by Harold Lamb
Fingering the crude chess set, she caught her breath. Carefully selecting a scarf that had been washed until it was ragged, she began to tie up the papers. It seemed important to her that they be kept. To burn them would be to destroy the last trace of Jan Matejko.
"Why do you keep them?"
Neither Michal nor Jacob had heard Paul come in the door. Nor had their attention been drawn to the figure in tribal dress—in the loose trousers, waist girdle, and heavy jacket of a Kurd.
"Paul!" she cried. "You're not in uniform."
He explained that he had kept on the uniform only because it had been easier to travel in it as far as Araman. "Nobody outside asks questions of a soldier nowadays," he nodded. "I do not mean that I was a soldier, except for the uniform. No, I was a corpsman. And I have done what you are doing"—he squatted by Michal, as if in resuming his own clothing he had reverted to tribal manners—"so many times!"
Again she had the feeling that his eyes were questioning her without approval. "In Africa there were papers in so many languages—even Slovak and Arabic. We did them all up, of course, I wonder who read them and where they were sent—if anywhere." His glance traveled around the almost bare room and he said, "It is too late to do anything for him now."
If they had been able to confiscate Matejko's pistol, Jacob reflected, the Pole might still be alive. If Michal had not stirred his pride, so that he had begun to care for his own life again, he might be trailing after Vasstan down below at that moment. No, they had not been able to help him. It occurred to Jacob that Paul did not seem surprised by the death of the Pole.
"It is not too late to help another man to live," Paul said suddenly.
"Who?"
"Daniel Toghrak."
"The Assyrian? But how?"
"You are Americans."
Jacob eyed him curiously. "These two Americans, as you know very well, can't even climb down from Araman without a permit." When Paul was silent, he asked, "Have you a permit to enter?"
The man of Araman roused from his meditation, and his laugh echoed through the house. "I? To enter Araman?"
"Then how did you come up, Paul?"
"The way the black goats came. There was a herd once, and I tended them, a child. They did not like the steps, so they climbed a different path. I have not forgotten."
Before Jacob could question him he went from the room. Michal knotted the scarf, and asked, "Can we help the Assyrians, Jacob?"
"No, Michal."
After that evening one of her spells of silence settled on Michal. "I don't know why," she confessed. "Yes, I do. I feel so useless, and angry too. I wonder if marionettes ever feel that way."
When he tried to find the others, Jacob began to share her mood. Daoud and Father Hyacinth had disappeared; Imanya and Gopal were deep in talk together. The quiet of the village was like the stillness before the sweep of a storm wind. He could not find Paul, until one of the young boys called at the door and signed for Jacob to come with him. It was nearly dark by then, and when his guide conducted Jacob to the altar, Paul and the Watchman were visible in the glow of the fire.
"I sent for you," the stretcher-bearer said, "because I am going down."
Unlike other orientals Jacob had known, he spoke swiftly to the point. "The divan—the council has begun. The Ghazi arrived from Sanjbulak, and tomorrow the Mullah Ismail will pitch his tents—his horsemen are descending now from the western pass."
Jacob wondered if Paul had been signaling with the sun telegraph, or if messengers came and went unseen. And the youth seemed to read his mind. "We have good eyes, Mr. Ide." For the first time he hesitated. "Those below are the patriarchal tribes of the heights. They used to hold this mount in reverence, coming here for counsel. Ay, they called it the Throne of Judgement. And in other years they had advice and aid from Araman."
"And now?"
"They may want it still."
Once Sir Clement had declared that Ismail would respect tidings from Araman. And now the tribes themselves had assembled at the shrine below.
"From whom?" Jacob asked.
Braced on his good arm against the stone, Paul looked into the fire, and the glow of it revealed the lines of weariness in his gaunt face. Now he spoke very slowly. "There are only three of us—left—on Araman."
Only three. Jacob said, "The Elder. And——"
"Myself and you."
"No one else?"
Unmistakably surprised, Paul glanced up. "Who else should there be, Mr. Ide? No, there is the patriarch who has never left his valley and this damaged student who speaks now, and you, a stranger, knowing nothing of the mountains."
At first Jacob could not believe that. There must be some other personality, or some authority that could be summoned. Then he reflected that the authority of Araman had been exerted only in the past, and that the outlying tribes, aware of this tradition of power, could not know what actually remained on the summit at this day. They might imagine much.
"What do you want me to do, Paul?" he asked, and wondered why he had not explained simply that he could do nothing.
Instead of answering at once, the man of Araman waited, as if the silence between them might speak of its own accord.
"If you——" Paul changed his words, saying, "If I send word that there is need, can you try to arrange for the Elder to be passed down? He has agreed to leave the fire."
"I can try, of course."
Without so much as a nod the man of Araman slipped over the parapet and dropped down to a narrow ledge below. Along this ledge he moved swiftly, as if it were full daylight. Gradually his body disappeared in the obscurity under the iridescence of the stars. This was evidently the path of the goats.
As he was making his way down to the plaza Jacob thought that Paul had really wanted himself to come down, but had been unwilling to ask it.
When he pushed through the door curtain, he found Daoud moving restlessly by the fire and Michal excited. "Jacob," she cried, "they are leaving us!"
"Tomorrow the priest is going to the monastery for advice," the Kurd explained, not meeting his friend's eyes. "I can work my way down from there. I must go, Jacob. Some report should be made to Baghdad of this—council."
Without pause, his words hurried on. They had planned out the details: Father Hyacinth would carry down a bundle of food without being questioned; he, Daoud, could descend with the priest who had a pass. With two pairs of rude skis stored in the bell tower below they could make pretense of taking casual exercise until they were clear of observation.
"What about the Watchman, Daoud—and his legend? You were translating the saga——"
"I can do nothing more here, Jacob." The Kurd glanced anxiously at the curtained doorway. Not that he was afraid in a physical sense—he could not face uncertainty and strain. And Jacob remembered that once before he had fled from Araman.
"I understand, Daoud."
"And you—it is not safe to stay!"
Jacob tried to ease the tension with a jest. "It may be as safe as sliding down the mountains on one ski. Besides, we're American citizens."
For an instant the archaeologist stared. "Do you think your Parliament—your Congress, isn't it, will protect you here? I have seen your American congressmen. They do not know Iraq from Iran."
"I'm not relying on congressmen, Daoud."
"Have you a diplomatic passport, then?"
"I've no passport—only an out-of-date military identification."
"Destroy that!" In his anxiety Daoud stammered over the English words. "Is it—have you any reason for staying now, Jacob?"
The single thought of escape had seized on the Kurdish scientist; he no longer heeded Michal, yet to leave his friend behind would have injured his pride, and he argued fiercely against it.
"It's not a reason exactly. It's more of an idea and pretty hazy at that."
"A what?"
Daoud was not angered at Jacob. This burning anger in him came from his dread of the unknown forces gathering arou
nd Araman and his own awareness that he was deserting in this crisis the man who had shared his food and thoughts, his rafik, his friend. Deliberately he avoided looking at Michal, a woman.
"A dream, Daoud." She laughed.
It was a dream, Jacob knew, taking clearer form with each hour. To safeguard these mountains and Araman, the heart of the mountain region. To lift this area off the map of territorial disputes, to separate it from the oil fields, the airfields, the strategic communications of the earth demanded by the separate nations, to keep it intact, to internationalize it so that it might cease to be a breeding ground of conflict and might become a sanctuary; to pen its strategic minerals underground where they had lain for a myriad ages—yes, that was the stuff dreams were made on, and if he should speak of it to Daoud, the scientist would believe he had gone mad. Yet if he could not convince Daoud, his friend, of the possibility of making such a project an actuality, whom else could he convince ?
"A scientific dream, something for the archaeologists," he explained. Carefully he asked if the archaeologists when they opened a tomb of ancient kings long buried—if they did not try first to protect what was inside. Experts at work on the tomb barred off the enclosure from intrusion and devoted months to extracting each object and studying it. Now that Araman was being opened up by no single expedition but by a kind of international grouping—with even Americans present—wasn't the first need to preserve it for international study while the Watchman still lived?
"You know we've done that on a smaller scale, Daoud. That is, we have foundations like the Rockefeller to advance the knowledge of science for humanity as a whole, and not tied to American political interests. There's the Nobel fund, too, for the advancement of peace. Think of the amount of work to be done here. It would take all next summer to put up housing for the experts to be called in, the Sanskrit scholars and ethnologists. There can't be so many of them, at that. Jackson of Columbia's dead; I don't know about Sir Aurel Stein. There must be Russians like Rostovtzeff, and Germans somewhere or other like Feist and Meyer——"
"Dead or lost to sight in the war years, or exiles, Jacob. Are you calling up ghosts?" For an instant something like hunger sharpened the Kurd's intent face. "Do you believe there is so much as a chance of preserving this as a theater for study?"
"There's always a chance. And it could be more than that."
"How much of a chance?"
The words were like a cry of appeal. A fantastic hope had touched the spirit of this Kurd, divided between his native fears and the indoctrination of Western teaching. He appealed instantly to his friend to tell him the reality of that hope. It was not merely that Jacob Ide knew more about the unpredictable happenings outside the mountains than Daoud could know. It was not that Daoud wanted to be reassured—of the two he was the greater realist. Instead, he was asking for the final word that the oriental can never utter, the yes or no that will decide a matter. Because in the mind of an oriental fate is forever unknowable and may not be decided by his own will. To Daoud, Jacob's dream must be either one of two things—an unhoped-for reality, or a casual American's hope of the unattainable.
Aware of that, Jacob hesitated. "Actually, not too good a chance, Daoud. But if an American expedition could explore the Gobi Desert for dinosaur eggs——"
"How good a chance?"
"About one in twenty."
At once the Kurd nodded. He recognized the truth. His instinct had warned him that Jacob's dream was hopeless. Then he was silent, troubled, unable to say good-by. Michal watched them, sitting apart, knowing that the men must speak their own farewell. After a minute Jacob picked up Sir Clement's papers, tied in a neat bundle. "You'd better take these to the Baghdad Museum, Daoud. We've finished with them."
Abruptly the Kurd threw his arm across Jacob's shoulder and hugged him. "Oh, there are so few men like you, Jacob."
Then, flushed and self-conscious, he drew away. "I'll endeavor to have RA.F. planes sent here from Habbaniya airdrome."
He had grown up in the tutelage of the British; in the past they had resolved all his problems for him, and to them he was hastening now.
"By all means send R.A.F. planes, Daoud. How much of a chance that they'll really come?"
"If they could, the British aviators would restore order here. They have done so before."
"How much of a chance?"
A glance told the Kurd that his friend was making a joke of this.
"Better than your chance. Let us say one in five."
"Then we'll watch for them."
They both laughed, and Daoud was able to leave without harm to his pride. Only at the door did he remember to say that he hoped to see Miss Michal also in Baghdad.
"I hope so, too, Daoud."
After a little Father Hyacinth called, carrying a basket of walnuts as a present. And Michal rummaged among her belongings, to bring out the old rosary and return it to him. With some surprise he took it.
"You are well, my daughter?" he asked gently.
"Quite well now."
Hardly noticing Jacob, he took his farewell of her, saying that there would be a chamber awaiting her in the monastery if she decided to return there.
"But it's only a cave." She laughed.
There had been times, the priest replied gravely, when great dangers had threatened and human beings found shelter in caves. And in monasteries also the spark of human knowledge had been kept alight. "That hope remains always," he said simply.
When he had gone, Michal looked around her curiously. The polished metal of the Russian ikon and the bronze horse shone in the candlelight. "We still have Nikolka and Pegasus," she said.
It pleased the two guards sitting on the fallen stones under the lion's head that the next day was clear and warm. Except for allowing a black-garbed batko and a thin man clad like a Kurd to pass down, they had had nothing to do. They sat close together without speaking, chewing dried sunflower seeds and moving when the chill of shadow fell on them. They had not been able to read the writing on the bit of cardboard that the priest had exhibited to them, and they hoped that they had obeyed the order properly in letting him and his companion by. To obey an order was the one unalterable necessity of their lives since the mobilization for the war. But their thoughts traveled comfortably down to the encampment where a meal of kasha and good hunks of gray bread awaited them.
When Svetlov, in his black otter-skin cap and heavy civilian overcoat, appeared up the steps, coughing, they had a moment of suspense. However, he gave no order and spoke of no order. They settled back where the sun was warmest.
Along the wall, at the break Michal had christened the lookout point, she and Jacob searched the valley below for any sign of Father Hyacinth and Daoud. No two skiers could be discerned in the hive-like activity of the growing camps. The black dots that were living men swarmed like bees. Down there they must be moving purposefully, to argument or conflict; from the height they appeared to stir constantly, aimlessly, as if it were against their nature to be still. Like bees.
It had been a strange fancy, that of the brown priest, of the City of God in the valley below.
"More bees," said Michal, pointing.
Hundreds of specks in clusters were moving in a dark line from the west. Apparently they crawled over the snow; actually, Jacob knew by the pace of their approach they must be horsemen trotting fast. He had seen that array before.
"The army of Mullah Ismail," he identified it.
After watching it for a moment, Michal asked if they couldn't take their walk around everything. She meant all their familiar spots—from the thicket where the ivy grew to the waterfall and the altar height. She was cold, and she walked quickly in the graceful stride that was so like a dance. Passing the sundial, she stopped to clean its face carefully. By the bronze globe of the sky she paused thoughtfully.
"It seems friendly now," she observed. "Is that because we know what it is, Jacob?"
She lingered over the instruments as if holding to the minutes of
time; as if it were a gain to her to keep each minute shared between them. Jacob felt a faint impatience at this dawdling that kept him from observation of the camp as the Herki riders came in. If only he had the German's binoculars!
She thought, I am breaking into pieces, all separating and coming away; I don't know what to hold to, while he is growing stronger with purpose. Why cant we speak of it?
"Jacob," she asked suddenly, "just how real is the possibility of making this country international and safe? Oh, I'm not saying it the right way—you know what I mean. Wouldn't it need full agreement between the four great powers, in the Security Council, to make a kind of world Geneva out of Araman?"
It seemed that he had an answer to that.
"If all this country were settled and developed, Michal, there'd be no possibility. But look at these mountains. Almost unexplored by Westerners. The people are tribal—they would be content to carry on their village life. No existing nation would actually lose any productive territory, because these are bare mountain chains, and anyway Iraq and Iran and Turkey have never established a workable authority in Kurdistan. But the main thing would be to get the western powers, the big fellows, to agree to leave the oil and minerals here unexploited. The whole thing would be an experiment, but at least a practical experiment."
Carefully she listened, her slim fingers gripping the rim of the globe of the sky. Her eyes, narrowed, seemed faintly mocking. "Put in simple words, you are asking for a Utopia to be marked out, to see if it would work."
"We can't go back to Geneva."
"Or to Cairo." Her head turned away from him quickly. She felt weak and ill, and she told herself she must not be sick. Aloud she said with a ripple of amusement, "It could be so nice, darling. With Sanskrit scholars skiing for their health like so many snow rabbits. And indoors, all the worried diplomats playing an endless chess tournament instead of arguing around polished conference tables. Then all their interpreters and wise specialists in foreign trade and strategic materials could look on as pure kibitzers."