thick with emotion.
“My father could lift heavier stones than any of the men who worked for him until he got sick and couldn’t eat and became very weak. He went to the healers at the sleep temple, but they couldn’t help. My mother acted as if everything would be all right, except at night I would hear her crying. When she thought none of us would know how bad—”
Telamon broke off. Sensing that the boy was struggling for control and that once he found it he’d continue, Iris waited.
“Afterward…a builder took over my father’s workshop, but he had his own apprentices and there was no room for me, so I came here, to Delphi. My cousin Vangelis is a sculptor here, and he accepted me as an apprentice. I wanted to stay with my mother.” His voice had lowered to a whisper. “I miss her.”
“Is that a secret?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because whenever I get homesick, Zenobia makes fun of me and tells me I am too young to be an apprentice to anything but my mother’s teat.” He stopped and swallowed hard.
“Who is Zenobia?”
“The senior apprentice.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Four, and I’m the youngest—except, of course, for Iantha.”
“Is she another apprentice?”
“A woman? No! She helps out, bringing us food and wine, and tends to the hearth. She’s Vangelis’s daughter.”
“So she is your cousin?”
“No, his daughter from before he married into my family.” Telamon’s face shifted again, and his mouth lifted into a small smile.
“How old is she?”
“Almost as old as me.”
“What does she look like?”
“I could sculpt a likeness of her for you. I did once.” He sounded bereft.
“Did you?”
He nodded. “Vangelis had thrown out a block of marble because it had a dark vein that spoiled it for him, so I used it to sculpt a bust of Iantha. I worked the flaw into her hair. Vangelis found me carving one day, and I thought he was going to be angry because I was making a likeness of his daughter. Instead he showed me where my mistakes were… She has beautiful wide eyes, but I’d set them back too far so she looked worried. There was nothing Vangelis could do to fix that, but he gave her cheekbones more definition and fixed her mouth.”
“What was wrong with her mouth?”
“She has full lips and always wore a little smile. I hadn’t caught that.”
Iris looked down at the floor at one of the drawings James had brought, of a young woman with full lips, high cheekbones and eyes wide in terror.
“Did you give the sculpture to Iantha?”
“Zenobia saw Vangelis helping me with it. He was always jealous when the master spent extra time with any of us, but I never guessed what he’d do. The next morning when I went to the workshop there were dozens of pieces of shattered marble at my station. At first I didn’t realize what I was seeing, then I recognized a fragment of her nose and then one of her mouth. He’d destroyed it. And then I heard laughing behind me. He was gloating.”
“What did you do?”
“I tried to hit him, but he was so much bigger than me. He shoved me against a huge block of marble, trapped me there and hit me over and over until my eyes started to swell shut and my nose was bleeding and my stomach ached. I was at his mercy, but he had no mercy.
“And then I saw a mallet someone had left on the ground, so I pretended I was losing consciousness and slipped down to the floor. He believed that he’d knocked me out and that gave me just enough time to grab the mallet, lift it and swing it at him. The flat surface connected with Zenobia’s shoulder and there was a loud thud and then he started screaming. I took off, but even in all that pain he came after me, yelling that I was going to be sorry. I hid from him on the far side of a stone so big it had taken all of us to bring it inside and waited to see if he was really going to come after me. When he did I jumped out and wrestled him to the ground. Because of the pain in his arm he was weakened enough for me to get on top of him and then he was
at my mercy—and I had the mallet. I was sitting on his stomach and he had blood coming out of his nose and his eyes were watering and he had to be in terrible pain, but he wasn’t scared of me. That was the worst part. He still wasn’t scared of me.
“‘You stupid fool,’ he hissed. ‘I’m the senior apprentice and the master’s favorite. Don’t you know what he’ll do to you if you hurt me? All I’ll have to do is tell Vangelis about the walks you take with Iantha and tell him what the two of you do with each other. He won’t stand for it and you’ll be out on the streets.’
“He was older and stronger than me, but he was the one on the ground, and I had the advantage—except I was scared, and he knew. He started laughing at me again, and, like a great animal, rose up and pushed me off him. Iantha was there, and she tried to stop him…”
Iris was suffering alongside the sweating, panting boy—yes, boy, because that was who James Ryan was now.
“He was shouting, ‘You bug, you insect.’ His spit sprayed my face. Then he punched me in the stomach. I was scared for Iantha, worried he was going to hurt her, too, but all his attention was on beating me up, and even after my nose and mouth were bleeding and my head was pounding he still kept coming at me. He kept punching me in the face, and then everything went black. The pain was excruciating. I couldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t see. Was I blind? How would I sculpt?”
Her patient had stopped speaking. The room was quiet enough so that Iris could hear cars honking in the street and the drone of the ubiquitous white noise machine in the corner that therapists used to prevent anyone from overhearing a session. His face was twisted with the pain; he’d had enough.
“James, I’m going to start counting, and when I reach ten you’re going to wake up. You’ll remember what you’ve told me, but you won’t feel any distress or pain. You’ll be in control and at peace.”
When he opened his eyes he was speaking the same three words over and over, and despite her instructions there was pain woven into them—deep and long-lasting pain.
“Iantha, I’m sorry. Iantha, I’m sorry. Iantha, I’m sorry.”
Chapter
TWENTY-ONE
Even though Samimi had only been called into his boss’s office to go over plans for his afternoon appointment at the Met, he was anxious. Since he had learned about the Semtex shipment, everything made him anxious.
“Is the meeting set, Ali?”
“All set. I confirmed an hour ago.”
Taghinia smiled as he opened his humidor, extracted a Cuban, rolled it in his fingers, listened to its music, cut off the tip and set about lighting the stinking weed.
Samimi, who was sitting opposite him on the couch, wished he could get out of the office before the stench infiltrated his clothes. He hated his boss’s indulgence but was doing his best to keep his revulsion in check, along with his nerves.
“Your mission today is very important,” Taghinia said.
“So you’ve said.”
“Be careful, be vigilant.” Taghinia inhaled, held the smoke and then blew it out, not caring that it wafted right toward his underling.
Standing, Samimi walked over to the window.
“This is a critical part of our planning,” Taghinia continued with a slight edge of aggravation in his voice that Samimi knew he’d provoked by getting up. His boss didn’t approve of his employee’s disapproval.
“Yes, you’ve said that before, but it’s difficult for me to do my job as well as possible without knowing the details of our plans,” Samimi said. “What exactly does Deborah Mitchell have to do with us getting the sculpture back?”
“You know as much as you need to right now.” Taghinia took another long pull on the cigar and then let the smoke out achingly slowly.
“I know nothing. If I just understood—”
Taghinia cut him off. “All right, all right.” And then, as if he were trying to teach a poor student a basic equation, he continued on in an exasperated voice. “We will need access to an event at the museum over the next few weeks. Deborah Mitchell will afford us that access. Bringing her yet one more little treasure will ensure it. Your job is to make her understand how much you enjoy spending time at the museum and how happy it would make you to be invited to their events, parties and openings. When you need to know more than that, I’ll inform you.”
Samimi nodded impatiently, as was expected of someone frustrated to be left out of the loop.
“My only fear,” Taghinia said, “is that this next step depends on you being charming, and that’s not something you excel at.”
Samimi was used to his boss’s passive-aggressive swipes, but cringed anyway—all part of the act. He was doing what was expected of him, behaving as he’d always behaved, being the same man he’d been for the past three years. Except he wasn’t that sorry little man anymore. He had taken control of his own destiny. He was going to shape his future, not let this slob shape it for him.
“Here you are.” Taghinia handed Samimi a package. “It arrived via the diplomatic pouch yesterday, and the associate director of the museum in Tehran is standing by on the phone waiting to talk to you about it.”
The container was the size and shape of a shoe box and covered in brown leather that was soft to Samimi’s touch. Opening the double brass hinge, he found a silk pouch that contained an antique cup made of gold. With one glance, he knew it was both very beautiful and very rare.
“I expect it will be more than impressive and certainly will make up for your deficiencies,” Taghinia said.
Samimi winced at the barb as he replaced the object, put the box under his arm and rose.
“One more thing.”
Samimi was halfway to the door.
“Yes?”
“Tomorrow, I’d like you to go straight to the warehouse in the morning instead of coming here.”
“The warehouse?” Samimi’s heart was beating so hard he wondered if his boss could see it.
“We’re expecting a delivery. I want you to pay for it.”
“What kind of delivery?”
“It’s not necessary for you to know.”
Samimi frowned. “I think it is, Farid.”
“It’s not your job to think about whether my decisions are right or wrong. When you need to know, you’ll know.” He spat out the words as if they were little pieces of tobacco stuck on his tongue.
“What do you want me to do with this delivery?”
“Wait until the courier has left, then call me. I’ll give you instructions.”
So the Semtex had arrived in the same pouch as the artifact. Samimi shivered as he walked out of Taghinia’s office.
The skinny woman who greeted Samimi had short blond hair and oversize square black glasses. As she gave him a visitor’s badge, Laura Freedman introduced herself and then asked him to follow her. Leading him through the museum’s grand lobby with its soaring ceiling and enormous bouquets of apple blossom branches in niches carved out of the stone walls, she was quiet. She remained so as they walked through the medieval wing, made a left, went through a few galleries of European furnishings and stopped at an elevator bank near the twentieth-century modern art exhibition space.
Samimi was too worried to give the treasures they passed their due. Why was he meeting with Laura instead of the curator?
Exiting the elevator on the fourth floor, they passed by a receptionist at an ornate desk, walked down a richly carpeted hallway and stopped at the first office on the right. The door was open.
“Thanks, Laura,” Deborah Mitchell said as she got up and came around from behind her desk to greet Samimi.
Today she was wearing a long-sleeved ruby dress that set off her dark coloring and chestnut eyes. Her long ebony hair was woven into a braid, and as he shook her hand, Samimi couldn’t help imagining that hair loose and spread out on a pillow. His thought must have somehow translated to her because she blushed. Which made him smile. Which just made her blush deepen. Wouldn’t Taghinia be surprised?
“Welcome back to the museum,” she said.
He thanked her as he put the shopping bag on her desk.
She looked at it and then back at him. “Would you like some coffee? We have cappuccino—or tea, if I remember correctly.”
“Yes, tea.” He smiled.
“And sugar, right?”
“Yes, please.”
There was something pleasantly old-fashioned about the ritual, especially when Deborah went to get it herself. He’d expected her to have her assistant bring the tea.
Sitting in on the visitor’s side of her clean modern desk with its computer and assortment of papers, catalogues, pens and photographs, Samimi noticed the poster on the wall. It was different from the one that had been hanging there the last time he’d visited. This was a green, cobalt and turquoise tile blown up to bleed off the edges of the paper with silver type outlined in black that read, EARLY PERSIAN TILEWORK, THE MEDIEVAL FLOWERING OF KASHI and, beneath that, the dates of the exhibition that had opened in January and would run through June.
“Here you are,” she said, returning with two navy mugs that had the MMA insignia on them.
He sipped the steaming beverage. “Too many people make tea that isn’t hot enough, but this is perfect,” he said. “Thank you.”
Deborah nodded at the unadorned shopping bag and said, “You’ve certainly aroused my curiosity with your call, Mr. Samimi. After the last treasure you brought us, I can’t wait to see this one.”
“Please call me Ali,” he said. Reaching inside, he pulled out the leather box, put it on the desk and made a show of opening it to reveal the blue silk pouch embroidered with white flowers with green leaves. Withdrawing it, he offered it to her.