by Harold Lamb
"Why?"
"For a specimen." Briefly, Paul hesitated. "We do that, Captain Ide. From each war we bring a weapon that is new. My father brought the Browning after the last war."
Jacob smiled, fearful of asking too many questions. "And so you have a museum of antiquities—European antiquities of war!"
Paul shook his head. "Hardly a museum. More, a laboratory, in which we can see the tools made by men in the West for war. Year by year, you know, they become more destructive and more difficult to combat. Perhaps too difficult . . ."
He broke off, going to the end of the corridor, where he picked up one of the primitive bronze leaf swords. Apparently he was familiar with all the weapons. "The first invention, for man to kill man. Our cousins, migrating to the west, found these swords on the Danube River."
"Why the first invention?"
"Because it was never made for use on an animal—for hunting." Paul laughed, hefting the weighty blade. "If you doubt that, Captain Ide, try hunting with it."
"You had weapons before that."
"Of another kind, yes. In that high and far-off time we had shepherds' pipes and flutes—ox goads and bows, knives for skinning and slicing and so forth. But not this."
No longer laughing, Paul put away the leaf sword. Under his merriment lay a deep sadness. Like Daoud, when his mind was troubled, he stood there saying nothing. Cautiously, Jacob filled his pipe, wondering how much this ex-soldier knew of the secret of Araman.
"These are only carcases." Paul motioned down the corridor. "But your weapons of today are often alive, and they destroy by their own volition."
For a second Jacob had the fancy that this array of arms was more than metal and wood.
"I saw that happen," Paul went on. "On the Derna road. I saw my two comrades carrying a stretcher on which lay a third man. Then the thing exploded under the ground—the thing of metal and chemicals killing all three. I, the fourth, was hurt in the arm."
"A mine."
"Yes. A mine placed by Germans killed two of the wanderers from Araman, and a sick man who was an Italian. Had any man intended that, Captain Ide?" When he asked the question, Paul's eyes wandered, as if expecting no answer. "The terrifying thing was that I felt no surprise. I knew that we had cut across a mine field, that was all."
When they parted at the door, Jacob risked a direct question. "Your father was what you call a wanderer? And he took you on his travels?"
"Yes—when I was not studying in Switzerland. He said I could learn more by seeing things than by reading about them. And he was always studying himself."
"He was a scientist?"
"No, Kaimars called himself a student of the outer world."
Nursing his pipe against the drifting snow, Jacob nodded. "I'd like to know more about him."
But Paul did not answer readily as before. "What my father studied is not easy to understand. It is much harder to explain." He was moving away when Jacob insisted, "Come over to my place anyway, and have some tea—when you are rested."
With a wave of the hand, Paul went off toward the village. If he came to their house, Jacob knew that the soldier would have accepted himself and Michal as fast friends.
As he passed the German's door, he observed Matejko hoisting a flag on a pole made out of a dead branch. The flag, resplendent in new colors, was Kurdish. Jacob smiled, asking himself, "Why not?"
Daoud was sitting by Michal, consuming tea and barley cakes and honey.
"How did you vanish?" she cried in relief. "Daoud was getting ready to drag the lake for you, Jacob. Gopal's coming." Eagerly she explained. "It was Daoud's idea—because Gopal was here last with Sir Clement, and perhaps he can tell us what happened. That is, what excited Sir Clement. So please hurry and sit down and look as if you've been waiting an hour, without thinking of anything, except that it's Christmas."
So they were chatting quietly when the aged painter appeared through the curtain, shy in Michal's presence. Squatting down by them, he accepted a bowl of hot tea. For a while he would not speak. Not until Sir Clement was mentioned did he respond.
"He says something about Araman losing a friend now that Sir Clement is dead," Daoud ventured.
"Try to get him to repeat what Sir Clement said yesterday. Or what he did," Jacob urged.
After a moment Gopal looked past them at the wall paintings. "An naqsh," he said, and pointed at the young shepherd who had mystified them.
Sight of the painting released a flood of words from the old man, and Daoud listened intently. "He is saying the painting is very old—from time to time it has been done over, without change. Gopal's grandfather did it the last time."
"But what is it?" Michal demanded impulsively.
"Sir Clement asked that, and Gopal told him."
"What?"
"One of the Magi."
Michal caught her breath. And Jacob asked incredulously, "That shepherd ?"
"Yes. Gopal is quite certain about that. He says this is one who was a disciple of Zarathushtra."
"The Magians or Magi were the wisest men of their time," muttered Jacob. "The Greeks knew that, and coined the word magic from their name. But this fellow with the harp. . ."
"'There came wise men from the East,'" Michal quoted softly. "And they followed a star which stood over Bethlehem. That's what Matthew said, Jacob, and this is Christmas, isn't it? Even Herod questioned them, and they went home by another road to escape Herod—after Bethlehem. Oh, and the earliest Christian paintings in the catacombs at Rome show only shepherds like this. There's one in the crypt of Lucina. I'm feeling all mixed up . . ."
"The earliest!" Abruptly Jacob swung around to her. "That's the key to so much. God, how dumb we've been!"
Startled, Michal thought of Sir Clement running out into the snow, shouting, "The Magi!" Curiously Daoud contemplated the painting that might have been restored without alteration from the earliest times. He knew nothing about such matters. Left to himself, Gopal slipped away, to return to the portrait of the survivor of the war who had come back to Araman.
"Tell me quickly," Jacob cried at Michal. "How do you visualize the three Magi at Bethlehem?"
"Why, three bearded and majestic old men, wearing splendid robes, in the dimness of the stable. One usually has a turban, and they hold caskets or——"
"That's just what we've all seen in dozens of paintings and Christmas cards. But who painted those kingly old men? Scores of Western artists for centuries. Italian masters painted Venetian doges—Dutchmen copied Turkish turbans. They weren't painting the real Magi, they were copying down the fashions of their own times. They put on the theatrical costumes and the wigs, and stuck in the caskets. Gopal's wall painting is the earliest, and it may be the only real one."
Michal rubbed at her eyes and smiled. "So the Magi were shepherds, and young? And there weren't any fine caskets, because incense does grow in the deserts near Bethlehem. And gold grows in the riverbeds."
"You are seeing it with your own eyes, Michal—not with the eyes of centuries of interior decorators."
A thought struck into his mind with the force of a blow. "We've been blind, Michal. We never recognized truth before our eyes. We've been looking at the end of things, the tortured, twisted end products of the twentieth century. We've been setting the screen of the twentieth century before our eyes to look back at the naked beginnings." He stopped, groping for a thought. "Aren't those the first words of the Bible ? I know that much—they are in the beginning?
"Millenniums ago," Daoud smiled. "When these people of Araman made bronze horses. Jacob, I'm glad you are convinced of that at last."
"Of more than that, Daoud. We'll have to go back beyond the bronze horses and the migrations to the beginnings of things, when the world was young. What did the Watchman say the people were then? People of the Dawn."
"Too early for me," said the archaeologist. "Why don't you rest yourself, Jacob? We are all tired."
"Sir Clement didn't rest."
With a shock of rem
embrance Michal saw again the passive body of the scholar licked by flames. Jacob had been sitting by their fire on the open hearth, and now he knelt to stir the embers absently. When Daoud left, she settled down by him, her shoulder touching his arm. Although he put his arm around her, she knew that his thought was still far away from her.
"What is it, Jacob?" she asked softly.
"It's like your painting, Michal. The truth that is hidden here. It's looking us in the face, trying to speak to us."
"Yes. The painting spoke to us."
"I have a feeling that if we can't see the face of this truth now we never will."
"We will."
His attention was caught by that. "Woman, can you tell me how?"
Michal could not, but she did not feel like admitting it. Instead she pulled his arm closer about her, closing her eyes so he might not read them. "Because we are together, Jacob, and because nothing else matters."
"You matter." She knew he was smiling now. "Daoud," he remarked absently, "goes by what he's read and observed. We're trying to forget all we've read and observed until now."
"Including Military Intelligence?"
"Including that, Michal."
"And Aristotle?"
"Aristotle lived when the world was too old. We'll have to be much younger than that."
He said, "Men like Zarathushtra must have known the peace of these mountains. At least the Magi, who learned from him, believed in it." His voice quickened. "Michal, Zarathushtra lived as a man in our young world. Yet what did you know of him before now?"
Now Jacob's mind was going off alone again, separating from hers. It gave her a forlorn feeling.
"From books?" she asked obediently.
"Yes."
"Why, he was Zoroaster, the founder of a religion that has fire worshipers and Towers of Silence where dead bodies are left for scavenger birds today."
Rising, Jacob searched among Sir Clement's notes until he found the fragment he wanted. " 'Zarathushtra, born on one of the rivers of Aryan-vej,' " he read. " 'Influenced by the earliest Iranian or Aryan folk religion (its nature unknown to us today, except for the Avesta hymns). . .built neither temples nor altars. . .he talked as he wandered. . .of the danger of conflict and the need of mercy by which food could be shared, and human beings survive. . .believed perhaps in a soul that could survive the first life, if it did not perish then. His people were the Medes or Madai inhabiting these hills—one people, but thought by him to be akin to all others. His disciples were called the Magi.'"
Putting aside the note, Jacob added thoughtfully, "He was an ordinary man like that young shepherd, seeking for the meaning of life. In that search he wandered out of Araman. Men learned from him and tried to remember what he had said; after generations, they made a myth of him, and made his sayings into prophecy and his faith into a cosmic religion. To know the real Zarathushtra we'd have to discard all the trappings and pomp laid over his memory by other men."
"As we discarded the wigs and the beards and the bric-a-brac gifts of the false Magi, who never followed a star to Bethlehem." She glanced up at the wall painting. "But I'd like to think my white elephant was real, in the jungle. I'm sure there was a friendly elephant once upon a time."
Jacob had a sense of helplessness. In the beginning, they had a clear thought about the Magi; now he was floundering mentally in the riddles of oriental mysticism, wondering whether a white elephant had existed.
"Jacob," cried Michal, "if only he would talk to us, like the other!"
She was feeling the strain as well as he, after the death of Sir Clement. This mystery that enveloped Araman was taking its toll of each of them, separately.
"I don't want you to wonder any more, Michal," he explained quietly.
"I'm glad of that."
"Put on your blue dress, because we're going to have company for supper."
Relieved, she looked up curiously. "What kind of company—Vasstan?"
"No, a voice that can talk to us."
Paul was not down the village street, or at Gopal's. Hearing voices along the height, Jacob went up to the altar. The wind had fallen with evening, and the snow had softened to drifting flakes. Purple light penetrated a clear patch of sky.
A half-dozen men in sheepskins had been helping the Watchman keep the altar fire going during the worst of the storm. Among them Jacob singled out the young soldier, and asked, "Will you come?"
When they were able to leave the fire Paul followed him silently into the room where Michal had lit all the lamps. She had on her blue frock and a white shawl, and she greeted the soldier as if she had been expecting him. When she gave him a bowl of tea, he raised it slightly toward his forehead, pleased. "It's bright here now," he said.
"Wasn't it always? What was it before we came?"
"A guesthouse, Miss Michal—without guests. Long ago some distinguished people slept here."
"Who were they? I'd like to know."
"You might know two of them." Paul smiled at her uncertainly. "Mani the painter, and Saladin the Kurd. The name is really Salah ad Din"
"The gentleman of the crusades?"
"Yes, but he defeated the crusaders."
Paul accepted food and drink without embarrassment, although he had to favor his right shoulder which pained him. Of an age with Michal, he talked readily to her. And Michal, in the mysterious manner of a woman in her home with a guest, was enjoying herself and making no secret of it. The room is bright, Jacob thought, because she is here.
"Was Messer Marco Polo one of the distinguished visitors to Araman?" she asked. "He went everywhere."
"Not here. He was a Westerner."
Paul seemed to know much about Sir Clement. His father had met the English scholar on the Indian frontier—a trouble spot at the end of the last war. (At the time, Jacob reflected, when the Englishman had left the army and embarked on his quest.) "Then no one from the West," he said slowly, "came here before now."
Paul shook his head. "Many tried to come." He laughed. "They could not find it."
Jacob risked a guess. "The Emperor Julian tried."
"With his army? Perhaps, but he died on the way." Paul seemed uncertain and wary of his words. "Perhaps he never knew what this place was."
"I know." Michal spoke up unexpectedly. "It's the paradise of our first ancestors."
"Why did you say that, Miss Michal?"
"Because it's true. You know it's true, Paul. Even the sick Colonel Matejko is well here, and even we are happy."
For a moment his restless eyes studied them, and what he saw seemed to break down a barrier within him. "Yes, it is true. But it was a long time ago when we left Araman."
Michal was silent, waiting, and Paul said, "The elders have often told how that happened. Would you like to hear, Captain Ide?"
Nursing the cold bowl of his pipe, Jacob nodded. Bit by bit the outspoken Paul was filling in blank spaces in his picture of Araman—purposefully, he thought, while holding back other truths. "Yes," he said, "if you will."
"We were safe in the mountains, where we had been taught much by the Wanderer, Zarathushtra. He had strengthened our spirit and had taught us to share the food for our bodies. In the mountains the people were happy then."
Paul spoke as if the ancient past had been yesterday, frowning over it as he considered.
"Down below in the plain of Shinar was the great city, Babylon. The kings and merchants of the earth below found delight in her, to buy her merchandise of purple and all manner of ivory, of oil and incense and slaves."
Jacob glanced up curiously, for the soldier's words were much like those of Revelation. As if aware of his thought, Paul's tone changed. "Actually, Captain Ide, Babylon had reached a culture advanced for that day. Her people used wheeled machinery and chariots of war; they mortgaged land, stored and traded in grains and goods. They used blast furnaces and built lofty skyscrapers out of bitumen blocks—Gudea had shown them how to build a ziggurat, like a mountain in the plain."
"Yes,"
assented Jacob, remembering.
"Babylon had oil and a full state treasury from taxation. Labor was cheap, because it was slave labor—the Hebrews being among the slaves. Having wealth, the city also had its moneylenders. By reason of all this its population had grown enormously. The science of numbers and the knowledge of the stars flourished at the hands of Chaldean mathematicians. So the standard of living for a few people was very high. In Babylon also was found the blood of prophets and saints."
Again that echo of Revelation.
"Nebuchadnezzar, the king, felt a great pride in his city of Babylon and his land of the plain. Yet he had a foreboding that the power did not belong to him. Daniel relates how Nebuchadnezzar went forth from those sons of men and dwelt among the wild asses, where his body was wet by the night's dew. The prince Belshazzar had no such fear. Until the hand appeared writing on the wall of his hall—" abruptly Paul looked up. "Do you also remember how fell Babylon, fortified by impregnable walls?"
"It was stormed by the Medes and the Persians, as Daniel had prophesied."
Paul nodded. "Yes, that's true. And this also is true. The Iranians of the mountains around Araman—the Madai and the Parsva, our kinsmen—had then the leader named Kurush whom you call Cyrus. They were tempted and he was tempted by the knowledge and the wealth in Babylon. They thought and he thought that this great city was our antagonist, to be overthrown. So it happened. Our horsemen rode down into the plain against Babylon. But they had no more than bows and javelins. How could they storm walls as mighty as those of Babylon, defended by machines? When at that time we did not know how to wage war?"
Jacob was silent.
"Of course we had our horses," Paul explained. "Your archaeologists have deciphered from the cylinder of Cyrus words about what happened: No one knows the strength of his armed men, but the waters of the river marched with him. Without battle or conflict, he was permitted to enter Babylon—the city was spared a calamity.
"It's not a riddle, really." With the zest of a schoolboy enjoying a joke, Paul explained. "The river that flowed through Babylon, it had no wall over it of course. And my people diverted enough of the water of the river to ride in along its bed. They spread through the streets within the great city where no one expected them to appear, least of all Belshazzar, whose rule ended that day. On the cylinder you have Cyrus had his words written: All the inhabitants l restored to their own dwelling places. . .I permitted all to dwell in peace. He did, too, as you know. The different peoples could open their temples, the Hebrews returned from captivity to rebuild their own temple at Jerusalem. Babylon had fallen. The kings who lived deliciously within her mourned her, and so did the merchants who no longer had trade with her."