The Scorpion’s Bite

by Aileen G. Baron

  They watched the gazelles disappear, passing silently behind the hills like ghosts.

  The Bible as ethnography, Lily thought. It fits. There’s an origin myth, genealogies, legal rules, and case studies.

  They rode along without speaking, eastward along the ancient track that led from Qusayr Amra to Azraq, the only sounds the whine of the motor and the clink of tools in the back of the Jeep as it bumped along the rutted terrain.

  “What are we really doing here?” Lily asked.

  “In Trans-Jordan? Observing the area, gathering information about the terrain, doing reconnaissance. And a little archaeology on the side.”

  “We’re winning the war here?”

  “Everything counts. If we don’t defeat the Nazis, there is no future.”

  Lily had seen the future and what it could be. She and Rafi had stopped in New York on the way back from Jerusalem in 1938 and spent a few extra days at the World’s Fair. It was called The World of Tomorrow, all blue and white with fountains everywhere. The trylon and the perisphere as white as clouds, the guides dressed in uniforms as blue as the sky. Lily and Rafi had been interviewed at one exhibit, and the interview had been transmitted, voice, moving picture, and all, to a small glass screen that the interviewer called a “television set” in the next room.

  She had spoken to a robot, and the robot had answered in a strange mechanical voice. They had watched the American world of tomorrow from a moving chair, magnificent cities strung along miraculous highways like pearls on a string.

  They talked about how they would live in a plastic house with a Bakelite telephone and a Plexiglas table, where machines would wash the dishes, clean the house, turn on the lights, and robots would drink milk and answer the telephone. And then, before the fair was over, the future cracked.

  The war began and Rafi left. All of it shattered in a fusillade that killed Rafi at El Alamein. For the two of them, there would be no sleek highways, no futuristic cars, no shopping centers that sold shining nylon dresses.

  “And Azraq?” she asked. “What are we doing there?”

  “Waiting for Glubb.”

  They drove through a valley surrounded by more solitary cliffs and rocky outcrops, over ground covered with scatters of flint. They bounced over bare earth, the gasoline smell of the engine occasionally yielding to the sharp scent of wormwood and dwarfed tamarisk trees that sprouted in the wadis. Here and there, ahead of them, cinder-cones, stood as reminders of small, long dead volcanoes. Along the track, occasional basalt boulders blocked the path. They had to drive around the rough, broken surface, and Lily wondered what it was like the day a volcano erupted, with unwary creatures slithering through the underbrush and angry magma spewing from the bowels of a restless earth.

  Once, Gideon pointed toward a stepped dam in a wadi. “Over there, you see it? The Nabateans built that dam and farmed the desert.”

  As they drove on, Lily saw the glint of metal against a limestone cliff to the south.

  “Look there,” she said. “Stop.”

  Gideon squinted where she pointed. “A piece of corrugated tin. Could be covering the entrance to a cave.”

  “You think it’s a tomb?”

  “Not likely.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Could be natural. Could be used for storage.”

  “What kind of storage?”

  “Sheepskin? Tools?” He shrugged. “Guns?”

  “We have to check,” she said, and he turned the Jeep toward the cliff.

  ***

  Lily removed the overburden from the corrugated tin with her trowel, using a few deft flicks of her wrist.

  “You do that very well,” Gideon told her.

  “Years of experience,” she smiled, remembering the first time she had used a trowel.

  It was at an Indian site in downstate Illinois, a WPA project. They told her to show up with a Marshalltown trowel, heavy boots, a hat to keep off the sun, a notebook, graph paper, and an indelible pencil. The next day she went back to the hardware store for a line level, a plumb bob, a T-square, and measuring tape.

  “It’s a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle,” the principal investigator had said. “Everything must be measured and recorded in three dimensions from the data point over there.” He pointed to a heavy rebar anchored in a concrete slab. “We take it apart here and put it back together in the lab.”

  The site report was a shock and a disappointment. It had nothing but empty statistics and measurements, graphs looking like battleship curves representing the early presence of an artifact, its rise in popularity, and then its replacement by another, never the reason that it was replaced. The report was about pots, and ignored the potters. There was nothing about what life was like for the Indians, in a world with only stone and fire and clay, life in a lodge dug partly into the ground. None of it was in the site report. It was nothing but a sterile laundry list.

  The director of the site declared proudly, “No speculation. This is science, not science fiction. Just the facts. Just the chronology.”

  Gideon lifted the piece of metal she freed from the opening. “Looks like something from a tin roof. Wonder where they got it.”

  Lily slid the trowel into her pocket and leaned forward. “Look. It’s a man-made opening. Here are the cut marks, made with a metal tool, a chisel, or a pickaxe.”

  She stood up to let Gideon peer inside.

  “I can see gouges from a chisel on the ceiling. There’s something in there. Could be a cache of some kind. Hard to tell. Pretty deep, over six feet.” He pressed closer, then stood up grinning. “I can’t fit through the opening. Bedouin are smaller than me.”

  Lily bent down again in the entrance. In the eerie gray light of the cave, she could just make out the cut marks from the chisel used to hollow it out from the limestone hillside. It was deep but not large, maybe two meters from the entrance to the back of the cave, and three meters across.

  “It’s a hand-hewn cave,” she said. “Bedouin don’t bury like this. Could this be a tomb anyway?”

  “More likely used for storage. This limestone is friable and easy to work. It hardens after it’s exposed to air for a while and dries out.”

  She leaned in farther. “I can fit through.”

  “You want to try it?”

  “How?”

  “Tie a rope around you like a harness. I’ll lower you down.”

  “Carefully.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gideon lowered her into the cave, releasing the tension slowly on the rope. She had taken off her new hat and wriggled through the opening, head first, then splayed out her hands on the floor of the cave before she righted herself to sit on the uneven surface.

  Something had been stored here. Now silt covered whatever had been stowed.

  She scraped with her trowel. Working with it raised dust. She coughed a little and kept scraping. The air, thick and heavy, weighed her down, but she kept moving the trowel back and forth, raising more dust.

  She tried to take a breath, heaving her shoulders, and coughed instead.

  There’s no air in here. She scratched away more silt.

  I can’t breathe. The silt covered her hands, her sleeves, her sandals.

  What was it Jalil said inhabited caves? A ghula, an evil witch.

  She gasped, wheezed, used all her strength to take a breath.

  I can’t breathe.

  “Gideon, pull me up. I can’t breathe.”

  He didn’t answer. He’s there. She heard a stirring outside, but he didn’t answer.

  “I can’t breathe.” She tried to shout and struggled for breath between each word.

  The ghula is devouring my soul.

  “Gideon. Please.”

  Air heavy as darkness.

  “Gideon, I can’t breathe.”

  She tried to yell out, pulled on the rope to attract his attention.

  Someone is out there. He should answer.


  The rope went slack, fell loose in her hand.

  Where was Gideon?

  She called him again. No answer.

  Gideon gone. And she was trapped, suffocating in the cave.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lily huddled on the floor of the cave, dangling one end of the rope from one hand, shifting the other back and forth in the silt below her.

  I’ve got to get out of here. Rocking back and forth, she rubbed against something bulging from the floor. In the cave’s half-twilight, she made out a long strip of wood and metal.

  Got to get out of here.

  Dust motes bobbed in the shaft of daylight coming from the cave entrance. She shuffled toward the opening, grabbed at the wall, stretched her arms toward the light. She could just reach the edge of the opening.

  Pull yourself up. Lean on the ledge and crawl out.

  She hooked her fingers around the edge of the opening and strained to pull herself up.

  Can’t. Too high.

  She slumped back to the floor of the cave, breathless again, and began to shiver. So cold in here, she thought.

  Got to get out. How?

  She put her head between her knees, closed her eyes.

  Relax.

  She tried a deep breath of the leaden air, then another. She sat back a moment, thought, felt some of the tension leave her shoulders, opened her eyes.

  Some kind of traction. Got to get traction.

  She rubbed back and forth again against the object bulging from the silt. She looked down, clawed at the dirt around it.

  Nothing but a shotgun, an old shotgun with a rusted barrel and a long crack in the wooden handle. What good would it do?

  Still no way out.

  She pulled at the shotgun. It moved, exposing a desert scorpion, white and gelatinous, startled by the light, scurrying back toward the darkness beneath the rifle. Instinctively, she picked up the trowel, smashed the scorpion with the sharp edge, cut it in half. The entrails of the scorpion squirted on her hand, her sleeve, her cheek. She wiped it off, crouched on the floor, and began to shiver again.

  Her reaction to the scorpion had been swift, almost a reflex. It stunned Lily, reminded her that she had a reserve of courage that she could tap.

  She focused on the wall, the opening where light flooded in, hot and bright. She thought of the holes gouged into the rock at Petra as footholds for workmen.

  She looked back at the shotgun.

  Now she could use it.

  She cleaned the trowel in the silt, used it to loosen the dirt around the shotgun and tugged at it. She could hardly lift it. Picking up the barrel with both hands, using all her strength, she swung it around, knocking the butt against the wall of the cave. A large flake spalled off the wall, leaving a white scar in the limestone. A narrow notch, enough for a foothold? Barely deep enough for a toe.

  The flake that came off looked like an oversized scraper with a bulb of percussion and force lines radiating from it—an enormous clamshell with a pronounced hinge. She picked it up to snap off a piece. It crumbled. Was the wall of the cave that friable?

  She picked up the trowel and gouged out a deeper notch.

  One foothold, one to go.

  She swung the rifle again as hard as she could, knocked off a flake eighteen inches above the other, stood back, dug into it with the trowel, then shoved the trowel into the belt of her jodhpur.

  One end of the rope was still tied around her waist. She secured the loose end to the shotgun and went back to the opening. Standing on tiptoe, she thrust the rifle through, barrel first. She rested, breathless from exertion. Then she pushed until the butt of the shotgun was outside the cave. She turned the gun, paused to breathe, and kept edging it around until it rested against the entrance, parallel to the ground and anchored against the sides of the opening.

  She yanked at the rope. A scattering of small limestone flakes rained down, but the rope held.

  She put one foot in the first toehold, stepped up. The edge of the foothold gave way. She slipped, dropped the trowel, fell to the ground, the breath knocked out of her. Her elbow hit the edge of the trowel, and she gasped.

  Not again. Damn, damn, damn. This isn’t going to work.

  She panted, short frightened breaths. After a minute, she relaxed, inhaled. Just winded from the fall. She still held the rope. She pulled herself to a sitting position, fingered the sting in her arm where the trowel had cut her. She was bleeding.

  Tugging at the rope, she stood up and tried again. This time, she worked upward, hand over hand, swaying like a pendulum, moving up the rope, stopping for breath, sliding down, the rope burning her hands, moving up again.

  Almost at the entrance.

  At last, the heat of the sun penetrating from outside. She knocked her wrist against the shotgun and clung to it, ignoring the blisters forming on her hands.

  She pulled herself up, crawled out of the cave.

  Outside, she caught sight of a Bedouin fleeing over the hill, his cloak flying in the wind. Gideon lay on the ground, groaning, clutching the back of his head.

  “You all right?”

  “I have a headache,” he said.

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure. Someone hit me. My head hurts.”

  “You said that. Who was it? Khaled?”

  “I don’t know. He attacked from behind. The next thing I knew, he started running away when he saw the gun you stuck out of the cave. I must have passed out. I have a headache.” He sat up. “And now I’m dizzy.”

  “Maybe you have a concussion. You sick to your stomach?”

  “No, no. I’m fine. Just a headache.”

  With a concussion, Lily knew, people are disoriented, repeat themselves, have problems with vision.

  Lily held up two fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “My God, you’re bleeding. Did he hit you too?”

  “No. How many fingers?”

  “Two. I’m all right. I just have a headache. And a bump on the back of my head.” He raised his hand to rub it again. “It’s going to swell up. You have an icepack handy?”

  “Very funny.”

  “I told you I’m all right.” He tried to smile and reached into his pocket for the keys to the Jeep. “You drive. I’m a little tired. And I have a headache.”

  She hoisted the rusty shotgun, wrapped the rope around it, and bundled it into the back of the Jeep while Gideon watched.

  “Looks like it was left over from the last war. Lawrence passed by here.” He handed her the keys. “Just follow the track to Azraq. Can’t miss it.”

  He trudged over to the Jeep, got in the passenger seat, closed his eyes, and fell asleep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You all right?” Lily asked as Gideon opened his eyes and rubbed the back of his head. “We’re in Azraq.”

  “The headache’s a little better. But I’ve got a bump back here the size of Cleveland.”

  Lily scanned the oasis, the springs, water, waving date palms, herds of gazelle, and flocks of birds.

  Gideon pointed to a somber squat building of black basalt. “That’s the British military hospital.”

  Lily drove to the front of the building. “Let them have a look at you.”

  “I’m all right.” He tossed his head with an air of bravado and winced.

  He was frightened, Lily thought, under the veneer of courage, of fortitude and independence.

  She drove to the shade of the building and turned off the motor. She helped Gideon out of the Jeep and moved him carefully toward the heavy basalt door of the hospital.

  He eyed the cut on her arm. “You coming in?”

  She pulled open the door with her blistered hand and winced.

  They waited at a counter in the hospital corridor that smelled faintly of chlorine and ether and rotting flesh, and took in the whitewashed walls, the black and white tile floor. After a while, an orderly
gave them a quizzical look.

  “You want the surgery?” he asked, and led them down the hall to a doctor.

  They emerged an hour later, having been told to take two aspirin and come back in the morning.

  Lily sported adhesive plasters on her palms, orange Mercurochrome painted on her arm, and a butterfly bandage pulling together the edges of her cut. Gideon clasped an icepack to the back of his head.

  “You’re really all right?” Lily asked.

  “Of course I am. I told you.”

  “No more headache?”

  “Almost gone.”

  “Still sleepy?”

  He shook his head, winced a little, then waved an arm at Azraq, as if the oasis was his personal gift. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  She gazed at the calm blue pools of water which reflected the flocks of birds hovering over them, calling, flapping wings, circling in live eddies of motion and sound.

  “This is where early man hunted, this is where Romans camped, where their emperors built a fort. This is Eden. What more could anyone want?”

  Lily wanted Rafi back. She wanted a big old house that creaked and sighed in the night like tired lovers. When she was a girl, when she visited her grandmother on Long Island in the summer, she would walk down to the beach along a cracked sidewalk edged with sand. She would stop at an old abandoned house with a widow’s-walk along the roof that faced the sea, with outbuildings, with weathervanes, with shuttered windows and a garden cluttered with leaves from ancient trees, and imagine living there. At the curb, a concrete step said Mon Terrace. For mounting horses, she supposed, maybe a carriage step. She wanted to live in this house, full of little boys, so she could play their mother.

  I still want a house with groaning wooden floors and children’s feet clattering on the stairs, she thought, and I want Rafi reading a book under a lamp, not blown apart at El Alamein in the Western Desert.

  “I want a bath,” she said. “I want to soak in a tub of hot water and then I want to sleep for a day and a half on a feather bed with a box springs mattress and then I want another bath. I want to win the war. Beyond that, I just don’t know.”