by Harold Lamb
"So long," said Jacob. "Thanks for the invite."
"Be seeing you," said Drouthen, adding with an effort of memory, "Old Jake."
When Jacob moved away with his slow pace, only Diana looked after him curiously. She had liked Jacob Ide, and had been greatly puzzled by him.
"A case," explained Drouthen to the shipping man, "of too long among the wogs—the Arabs, Sudanese, Armenians, and so forth. He even believes in the Atlantic Charter."
Drouthen had read Jacob's reports once, in the way of duty, or at least had initialed them as read.
"A case of being Dutch and reading too many books," corrected Diana. "Maybe when he gets home he'll realize the war is over."
"He'll realize that he's late for the good jobs," added the shipping man.
"There's a table!" cried the girl. "Quick, Tom."
They hurried to take possession of an empty table. The soldier who had been waiting within arm's reach of them abandoned his post and moved after Jacob through the crowd. On the veranda voices rose higher, gathering around shrill shreds of laughter. The Sudanese hurried, lifting their trays over the heads of the Europeans.
The soldier passed between a pockmarked vendor with a frame of horsetail fly whisks and a Levantine with oiled hair who watched the stairs in the hope of picking up a few piasters by selling his observations to a more prosperous Cairo spy or even to some obscure agent of His Britannic Majesty's government. The air reeked of sweat and dust and gasoline. In the press of people the man of the Levies kept the American's figure in sight. At the lighted window of a curio shop Jacob paused to glance over the array of dubious scarabs, clay tomb figures, cheap ornamental brasswork designed for the thriving tourist trade. Before Jacob could move on, the soldier stepped beside him, smiling.
"You do not like these," he said in clear English. "You are an American captain?"
Jacob nodded.
"Then come!" As if remembering that he should give some explanation, he added carelessly, "You will see something better."
His manner was not that of a puller-in or pimp; he seemed to think it quite a matter of course that a foreign officer should listen to him. The lines of his head were those of a white man; some intensity of feeling stirred him, reflected in his dark eyes.
"I don't buy curios," Jacob refused. Soldiers often turned up with looted objects, and in any case Jacob did not care for souvenirs, having no one to send them to. For himself he had bought a few illuminated manuscript pages of Korans.
Instead of protesting, the soldier nodded. "I think this will help you," he said.
Jacob went with the soldier, not because he expected to see anything unusual, but because the man—who did not seem to be Arab or Armenian—interested him.
When he asked his name, the soldier said carelessly "Paul," and when Jacob glanced at him, he added, "the son of Kaimars." Although he had become familiar with Eastern names, Jacob could make nothing of these. Paul, or Saul, was common enough; but Kaimars did not sound like Arabic, or Greek either. Before he could ask any more questions, the soldier swung into a courtyard upon which several buildings faced. Apparently he knew his way, because he went directly to a massive wooden door and pushed it open.
Lingering a moment to run his eye over the entrance, Jacob observed that the only sign was the word Antiquités carved in the door; that, and the rusted iron shutters over the window, repelled customers rather than invited them.
Inside, there was only one light bulb without a shade over the counter where a grizzled individual—Jacob guessed him to be Armenian—sorted out the fragments of a broken vase. After a glance at the soldier named Paul and the tall American, he appeared to take no notice of them.
The shelves held a scattering of dusty brass and bronze objects, with some nice mosque lamps and portions of stone statues that seemed to be Greek. Jacob wandered past them, deciding that they were really old and not stuff manufactured for the tourists. Then he noticed a bronze horse among the broken statuettes.
No larger than his palm, the horse crouched as if about to fly off on its half-folded wings. It was unlike anything Jacob had seen in Cairo. When he took it over to the light, he discovered that it had been cleaned carefully, or much handled, so that the lovely patina of age showed on the smooth green surface of the bronze. He thought: only a Greek of long ago could put life into metal like this.
"Isn't it Greek?" he asked.
The man seemed to understand because he shook his head. But Paul answered for him, "It is older than anything Greek, Captain Ide."
Usually dealers claimed the limit of antiquity for their better pieces, and this was a good one—too good-looking. Studying it, Jacob realized that its delicate lines were almost fantastic. "Egyptian, then?" he inquired, not because he believed it—the Egyptians almost never modeled horses or used bronze—but to see what they would answer.
"It was made before the pyramids of the Nile," Paul answered, smiling.
Silently, Jacob calculated that that meant five thousand years ago, which was earlier than the fine art of Crete. "How much do you want for this?" he demanded of the Armenian.
"Twelve pounds Egyptian," said the dealer indifferently.
A high price for an imitation, even as an asking price. And Jacob felt that this man would not bargain. If the archaic Pegasus were real, as they claimed, it was worth many times as much. Putting the horse back on the counter, Jacob decided not to buy it. "Can you tell me where you got it?"
Most dealers would say the Valley of the Kings, or Persepolis, to lure on a customer; and Jacob was prepared for Paul to hint that the thing had been stolen from a museum. Nothing of the kind happened, however.
"Baghdad," responded the Armenian, intent on his fragmented vase.
Jacob smiled without irritation. "That bronze was never made in Baghdad."
"He found it there," Paul explained carefully. "But it is true it was made elsewhere, Captain Ide."
"Yes, in the shop of a good forger."
"No, Captain Ide!" For the first time the soldier seemed concerned. "It came from a country which exists but is not known to you because it is not on your maps. This land of which I speak has always been there, beyond what you would call your horizan. How would you call a place like that?"
By this time Jacob was enjoying himself. "Utopia."
Apparently the soldier did not recognize the name. "Please—what is that, Utopia?"
"A never-never land, a nowhere."
"I do not understand."
Because the young soldier seemed earnest about understanding, Jacob explained that Utopia had been an imaginary island in the Western world described by Sir Thomas More. Other men had told about the myth in other ways. Bacon, the scientist, held it to be a marvel created by human invention. Erewhon filled it with human hopes that had never been realized. "It was a dream of human beings," he said, "the kind of a place they wanted, but never found. It could not be found, of course, because it did not exist."
Paul had listened intently. "But this place where the bronze was made does exist. Your maps do not have it—that is all." Briefly he hesitated. "Did you ever hear of Kurdistan, Captain Ide?"
Jacob almost smiled. Probably the man of the Levies did not realize that he had been in military intelligence, which had had to deal with legends as well as realities. Yes, Kurdistan—the land of the Kurds—did exist as a place, although the name hardly ever appeared on a map nowadays. It was not small, either, consisting of some thousands of square miles of the most rugged mountains in western Asia, where lived the obscure Kurdish tribes. To that extent Paul had spoken the truth. "Yes," he acknowledged, "but I never heard that the Kurds made bronzes like this."
Now that he looked at it closely, the horse with its half-folded wings appeared unlike a European animal. Suddenly Jacob wanted it, to have with him. Paul kept silent, seemingly aware of his thoughts. When the Armenian, believing that the American would not buy, reached out for the bronze Pegasus, Jacob picked it up and counted out a ten-pound note a
nd two ones—more, he told himself, than he could afford to pay.
At the door he asked the soldier suddenly, "Did you expect me to buy that bronze?"
In the gloom of the courtyard the man's dark eyes held his. "It was the best in the shop—or in Cairo." With a gesture of farewell he said quietly, "The best of luck, Captain Ide," and went away into the shadows.
Left to himself, Jacob thought: he'll be back tomorrow to collect his two pounds, or maybe three, as commission from that dealer. I wonder how many of the horses they have, and how many Americans have fallen for that odd story?
When he switched on the light suspended over the bed in his hot room, he took out the bronze horse. It looked more real than in the dusty shop. He had never felt so drawn to a curio, and he remembered that the two men had not claimed this to be a bargain, or any exotic talisman; they had said only that it was incredibly ancient. He wondered if that could possibly be true.
Still the horse did not actually decide him to go on to Baghdad. After that evening he wanted to get out of the offices and streets and away from the groups of arriving civilians by the first train. He had two months' leave, with travel orders as far as Jerusalem, which he had wanted to visit.
There was an archaeologist at Baghdad who could tell him what the bronze Pegasus might be. By then Jacob would have given much to find out.
He did not discard his uniform by conscious decision, yet he found that he wanted to be rid of the familiar gear. He packed it away for storage, filling the kit bag for his trip with an extra civilian serge suit and accessories and putting in only one military item—a map. He added his copy of Aristotle and the bronze Pegasus.
When he snapped off the light and pulled the mosquito net down around his bed, he wondered why the soldier named Paul had wished him luck.
At Jerusalem Jacob met the squadron leader. There was nothing out of the ordinary in their encounter, except that they resembled each other so much. It happened on the far side of the old city, in the valley of the Kedron.
Jacob had avoided the new city, where armed patrols walked on Jaffa Road and a police headquarters and a great hotel had been demolished by bombs.
Passing the police control at the head of the valley road, he walked down, with his cane helping out his stiffened left leg, into the shadow of the old city toward the ancient graves. It was the hour he liked, just before sunset, when the tawny gray walls by the Golden Gate were tinged with flame. Selecting a vantage point along the road, he sat down to watch, close to the olive trees of the Franciscan garden, when he noticed the officer coming after him purposefully.
When the other came closer Jacob had the odd sensation that he was watching himself in uniform. The gray eyes and the outthrust chin might have been his own, except that the officer in blue-gray walked with a free stride. Abreast Jacob he halted without apparent reason, not aware, it seemed, of the resemblance. "Restful here, isnYit?" he asked, making a rather obvious display of filling his pipe.
Jacob nodded, and waited for what was to come.
"You're American, aren't you?"
Close at hand, the Englishman looked younger than himself and less sun-browned. Jacob nodded. "Why, yes, at least they call it that."
"Ah. Thanks." The squadron leader spoke rapidly, as if embarrassed. "You're staying at the King David, aren't you? We met there, I think. I'm Aurel Leicester."
Jacob knew the tone and guessed at the questions that would follow to identify him without actually requiring him to show his identification. "No. We look like each other, but otherwise we haven't met."
"Otherwise? I see." The officer's glance strayed down to Jacob's shoes and stick and quested along the path. Casual, hatless Americans did not, as a rule, stray among the graves of the valley of the Kedron. "Now that you mention it, I see there is a resemblance. But you're not mil'try, are you?"
"Not at the moment. I was only wondering why, at a time like this, the Golden Gate should be blocked up."
"It's been closed for years."
"For the wars. Like so many of the older gates." Jacob nodded approvingly. "Actually, Squadron Leader, I've come here because it's cool and I like it. I'm staying at the Y.M.C.A., not at the King David, but I'll be leaving tomorrow for Damascus to catch the Nairn convoy car to Baghdad. I don't know where I'll put up there, but you can easily run me to earth again."
The officer half smiled, amused. "Thanks. As a matter of fact I will."
He swung away with the manner of a man who, having completed one job, had much else to do. He had satisfied himself that the solitary walker was an eccentric American and presumably harmless. All that remained to be done was to check on his departure from Jerusalem upon the Damascus road.
In the shadow of the Hebrew tombs Jacob waited for the sun to go down over the gate by which prophets had entered the city, which was now closed.
In Baghdad, as soon as he had taken possession of a room in the Regent Palace Hotel and had got rid of the dust of the overnight drive across the desert, Jacob pocketed the bronze horse and started out with a faint stir of excitement to find the archaeologist who had explained the museum to him painstakingly on previous visits. He did not waste time trying to struggle with the telephone in Arabic. "Now we'll know," he assured his prize, "if you are a good-looking phony or something more important than I am."
Not, Jacob reflected, that he .was important in any way. He had done a routine job during the war, and after this last trip he would be back at a rewrite desk, waiting for news of what was happening elsewhere. He had put off going back to that as long as he could.
The one thoroughfare of the city, crowded with motorcars and displaying Western goods in the windows under the arcade, was jammed with humanity, and as soon as possible he slipped out of it into the labyrinth of the great bazaar, passing at one step from the present to a century ago. In this covered way smelling of saffron and cloth and wet clay Jacob could always feel a pulse beating. Its kaleidoscopic colors, its music of donkey bells and arguing voices held a message for him. At a glance, as he passed, he picked out the green headcloth of a pilgrim, the red of a sherif, the silver coins of the necklaces of Arab tribal women—who sold their coins in bad times and added to them in prosperity—and he noticed who bought silk and how many veiled girls crowded around the expensive trinkets in the goldsmiths' cases. He picked out bearded Armenian priests laden with new blankets, swarthy Assyrian elders followed by children carrying melons and meat for the day's supper.
On this day, he mused, food was plentiful and money abundant. Yet in the back of his mind the thought persisted that these people of the bazaar, garbed in the fashion of a century ago, were dependent for their future well-being on the officials who had thronged Shepheard's Hotel, and even on the touring congressmen who had never seen them—unless from the cars speeding to a plane.
From the bazaar's labyrinth he threaded his way through the dust to the portal of the museum and to the door of a narrow office where water dripped over dry grass hung in a window. Without knocking he entered, and a slender man at a shaded electric light looked up. His intent face lighted with pleasure. His lean head, crowned by curling hair, had the austerity of an El Greco portrait. "Captain Ide!"
"Hello, Daoud."
As usual the assistant curator was barricaded by piles of pottery shards and half-reconstructed vases. Trained in England, Daoud ibn Khalid had endless patience and an instinctive skill in piecing together such jigsaw-like fragments. Jacob liked to watch him and to argue with him because the Arab dealt with the most insignificant question as carefully as if it might lead to a new discovery.
When they had drunk the tea that Daoud hastened to fetch to celebrate their reunion, Jacob put his bronze Pegasus on the table under the light without a word, watching the young archaeologist. With something like a gasp the slender Arab took the horse in his deft fingers, feeling the weight of it. "Where did you find this?"
"In Cairo, at a dealer's. He said it came from Baghdad." Jacob waited. "Is it real?"
"You have a mercenary soul." Daoud relished a joke. "I'm not selling it. Is it archaic Greek?"
Daoud was digging a particle of bronze from a hoof with the edge of a miniature chisel. "Certainly not Greek," he responded absently, his eyes never leaving the miniature horse.
"Why not Greek? You Asiatics never turned out a Pegasus as delicate as this."
"We did in this case." Daoud still moved the horse in his fingers to catch the light against its head. "The mane isn't cropped. No Greek work existed before the eighth century B.C. This horse was made more than seven thousand years ago."
That was what the soldier in Cairo had said. Jacob felt a sharp bewilderment. The man across the table wouldn't jest about the age of an archaeological find. "Don't you mean seven centuries?"
Daoud shook his head.
Jacob studied him, puzzled. "Daoud, I know you fellows have been turning time back by millenniums. You don't think of mere centuries any more. I think the millenniums have addled your brains."
"Addled?"
"Made you crazy like a loon. History doesn't go back seven thousand years. In that sweet long ago our ancestors were cultivating millet with flint hoes and taming their first dogs and sheep. They hadn't begun to write, except to carve pictures in caves. I know that much."
"Your ancestors may have been acting as your say." Daoud put aside the bronze horse at last. "Yes, your European cavemen. But we do not know what my ancestors were doing then."
Although he had an Arab name, Jacob suspected that Daoud had Kurdish blood in him from fathers or grandfathers in the mountains. "Suppose you don't know what your ancestors were up to. You can be damn sure they weren't working bronze three thousand years before bronze was discovered."
Daoud looked queer, as if thinking of more than he wanted to say. "When was bronze used first? No one can say, Jacob, because copper came into use, as you say, before recorded history. Suppose some people more intelligent than others also mined tin and happened to mix it with copper? Can you even guess at a time or place where that might have happened?"