by Harold Lamb
"Beyond the light of their fires, beyond the small circle in which their men and children slept, lay terrifying dangers—utter deprivation, intense cold, peril from hostile animals and humans. They had only their hands and a few light implements to work with. They died off rapidly and in many ways, by falling from these heights, by being caught in the rush of floods, and by starvation. Nothing was permanent; nothing was secure except the homes the men built. Because they had to preserve the animals which in turn gave them food and clothing, they learned to move about, to reach fresh grass and water. So they learned how to build new homes into the slopes of the mountains and to make their utensils of clay and copper light enough to be carried easily.
"They developed small skills, as you are developing them. Wherever they moved, fear accompanied them like a shadow. They could not escape it. Out of that in some way they contrived a hope. Penalized by their own inferiority and by utter deprivation, they began to develop themselves. Out of animal-like misery they learned the meaning of joy. And somehow out of their sufferings they gained serenity of spirit. There was no garden in Eden then. They did not know nepenthe or lotus flowers except by making that most difficult thing in the world, peace for themselves; nor did they pick wisdom in the fruit of trees, except by growing the trees. But they had found peace and they knew hope. No, Michele, the first paradise was a bleak upland height such as this."
Leaning her head on her knees, Michal thought that the old scholar had gained serenity of mind. "Wasn't it down in the lush plain of Mesopotamia, between the rivers—didn't four rivers flow out of Paradise?"
She was growing a little sleepy now from the heat of the fire.
"If four rivers ran out of it, it couldn't have been a tropical valley; it must have been in the mountains. The word paradise, itself, by the way, is not Western but Eastern—firudis—and it might mean the place of the gods. But we do not know its original meaning." He considered that. "Most assuredly it was not the hot valley of the Tigris-Euphrates. The experts will tell you that the people who abode in these mountains did not venture down until much later into the awesome, swamp-ridden lowlands, alive with snakes and insects. In the same way they penetrated slowly into the bare steppes and the sandy deserts, like Hagar. Perhaps they were exiled, as she was. But hope came from the mountains and ended in the deserts and in the great cities."
"The great cities," murmured Michal. "'And the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. And the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it/ That's Revelation, telling about the New Jerusalem, and it's not in the mountains."
Sir Clement smiled. "Oh, but it was when one of the seven angels displayed it from 'a great and high mountain/' The tellers of that story, the first Hebrews who migrated with Abraham away from the city of Ur across the deserts, had known a form of civilization. They could imagine wonderful buildings with foundations of chalcedony or jasper or chrysolite. They had learned to lift their eyes up unto the hills. The evidence is clear, Michele mine."
Michal smiled at him. "You coax very nicely, darling, and now I shall go to sleep obediently. It's all true, isn't it, even if I am scared?"
"Intelligent girl," nodded Jacob. Michal's hand touched his cheek. She knew it was a game they played—Sir Clement's game of cheering her up. He had answered her question, or rather the questioning of her instinct. But he had not answered Jacob's unspoken questions: could anything at all survive of what had been here seven thousand years before? Was there any evidence of the unseen force which the two men, and now Michal as well, had sensed here?
Unmistakably the villagers were gathering fir branches the next day. When she went out to cut some hardy ivy from the ruined wall, Michal saw them carrying in the branches, and she watched them curiously. No one of the foreign colony had suggested that to the people of Araman. It seemed that they were in the habit of decorating their rooms with green branches, not with trees. Michal had thought that the bareness of her own room and tree might be relieved by strands of the ivy. She had also borrowed extra lamps from Daoud's house.
It was late in the afternoon and she had wet herself thoroughly in the deep snow among the piles of stones. She was trying to reach a nice, waxy-looking vine when Imanya came up behind her and spoke. Not understanding, Michal shook her head. Then the woman of Araman took her by the hand, which startled Michal a little because Imanya had never touched her before. The hand that gripped hers was hard and warm.
As they went through the street, Michal noticed that the children were tying branches over the doorways and setting lamps on the benches outside. At her own door Imanya left her.
Inside Jacob was lighting a lamp with a sliver of burning wood, and Michal remembered how their matches had gone long before. Daoud stood by him. On the divan Clement Bigsby lay dead.
Darkness came quickly to the summit. Daoud went on lighting the extra lamps, one from the other. Jacob stood, poking at the fire. Sir Clement's heart had given out, he thought, after the long weakness of malaria.
He had been up in the plaza looking for Michal when he had heard Sir Clement call. It was more like an excited cry. He had seen the Englishman running from the door, toward the steps. Then Michelangelo—Gopal—had followed him out of the door. The Englishman had paused at the steps and sat down as if he had hurt himself. Gopal and Daoud had helped him back to the divan, and he had died within five minutes, breathing with great difficulty and not speaking again.
"He didn't say anything?" Michal asked confusedly.
"When he called out, it was one word over and over. He saw me, and he was calling to me, or to Daoud."
"Then what was the word, Jacob?"
He hesitated, frowning over the fire. "The Magi."
"Jacob!"
"I can't have been mistaken, Michal."
She thought, he was frightened and running away. "Was he so frightened, Jacob?"
"No, he looked happy. Like yesterday afternoon, when he'd made that discovery."
He shouldn't have tried to run. Still, he was excited and tired. Now he would not speak to her again and she would miss that terribly. To keep from crying, Michal got up and began to drape the ivy among the lamps. Daoud came and helped her deftly.
Long after dark they were still wondering what was to be done. There was the death to be reported, and all the Englishman's papers to be given to the proper authorities, and the burial.
"We can't get word, or—go to Baghdad," Jacob pointed out. They had no spades or pickaxes to dig a grave. Nor had they any boards to make a coffin.
"There is a necropolis at the monastery," Daoud vouchsafed.
Michal thought of Father Hyacinth. Somehow she felt very strongly that Clement Bigsby would have wanted to stay in Araman.
At first when the Watchman entered, she took no notice of him. Then she felt a faint surprise because he had never come into her door before. And then she saw that he carried a length of scarlet silk.
The Watchman went over to the body of the Englishman. Daoud drew in his breath suddenly. The Watchman did not tiptoe around; solidly he walked, like a farmer in from the fields attending to some necessary thing in the house.
The bed they brought in was made out of branches, covered with fir ends. Four men who came after the patriarch lifted the poles of the bed on which the body could not be seen because it had been swathed in the silk. The Watchman went out, taking no notice of them, and the four men followed.
"Daoud," said Jacob, "what——"
"They are going to the hestia. So they call the fire, Jacob."
Clement Bigsby had never said anything about death or burial. He had wanted to finish his book. Jacob was looking at her, puzzling. Not wanting to speak, she went out after the men of Araman.
She had forgotten about the transformation of the village below them. Each house had its fir branches and the lamps glowed steadily because there was no wind. So illuminated, the snow underfoot looked different. Taking Jacob's hand because she felt the need of it, Michal
followed the bearers up the steps to the altar height.
This also had changed. Wood and bundles of dead branches had been heaped before the altar. As Michal expected—she had seen burnings on the pyre in India—the bearers placed the bed of branches upon the wood. Then the Watchman held a torch in the smoldering altar fire of sacrifice to kindle it.
Now she saw Colonel Matejko and Vasstan, who must have been occupied with their dinner until they sighted the procession and learned the reason for it. Somehow the Pole appeared different: he was standing at attention, and he had fastened some faded ribbons on the shoulder of his uniform. A pair of white gloves covered his hands. Vasstan, his feet planted firmly, stared at the blaze with his head outthrust.
As the fire caught within the piled-up wood, sparks settled in the scarlet silk. Behind Michal the villagers had assembled in silence.
Michal bit her lip as the fire surged up over the silk. Feeling faint, she wanted to ask Jacob if she could go; instead she gripped his hand hard and tried to think of something apart from the fire. All Sir Clement's knowledge was gone with him except the few written pages. His brilliant, tender mind—his smile, when she had come into the room. And now the fire. The fire had been man's first invention—the beginning and the end, as earth to earth.
She had not noticed Father Hyacinth before.
The framework of embers glowed, and Jacob whispered "Good, Michal."
At this Jan Matejko came over, treading carefully, his white hands gesturing, saying in his precise French, "Accept, madame and monsieur, my condolences of the heart. He was a gallant gentleman."
Then he stepped back, as if on parade. Vasstan appeared in his place. And Vasstan seemed embarrassed.
"Tod fuhrt!" he exclaimed unsteadily. "Traf ihn—he of all men." Sentimentally, with moist eyes, he stared at the embers of the funeral fire, looking like a worried Wotan. Something, unmistakably, he wanted to do. There was some gesture to be made. "He killed himself?" he asked.
"No!" Michal exclaimed, and then said honestly, "Unless he killed himself because he would not take care of himself."
After considering this, Vasstan made his gesture. "So my enemy is gone. Perhaps my time is also over. Captain Ide, I will your friend be. I mean it, so."
He does mean it, Michal thought. But will he feel that way tomorrow, or the next day?
"Yes, Colonel Vasstan," Jacob said absently. Beyond the glowing embers he had noticed a spark of light moving in the darkness of the plain. Freeing his hand from Michal's, he stepped to the parapet, closing his eyes. When he opened them he could make out the distant gleam clearly.
It brightened, swaying as if swung by a man's hand. It could be a torch, he reflected, a mile or so away. Apparently it was meant to be seen by those on the mount around the pyre. Probably the Watchman had observed it, as he observed everything.
"Can we go now, Jacob?" Michal's whisper reached him. She moved away from the embers quickly, holding herself taut. By that he sensed how much she felt the strain of the burning. In her carefree moods she walked as if dancing with instinctive grace—as if it did not matter where her feet led her.
"There's only the two of us now," he said lamely.
After an instant's silence her lips protested, "Not the two of us, only us."
Feeling the tightness in her, he said quietly, "It will be a sorry Christmas for you, Michal."
"For us." She cried out the words as if to avert an evil omen.
Left to himself at the altar, the Watchman scanned the plain below until the spark of light died out. Then he drew a bronze wedge and hammer from the stand of the globe of the sky. For a moment he traced the pattern of the stars upon the globe with his finger. Taking his tools, he went over to the face of the rock and began to cut a new symbol.
In their house it was still. On her knees, Michal had been putting Sir Clement's things in order swiftly—packing his clothing and medicines deftly into a bag. She worked without stopping, wondering a little at the feeling that possessed her, that she was not so much tidying away what had belonged to Sir Clement as preparing for something that was going to happen.
By the fire Jacob, aware of Michal's restlessness, thought over the manner of Sir Clement's death. It was simple enough to call it heart failure. Yet that afternoon in this room the English scholar had been well enough to talk to Gopal, if they had talked. Certainly Sir Clement had made some startling discovery. If he had stumbled upon a secret he was not meant to know, a thin bronze blade might have been thrust into him without causing outward bleeding. Or at least not enough to show through his loose tweed clothing. There had not been time to strip the body, to make a careful examination for a wound, before the burning. He did not want to tell Michal that.
She was still in the stupor of shock. She and the Englishman had been of the same caste, understanding each other's whims, relying on the other's understanding. Since Sir Clement had appeared in Araman, Michal had devoted herself to nursing him. Necessarily, she and Jacob had been separated physically, and he had felt himself again to be an intruder, as at Riyat. The tie of sympathy between the girl and the older man had been stronger than between her and the sick Matejko.
Jacob was aware when she turned her head to him without speaking. She had drawn out the mass of Sir Clement's papers and knelt helplessly among them, fingering the piles, her face bright with pain. Answering her appeal, he said, "I'll do that, later."
Still fumbling with the piled-up notes, she nodded. "He never finished his book."
Jacob waited.
"What will happen to his writings, Jacob? Will they all be tied up in neat bundles to be given to Daoud or to the proper authorities somewhere in England to be put away in a storeroom like ashes in an urn?"
"No"
Surprised, she looked up at him quickly. In that second, in the fire's glow she appeared bodiless as a spirit of color and light, holding her breath, waiting for his assurance. Seeing her so, it was incredible to him that she could be the woman who had lain in his arms in the warmth of passion and of quiet sleep. The slight face, intent in its brooding, under the loosened tangle of bright hair, seemed apart in its beauty from anything that he had shared or could ever possess. "You are so lovely," he whispered, "it hurts."
Bending his head down to her, he saw the pulse throbbing in the softness of her throat. "Tell me," she asked, after a second. Then, in a breath, "I feel so strange. I feel as if I had to listen to something that is being told me, only I can't understand. Jacob!"
Rising swiftly, she went to touch the ivy beneath the lamps and to glance questioningly at the shadowed face of the shepherd on the wall, mute as always.
In matter-of-fact words he told her his conjecture about Sir Clement's death. At once she shook her head. "No, Jacob, that never happened. He was happy at what he had found. Gopal did not hurt him. Even Vasstan felt his kindness."
This was a different Michal, speaking with inward certainty, withdrawn from him in thought. With the sharp pain of realization, Jacob fancied that the tranquil Englishman who had loved her still had his claim upon her.
"Michal, you ought to leave Araman. You can," he said abruptly.
"Why?" She was attentive now, startled.
"You can go down with Daoud and Father Hyacinth, and take these things. You should never have come."
"But why ? I don't feel frightened of anything that is here."
Restlessly, over the fire, he tried to explain his foreboding. It was his fault that in craving Michal he had brought her here, defenseless except for him, subject to his demands.
"But I wanted to come, Jacob. Perhaps I never told you that, but it's true."
"There's a lot more I never told you. There's a sense of power here, pulling at me. These Kurdish tribes look up to me as a kind of American Messiah. I don't like that. Yet these dislocated groups, the Assyrians and the others, would follow a new leader at the moment, ditching Vasstan. I kept imagining it—how I could ride in the saddle and have my commands obeyed. These mountains a
re a natural stronghold that could be held if a man knew how to do it."
"And I was there, in your imagining?"
Blaming himself, Jacob edged his words with bitterness. "Yes, following me and obedient to me."
"I know, Jacob."
"I would make a splendid commander, gratified by homage and recognition." Sudden words revealed what he had buried, inexpressed inside him. "I hated Father Hyacinth for interfering between us, as I thought. And then Jan Matejko—because you felt so much for him."
"Yes, Jacob."
"Worse than that, for a second after Sir Clement died I felt glad that he was taken away from you. Only for a second, but I did think of it."
Michal's eyes never left his face. "I'm glad you told me that."
"Glad?"
"Because now you're just as human as I am." Something within her shone delighted. Then as swiftly her eyes closed, and after a moment she said, "We must love each other very much to be so afraid for each other."
And as if frightened by the words, she hurried on, drawing back into shadow against the wall, "I was afraid, a little, because I couldn't share your dreams. I mean the Kurds and these people of Araman, and searching for something I didn't understand. I was jealous, and—Jacob—I was even glad when you forgot and left the bronze Pegasus packed away for a week. I didn't want you to think of anything this place might be except our home."
"It is our home, Michal."
"I'm still afraid, and I can't help it." He could hear the quick catch of her breathing. "Now we do share everything we've been keeping muffled up inside ourselves, don't we, Jacob?"
"Yes."
She nodded as if that were settled forever. "I shall never leave Araman!" she cried out, and looked at him like a child surprised at her own outburst. "What should we do, Jacob?"
Gazing around helplessly, she went back to the orientalist's papers.