by Harold Lamb
When Jacob went back to the bedroom, Michal glanced at his face and said, "You see?"
When she heard the British plane was leaving in two hours, she turned her head away on the pillow and rearranged the ikon and the bronze horse on the bedside table. "At least it won't take you very long to pack, will it? But don't you think we should divide up our household belongings? That won't take long, either. You'll need Pegasus to exhibit, and I may need Nikolka, so he'd better stay here with me." Her fingers held to the winged horse, and her eyes half closed, hiding, as she tried to smile. "I hate for you to remember me like this, in a dull gray coverall."
"I won't, Michal."
Suddenly she held out both her arms, crying, "You must come back to me soon, Jacob."
Flying into the west, over white cloud surface and dark land patched into squares of growing things, over the green blue of the Mediterranean and the hard green gray of the Atlantic, Jacob changed the hands of his watch, as the official time changed, lengthening as he pursued the sinking sun. These days passed, and more must pass before he could have word of Michal by cable.
The first sight of his own continent was no more than a glimpse through clouds of drifting ice, like scattered sheep below, and then a faint line that grew into a snowbound coast beyond the ice. That coast perhaps at this point of land had been discovered a thousand years before by the long ships of Icelanders seeking what lay to the west.
Seen from the plane, far off, it bore no sign of change from that early time.
Jacob met his first delay at the pine-covered shore of the inlet where he waited three days for a place in a New York-bound plane. The wartime barracks where he slept was deserted except for him. To buy his ticket from there, he had to cash most of his remaining express checks.
There was a glorious moment when he came down through the overcast and the motors slowed their beat, and he saw through gusts of rain the myriad lights of his own city overspreading the ground and rising ahead of him in pinnacles against the darkness. These lights traced patterns of avenues, bridges, and pyramided skyscrapers.
At La Guardia Field he was held through that night and most of the next day by an affable man, an immigration inspector at the counter by which the passengers passed into America. This individual, never losing his good humor, had pointed out that Jacob had neither travel orders as an officer nor a passport as a civilian, and furthermore that the military identification of a certain Captain Jacob Ide of USAFIME in no way proved that the passenger presenting it was the officer in question—especially as he bore little resemblance to the photograph in the identification. Moreover, Jacob had no baggage. He had, in fact, nothing except the bronze horse that might be anything in the way of a curio. Failing positive proof that he was Jacob Ide, American citizen, the only alternative was official acknowledgement from United States Army authority of his identity and his presence at the field.
The next morning Jacob spent two hours laboring with a telephone in a booth under observation of a tranquil cop, getting the proper silver coins to put calls through to strange voices in the War Department offices in Washington. No one there knew of a Captain Ide who had been authorized to return home; there was a record of a missing Captain Jacob Ide, with an AWOL queried on it; there was a discharge awaiting a Captain Ide of G-2 upon proper completion of medical examination in the Cairo headquarters, since removed. As far as the War Department was concerned, the Jacob Ide at the other end of the telephone did not exist, because there was no account of him in written orders on hand.
Jacob was released in the end by a scrap of paper. Very tired after his bouts with the telephone, still under scrutiny of the policeman, he went to the lunch counter for a glass of milk. Since he had spent all his change in the slots of the telephone, he had presented an express check for payment, and this had been refused. The policeman, wandering over to listen to the discussion, had taken the check and Jacob back to the affable immigration inspector, who eyed the bedraggled paper with interest and had asked the officer of the law if he had seen Jacob sign it. "Where and when did you get these?" he had demanded of Jacob.
"Five years ago at the Times Square branch of the Bank of the Manhattan Company," Jacob had explained wearily.
The affable inspector sauntered over to pick up a phone, and in five minutes he came back to say without change of expression, "You were certainly here, and you had an account with that bank in nineteen forty-two, Captain Ide." After noting down the foreign news office of the New York Transcript as an address, and instructing Jacob to forward a photostat of his army discharge within a week, he said, "Now you can go along and play," and took up the passport of the next in line.
But when Jacob in a taxi joined the Manhattan-bound traffic, it was too late to reach Washington before the government offices would be closed. The next day, Saturday, they would be closed, and the next.
When the taxi snarled to its first stop, Jacob felt a twinge of dread before he noticed that the cars beside them had stopped, and a traffic light showed red across the way, where a stream of human beings pressed past the machines. Following the afternoon crowd into the depths of the subway, he was pushed close to the tracks, and found himself tense and chilled when the first train roared toward him out of the maw of the tunnel.
It was not the traffic lights, or the thunder of trains underground, or the rush of human beings in and out of doors, but the feeling that they were moving blindly toward something unknown that made Jacob uneasy. While he waited to cross Fifth Avenue he looked up at the ascending mass of the Empire State Building, and felt as if he himself were poised at the edge of a height.
He looked forward to his old offices as a haven, something understanding and familiar where he could say whatever was in his mind.
A strange girl at a desk outside the elevator asked him who he wanted to see, and—after a curious glance at his clothes—on what business. He said Ed McMahon would know him, and in five minutes he was stepping through the familiar swing door.
There he stopped dead. The outer room met him with almost physical impact. Strange faces affixed to telephones, the full glow of fluorescent lights, the hammering of typewriters that he had not heard for so long, snatches of staccato words flung out, the distant deep purr of revolving presses——
Through this he moved unheeded, sighting familiar faces bent away from him over machines. He moved on limping, bewildered by the crescendo of sound, toward Ed McMahon's open door, where he could see his old editor, unchanged by five years, cleaning out an odorous pipe while he nursed a phone receiver on his shoulder and muttered into it fragments of speech—"no animal crackers in the soup; no subhumanity." Glancing up rapidly and then carefully at Jacob, he said across the phone, "Ready to work again, Jake?"
"I have a story."
"Cairo is fat and purse-proud; it has riots but no story in it."
"This is not Cairo's story."
Between the interludes of the telephone Jacob told the cable editor of the Transcript the story of Araman. Because he had so much to tell, he found it hard to make clear. McMahon listened, while he seemed to be doing several other things. Finally he shoved the telephone away and squared his elbows on the littered desk. "It's the sort of thing—" He shook his head. "I believe it, Jake, but how many others will? You haven't any pictures. Now, if you had been at the Dardanelles. The great American reading public knows about the Dardanelles by now, and any story would be good."
Jacob had seen the word Dardanelles spilled across the newspaper headlines in the street.
"It's time they heard about Araman."
"You're Dutch enough to stick to that one idea. I'm not arguing with you. The discovery angle is good, and London is bound to play it up soon or late. All right." He hesitated. "Center on the discovery of one of the earliest civilizations. But wait a minute." He fumbled through a pile of clippings and pushed one over to Jacob. "The Araman thing has been tied up in a package already. I didn't recognize the name."
The clipping, dated fo
ur days before, was an international news agency story from Istanbul under headlines:
ANCIENT CITY FOUND IN
KURDISTAN
Soviet archaeological expedition uncovers
early culture of mountains near Armenia.
It was coldly factual, relating that a special mission from Tiflis had discovered hitherto unexamined sites of primitive culture among the Armenians and the Kurdish tribes near Lake Urmiah. The discovery indicated that both an Armenian and a Kurdish nation had existed from early Babylonian times, as proved by the remains of buildings and rock inscriptions in the sacred walled city of Araman, which had no doubt been the residence of gr/sat kings of the Armenians and Kurds unrecorded by history. The Soviet mission had made a transcript of the saga of Araman given by the surviving patriarch of the city and confirmed by inscriptions carved in the cliffs. These findings tended to support the claim of both Armenians and Kurds to national existence, now as in the past. Those claims had been presented by the Kurds and Armenians to the Soviet Union. The Kurds were erecting a monument to the Red Army on the peak of Araman.
As Jacob read, he thought of Dr. Anna scribbling honestly in her notebook. Someone else had edited her story.
"True or not true?" McMahon questioned, across the telephone.
"Both. It's a part of the truth, and it buries Araman entirely under politics. It wipes out the vestige of the first endeavor of human beings to be free. It says nothing about their faith that has survived war, or the chance of restoring it."
Putting down the telephone, the editor looked at Jacob impassively.
"Any political angle is for Washington, not for our columns. Why not take it to Washington first?"
McMahon guessed that Jacob was bound for Washington, and he felt relieved that the Transcript would not have to cope with a story that was neither ordinary news nor an archaeological find, but a matter of survival of human beings. And he suggested that Jacob relax and go through with his medical examination and discharge, and get fixed up at Walter Reed Hospital or somewhere before returning to work. "You look like Banquo's ghost, Jake. Where are you putting up?"
Absently Jacob named a hotel that he had liked before the war. His editor laughed. "Beds in this city don't exist over the week end." Scribbling a note, he handed it to Jacob, telling him to take it to a small hostelry between the office and Times Square, and give it to the manager, who would take care of him somehow. "Get yourself some clothes, or you won't get in anywhere. And try to see Armistead Marly in Washington."
And he yanked the buzzing telephone back to his ear.
The idea of the overcoat was a mistake. Jacob had not really wanted one, but with an overcoat and perhaps gloves and a neck scarf, he could carry out McMahon's injunction, and would appear respectable as far down as the knees. For some time he wandered by the glowing windows where surprising amounts of costume jewelry and arrays of bottles shone. Turning in past a window that displayed sport shirts and bathrobes, he found himself in a small glittering room where two men in striped suits bent over the sporting page of an evening edition, arguing about the racing results at Miami. Left to himself, Jacob inspected the few overcoats hung on a rack in the rear, picking out one that looked like tweed and seemed to be about his size. One of the racing cognoscenti moved over to him, extinguishing a cigarette, and said, "Soivn'ty-fi'," and when Jacob hesitated he added carelessly, "It's a buy."
Without trying it on, Jacob fingered it irresolutely, thinking that seventy-five dollars would take almost all his remaining traveler's checks. Finally he decided to buy a sweater instead, for twelve dollars and eighty-five cents. It would not hide the shabbiness of his blue suit, but it would keep him warm.
Going out into the swift-moving crowd, he went in search of the hotel McMahon had named, and he realized that it was not the price or the dubious appearance of the overcoat that had made him reject it. Rather, he did not want to discard his old clothes. These battered shoes and the torn blue cloth had belonged to Araman. If he threw them away, he would be losing them and be unprotected by them.
At a congested crossing he turned the wrong way. He felt the sting of hard snow on his face and glanced up in surprise. From the murk above the window lights flakes were drifting down, to vanish underfoot on the pavements. Only when they passed the flashing, colored lights did they show white. At the next corner he peered up at the lampstand to read the street sign. It said that he was on the Avenue of the Americas—a name that was unfamiliar to him. When he stood still the people behind, hurrying through the snow flurries, jostled into him. It may have been the snow, but he had a strange feeling that he was there alone in the glare of the lamp, apart from these people, who saw nothing of him. As if there lay upon his shoulders not a cloak of invisibility but a need peculiar to himself, unrecognized by these groups hurrying to stores and to theaters and dinner tables.
That night, while the hour hand moved around on his watch, he could not sleep. It was the first time in months he had stretched out in an ordinary bed; the room smelled of lacquer and stale perfume. He had had to wait in the lobby while it was made up, and he had gone down to a cafeteria where men and women jostled trays against the counter, calling out orders in heavy voices and pointing at steaming trays of food. Not feeling hungry, Jacob had avoided the crowd by drawing himself a glass of milk from a faucet, after pushing a coin into a slot; he had picked up some buns from a clear space on the counter.
The metal scrap basket contained a pint bottle, empty of whisky. Over the washstand one of the towels had been rumpled and streaked with bright lipstick. In spite of the falling snow, the neon signs of the street below colored the window opening and sent wraiths of red and green across the ceiling. Through the thin wall by his head he could hear the rumble of voices punctured by laughter. Remotely, elevator doors clashed open and shut.
The reasoning part of his mind said: you need about four stiff drinks at the corner bar; you've had precious little sleep for a week, and you're still shy of the blood you lost more than two weeks ago, and that does things to your head; this is Times Square, and it's strange only because you haven't seen it in five years.
Something unreasoning in him stirred and cried out because the snow was falling, and this room shut out the snow, and separated him from Michal. In that other room, before the embers of the fire vanished, Michal would be blowing out the lamps, holding the edges of her robe out in her fingers, dancing a step or two between the lamps, in time with the melody of the wind and the silence beyond it, then turning suddenly, her head on one side, to smile at him. In this room Michal did not exist; she could never be here. . . .Sister Miriam had known there was something to worry about; Michal had told him he must come back if anything happened, and now he could not go back as he had come. Not without a passport, and foreign visas, money and plane accommodations all to be extracted bit by bit from official routine.
Jacob counted all the obstacles to his boarding a plane to fly eastward and kept thinking of new ones. So the room closed in on him, holding him in the cold bed, until his mind numbed and he slept restlessly, his chest wet with sweat.
At the opening of the bank next morning he went to his safe-deposit box and arranged for a thousand dollars to be cabled to Michal at the hospital. Since his bank had no means of sending dollars to the sterling zone in the Middle East, it had to be done through a British bank, and it took all the morning to arrange.
In the cable he inserted a message to Michal asking her to wire immediately how she was and how soon she could catch a plane for the States. Since he had no address, he gave her the office of Armistead Marly, the name McMahon had mentioned. Marly, he learned at the bank, was head of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs in the State Department. Once this message had gone off, Jacob's sense of unease relaxed. In the nine days since he had left her, Michal's fever might be ended, under Dr. Ishaq's care. In two days more, by Monday, he might have her reply at the office in Washington.
After that Jacob had his first bit of luck.
He had walked through the park, where snow still lay on the earth between the pavements, to the museum. He had wandered in, past the gray rooms that held Egyptian tomb facades and sarcophagi and erect statues of beast-headed gods, to the offices where he had found one of the curators, although it was Saturday afternoon. This particular curator, as Jacob knew, had a deep knowledge of pre-Islamic art in western Asia. He had a few minutes to spare because he was awaiting the arrival of a collector with a rare piece of Rhages pottery.
During those few minutes he listened with frank curiosity to Jacob's account of the archaeological finds in Araman. And he stared with even more curiosity at his clothing. In cold silence he examined the winged horse.
"You do not know its provenance, Mr. Ide," he commented at last. "The dealer in Cairo might have picked it up anywhere. Many such pieces, stolen during the war, have been coming on the market. This must be seventh-century Greek work, and quite valuable—unless, of course, it is a good imitation. I cannot give you an opinion on archaic Greek objects."
Jacob explained that he had no wish to sell the horse—the curator had taken notice of his clothing at the first—but wanted to ask if the museum could not interest itself in joining with foreign archaeological societies to explore the mountains of Kurdistan for all the remains of the Araman culture.
Decisively the curator shook his head. The museum already had concessions to excavate, he explained, in the vicinity of Nishapur in northern Iran, where valuable medieval pottery had been uncovered, and in Palestine, to excavate Biblical sites. "Even upon those sites we cannot undertake anything under the present very uncertain political situation."