A Garden to the Eastward

by Harold Lamb

Vasstan emptied his tea bowl. Michal smiled at him, glancing at the silent Jacob, wondering how much the German who thought he was explaining a scientific fact to children was actually helping Jacob.

  "So perished the army of Crassus, and of Valerian who kneels in his monument before the horseman of Asia in the Felsrelief outside your door, Miss Michal. The great Constantine understood the weakness of the armies. So he tried to turn that weakness into strength; he made the Christian religion publicly his own, and legal for the soldiers. He even carried, himself, a small wooden cross when he wished to inspirit the armies to battle—letting it be said that the wood was taken from the true cross which his mother, Saint Helena, had found in Jerusalem. Yes, he built churches, like his mother, and made superstition the law which he himself enforced.

  "After Constantine, Julian who was called the Apostate. You have here an orphan, a physical weakling, consumed by a great hatred for Constantine's branch of the imperial family. In boyhood he was removed to a tower near here in Asia Minor. There he buried himself in Greek writings and the teachings of Easterners, in books and prayers* You may be sure he prayed for vengeance. It happened so. Some of the frontier legions revolted and freed him from his guard, demanding that he become their Caesar. They made him emperor."

  Vasstan eyed the intent Michal. "Now observe what happens in him. Imperator he is, protector of the Church, dictator of the legions. The weakling stiffens; he does well his work. Aber, the hatred is in him. Now what course is he to follow? Constantine whom he had hated had made the army Christian. So Julian changes the standards of the army to pagan eagles and is called Apostate. When he is told of defeats in Asia, and of the fate of Valerian, he musters a mighty army, the last iron of the legions, and marches east into the rising sun. Once he stops by the tower where he had buried himself in books. Once he stops in Tarsus, the city of Paul. On he marches to the east, with pagan standards, breathing his secret prayers, riding in a litter because he is sick and feels that he has not long to live. Through the heat of the Syrian desert he leads his legions, across the Tigris River. There he orders his fleet of boats to be burned, and marches on toward these mountains, where dust and heat and the nomads and disease are all enemies of his legions. By day and by night he loses men, but he goes on. There is no reason for it. Yet he will not turn back. Soon he is wounded and dies in the foothills. It is said that the last night he lay in his bed he lifted his arm and cried, 'Thou hast conquered.' " Vasstan looked at them. Pleased with the effect he had produced, the German explained, "You understand? Like a true imperator Julian died attacking his greatest antagonist, the unknown god in the East. After, a few survivors of the legions found their way back and chose a new emperor. But Rome itself had died with Julian." "Yes," said Jacob, "I understand now."

  Vasstan departed in high good humor, telling them that they must see the new flag of Kurdistan that the excellent Matejko had made.

  "Rome itself had died," Jacob whispered.

  "Jacob, did the test help? Did Vasstan——"

  "Yes, Michal." With a long sigh, he braced his shoulders back against the wall. "I'm not mad, and what seemed to be a miracle is really fact." Absently his hands piled up the Englishman's notes. "An angel of the Lord did scatter the host of Sennacherib. And the Assyrian armies that tried to invade these mountains were scattered in the lifetime of Zarathushtra. Babylon created new armies, and they ceased to be, as Paul told us. How many others were disintegrated in the same way?"

  The vision of the snow returned to his mind.

  "A name of Araman links up so often with their defeat. Mani lived when Valerian's legions were humbled. Our Saint George with the end of Diocletian. And then Julian."

  "And Saladin defeated the crusades."

  "And Napoleon had to retreat from the deserts of Syria. There are French bayonets here in the armory." His eyes sought hers. "Don't you see? Relics of each victory were brought to Araman. And each time a supposedly victorious army was disintegrated, a military regime ceased to be. Men who came from Araman have fought against warfare from the earliest times. Not against other peoples but against war itself, that second terrible horseman of the apocalypse."

  Michal came over and sat by him, silent.

  "They've gone out without any weapon except the human spirit, to make an end of the machinery of war. In one way or another, most of them seem to have died in doing so."

  "Sir Clement——"

  "I think he guessed at the truth. He warned me of the danger of approaching Araman."

  "Paul did too."

  "In his way, yes." Jacob pushed the notes away, pondering. "He said this is all that's left of Araman. Their power must be failing, Michal. Perhaps it's ending. Perhaps it ended long ago."

  He was still lost in thought. "What could they do today against even one mechanized column?"

  But Michal had heard what she wanted to hear. "Perhaps there would be another miracle."

  "If you believe in them."

  Pressing her head against his, she laughed. "Certainly I do, my lover. I could have told you that forty hours ago. Now I'll show you one."

  Flinging his sheepskin jacket at him, she caught his hands. "Come out and see."

  Jacob could not believe what he saw. After his long vigil by the lamp, the brilliance of the sky hurt his eyes. Sheer white stretched through limitless space to the transparent blue overhead.

  "Squint your eyes or it will dazzle you," Michal urged.

  When he peered out toward the horizon, the sentinel peaks took form, rising from the purple of their rock buttresses. Unfelt winds moving around these remote peaks drew plumes of snow particles upward, like smoke. For an instant Jacob had the impression that they were poised, the two of them, on the lookout point of a fortress so gigantic that it extended outward into space itself. He felt as if he and the woman beside him were sheltered and safe within this cusp of the firmament.

  Michal was not so silent. "I feel slightly intoxicated," she said happily. "Months ago—ages ago—I thought that clocks were ticking away my life, and a tiny bit of me was vanishing each moment. I hated it. Now time isn't running away. It's all tucked up inside me, and even the years don't matter any more. I suppose that's nonsense, but I don't care."

  A sense of relief stole over him. The aching in his mind had ceased. It was as if he had laid a burden down and had stood up to breathe freely, no longer troubled by unquiet.

  He told himself that this was because he was looking out over valleys that bore no trace of the handiwork of man, and so in their entirety remained at peace.

  "It's never been lovelier," breathed Michal.

  She led him down the village street, past the house where Gopal sketched at the portrait of Paul. Father Hyacinth, clearing the snow from the face of the sundial, in talk with Sergeant Daniel, smiled at them. His brown face reflected not only his joy in the morning but his delight at seeing Michal.

  Then she led the way around the lake, and contemplated the wheel that turned slowly under a diminished flow of water.

  "It's much quieter," she announced firmly. "It's saying that there's nothing to trouble me today, nothing at all, and you ought to be asleep, darling, and not thinking."

  "I'm not."

  Drowsiness was creeping through his body, drawing the blood from his overtired brain. The exhilaration of the morning still held strong, and he saw her as through a mist wherein moisture sparkled in her hair, and her eyes, unreadable, held his. With his arm around her slight shoulders, it seemed incredible that she should be there in the bright morning and should belong to him.

  At that moment Michal's body ached for the touch of his. She forgot the brightness of the snow and the quiet of having him relaxed at her side. From her inner consciousness a voice cried to her that all his thought had been a dream, bodiless, seeking after shadows, away from her. Yet if it were that, why should fear lay its cold hand on her, until her body quailed and her arms strained at her sides, to grip him close and tight to her? She wanted to cry out to him in
tender, simple words her fear and her longing, and with an effort she kept quiet, knowing his mind had drifted away in drowsiness. To herself she cried silently that there was nothing real to trouble her, nothing at all, and Jacob had to sleep.

  Stumbling over the stones, she led him back through their door. Throwing himself down on the bed, he sank into sleep at once, even while she pulled off his coat and shoes, and covered him, then sitting by him, not caring to prepare food for herself alone.

  Jacob woke in the darkness of night, aware of Michal's small hands drawing off his clothing awkwardly. Half roused, he fumbled to help her. Lying back, he felt the warmth of her body resting light against him and her arms twisting around his neck. He felt her eyes wet, and heard her breath strangling in sobs that convulsed her silently. In fierce craving he held her under him, the pulsing of her breast, the straining of her thighs against him, the strength of the slender body engulfing him like a wave that swept him out of himself and restored him to consciousness and longing, while her voice whispered again words half heard, telling him once that if they could have a child. . .

  Even when they slept again her arms held him, and when the wind whirled past their heads, she cried a little quietly, as she had done that first night with Jacob by her when she heard the thudding of the water wheel.

  The weather remained clear. By day the ice on the lake thawed, to form again at night. Quiet settled upon the summit of Araman, where the people were occupied with the tasks of winter—feeding the sheep and getting in firewood.

  Late on a mild afternoon the machines appeared. They moved like methodical animals, keeping in line along the trail from the east.

  Two small vehicles in the lead oscillated back and forth in a manner strangely familiar. After an hour they showed themselves to be unmistakably American jeeps breaking a way through the snow. A light truck and two heavy wagons drawn by double horse teams followed, with a cavalcade of riders bringing up the rear.

  Before dark the new arrivals had reached the approach to Araman. A rough square was formed by the vehicles and horse lines, apart from the small Assyrian encampment and the black tents of the Kurds. Through the binoculars, twenty or thirty human beings could be observed actively making camp, but who they might be no one on the summit knew.

  The newcomers made no effort to climb the steps that night or the next day. Sergeant Daniel appeared with the first news of them. They had come, he said, from beyond Lake Urmiah, and they were Russians from the Archaeological Museum of Tiflis.

  Apparently the Russians had come for a long stay. Except to go out for firewood they kept close to their encampment. They seemed to be a mystery to the villagers of Araman, who had been amazed at their first sight of motor vehicles moving without animals to draw them.

  Daniel and his Assyrians could only explain that the strangers had been working around the shores of Lake Urmiah when snow interfered with them, and at Sanjbulak they had found Kurdish guides to conduct them to the foot of Araman. Jacob wondered briefly why any archaeologists had tried to come over the passes in midwinter. After two days, he decided to go down to meet them, taking Daoud with him as a possible interpreter, since Vasstan and Matejko showed no inclination to greet the newcomers.

  "Shouldn't they make the first call on us?" Michal asked doubtfully.

  "We were here first. Actually, they have as much right here as any of us."

  "I suppose so. But do they know we're here?"

  She did not want to watch Jacob make the descent, and she waved to the two men when they passed through the Lion Gate, then returned to occupy herself with the slight tasks of cleaning house. Finding that these did not serve to cure her restlessness, she went down to Imanya's house hoping to find Paul or Father Hyacinth. Only Imanya was there, threading the shuttles through her silk loom. Michal sat down to watch the flying shuttles, without being soothed by them.

  If she could do something as simple as making the silk she wore, Michal thought, she would be better off. But she was no whole woman like Imanya, she was only a fragment, depending upon others. . . .Jacob had never before gone away where she could not call him. The two of them should never care so much for each other that it hurt to be separated. Yes, they should care for each other just like that!

  And I have so much, she assured herself purposefully. I've had months of precious hours, and even the minutes mean so much more now; Jacob has accomplished what he came to Araman to do, and he no longer has a shadow of a duty to perform, unless to go back and report what we have discovered. Sometime we're bound to do that.

  For a moment she felt the faint absurdity of such a report as she, Michal, would make it. For seven thousand years the people of Araman have made war upon war. It was absurd. As absurd as picturing Imanya going on the air, sponsored by some gremlin aid to housewives, telling how happy she was to have her son Paul back from Africa. And the aged Watchman really did look like Peter in some old-fashioned miracle play, where natives took the part. It was ludicrous, too, to think of the somber Paul standing in the way of those American jeeps driven by the Russians.

  The shuttles flashed like darts through the taut white strands.

  No, it wasn't absurd, to think of them in Araman itself. Michal had only to step through the door to see the guardian mountain peaks that hemmed in the valley like benevolent giants. The air she breathed had given life in this valley, untroubled for geological ages until now.

  What was it Jacob had said was here? a living power?

  "And it is," she assured herself. "I'm the only absurd thing in all this valley, sitting in a Paris-made dress, brooding because I'm cold, and a little frightened as usual."

  Resolutely, she got up to go back to her house, and turned off into the wood instead. She excused this detour by thinking she would pick some more ivy. Of all things, she had not intended to go near the wall. When she discovered Father Hyacinth sitting on a stone of the crumbled wall, however, she hurried over to him.

  He was looking down at the new encampment which, from that height, appeared to be no more than miniature huts populated by insects. The priest greeted her and made way for her to sit in the sun.

  "You should not wear slippers in the snow," he pointed out. "That will give you the pneumonia."

  Michal explained that she could not wear the Kurdish boots that had no heels. Then she pointed. "Those people there—why do you think they came?"

  The brown face of the priest wrinkled when he made one of his rare remarks. "Why not? They have come. Mar Shimun has said that the peoples of the earth will arrive, to take refuge in the mountains."

  Apparently the thought of refuge was a fixed idea at the monastery. "Why?" demanded Michal.

  After consulting the horizon with his eyes, Father Hyacinth made answer. "Because here it is the City of God."

  "The City?"

  He nodded.

  Michal knew from past experience that he would not explain how that could be. Her memory told her that the actual City of God had been the De Civitate Dei, written by Saint Augustine, and she knew very little about it. When she said as much the priest fell into contemplation.

  "That city in the book," he vouchsafed at last; "where is it now, Michal?"

  Michal shook her head. Perhaps the monasteries survived.

  "Ah, well." He gave up contemplation, to smile mischievously. "Michal, when Augustine was young he heard voices which bade him take and read the message of Paul of Tarsus. And so the City of God of which he spoke must also have arisen here in the East."

  His quaint reasoning cheered up Michal. "Of course it's here," she agreed.

  They were discussing with enjoyment the presence of the mythical city with mountains for walls and the valley for a plaza when Michal heard a faint thudding. Peering down into the camp, she puzzled over it before she realized the truth.

  The irregular sharp impacts in the air were made by guns firing to the eastward. The day was clear, with a strong wind blowing from that direction.

  "It's artillery, mi
les and miles away," she cried.

  Father Hyacinth glanced into the tranquil valley and shook his head. Having no knowledge of gunfire, he thought it must be axes at work.

  The sounds merged together after a moment and ceased.

  "Where is Paul?" she demanded, feeling cold of a sudden.

  Pointing out the trail to the east with his pipe, the priest said, "He went that way."

  Although she listened intently, Michal could hear nothing more, and she wondered if anyone else on Araman had caught the sound of firing. She could not have been mistaken. More than five years before and a thousand miles away she had heard that same thudding on the wind when she had been chatting by the orange trees in the garden of the embassy at Athens.

  He looked at her. "You are not well."

  "I'm all right." Drawing her coat about her, Michal waited, listening.

  Jacob had not encountered any Russians before now. He thought they looked like Midwestern Americans in rough-cut clothing, and with a heavy sprinkling of gold teeth. Ordinary people, but shy, without any manners. That did not bother him so much as it did Daoud.

  Barbed wire had been strung carelessly around their site, and a handful of men in parts of uniforms were setting up huts without haste. The sentry at the gate looked like a Turk although he wore a military overcoat. The battered one-and-a-half-ton truck—made in Detroit—contained a radio, set up, and Jacob recognized it as one taken from an Airacobra pursuit plane. Its range, he calculated, would reach Tabriz in Azerbaijan, or Nakhichevan across the Soviet frontier. It had a good big aerial.

  It took a moment for him to realize the significance of this. Araman, or at least the encampment below the mount, was now in touch with the outer world by way of Tiflis in the Caucasus and Moscow. What effect that might have would need to be seen.

  When the members of the expedition understood that he was an American, they kept crowding around, and he could not examine any more of their equipment. They made no move to prevent him; they merely stood around and stared. Several military rifles were in evidence.