Kingdom (40 page)

Nancy could not hold back her tears. They flowed freely as she clambered along the path. She had travelled so far and learned so much, and for what? To abandon the man she had sought for so long? And perhaps Herzog had spoken the truth after all – perhaps their lives were nothing more than a puppeteer’s sham? Jack Adams never consulted the Oracle, he remained immune from its schemes – but she had felt its power – the power of an amoral conditioning force that Herzog had described, some presence which was directing them all, to an end they could not hope to understand.

She was hungry and cold, and there was nothing left of her but muscle and bones. And at that moment, she wanted no part of the world; she wanted to withdraw from human society. It was a ghastly merry-go-round, a monstrous charade controlled by devils and demons; happiness was another word for selfishness and that was the real truth of the world. Sobbing and panting for breath, she put her head down and dragged her weary limbs along the pass. Behind her in the cave, lying there, perhaps already now dead, was this man – sage or madman – the man whose life had somehow been intertwined with hers – Anton Herzog.

Epilogue

New York

The salt traders had been there as Jen had promised, camped on the wind-blasted plateau in their yakskin yurts, their animals foraging through the thin blanket of snow, their feral children running wild like dogs. They had been suspicious and hostile at first, and Nancy saw that she and Jack were a strange sight, two raggedly dressed Westerners, silent in their confusion. Yet, with the cards and the gold as offerings, they soon found the traders welcoming enough. They were taken into the chieftain’s tent, a smoke-filled teepee where human forms sprawled in the darkness. The chieftain, a ferocious-looking man with a cutlass and pistol stuffed into his belt, had accepted their gifts and allotted two young men and one animal to take them to the border and guide them to the path that descended through a dark chasm, down into the foothills of the Himalayas and out onto the sundrenched banks of the Brahmaputra.

And as Jen had predicted, the going was hard but, eventually, they came across the first village and within twelve hours, thanks to lifts from farmers and lorry-drivers, they found themselves standing on a railway platform, at a distant provincial railway station on the furthest fringes of the Indian state of Sikkim, waiting for the local service that would pass them down the line of the great Indian railway network until, after a further thirty-six hours of crowded travel, they would finally be deposited at Delhi Central Station, bleary-eyed and disbelieving.

That had been six months ago now and Nancy Kelly had left India far behind. Later, she had learned from Krishna that the Indian police had abandoned the search for Herzog. The Chinese government said that they had assumed he was dead, though they claimed no body was ever found. His bones were still probably being picked over by the Himalayan griffin vultures, after his own anonymous sky burial in the mouth of the Cave of the Magicians. Charges of spying were forgotten about rather than officially dropped, but the police had informed Nancy that she was free to leave.

All that remained for her to do was to contact Maya. She spent a tortured morning working out what to say and finally wrote that she had made it to Tibet and found Herzog there. He was dying, she wrote, he died before her eyes. Maya should now take the will to a lawyer and she would be given money, to bring up their child. She paused before she wrote the final line, and then she committed herself. ‘Anton Herzog,’ she wrote, ‘died speaking your name. His last word was “Maya.”’ It was a white lie, though a lie none the less, but what was the point in upsetting her, in saying that she had seen him on his deathbed and that not once had he mentioned her?

She caught the first flight she could back to America, gazing out of the plane’s window as it taxied down the runway in the blazing Delhi sunshine, wondering how different her life in India might have been, had it not been for Anton Herzog.

Ultimately, she could not fathom what had happened to her at all, but she could not throw off the suspicion that she had come close to discerning an awful truth, a truth which had ravaged the frame of Herzog, once he had perceived it. She envied Jack his outlook on life, his absolute refusal to engage even in the merest thought that Herzog could have been telling any kind of truth. But either way, even for her, the mysteries and the implications, whether correct or not, were simply too great to be factored into a single human’s life. She and Jack had agreed to keep quiet about their journey, and most of all to tell no one that they had found Anton Herzog. She had hoped that in going to Tibet she would find the greatest story of her life, and in one sense – the profoundest sense – she had. Yet during their journey back into India, soul-searching and raking over their shared experience in the cave, they had realized that no one would believe them and that no one for a minute would understand. The greatest story of her entire life would never see the light of day.

She bade Jack farewell on the platform at Delhi station and promised to wire the money to his account. For a time they stared in silence at each other on the station concourse, amid the constant motion of the crowds. Then Jack squeezed her hand and kissed her on the cheek.

‘Don’t think about what he said. None of it was true. The fact that he died up there proves that. The fact that we left shows we have free will. If the Oracle is a prophet then it lies.’

And then Jack was gone, back to his world of antique traders, old bones and long hot Delhi nights. She watched him walking away, and saw him shaking his head, as if he was trying to banish the memories of what he had seen.

Her heart ached as she saw him go; in some ways she had begun to fall in love with him; in other circumstances, it should surely have all led to an affair, a romance of some sort. But she was not being reasonable. He was bound up with everything she had seen, this seismic experience she had endured, and she couldn’t figure it out. They both needed to escape from everything that had occurred, and they could only do that alone.

Nancy had returned to New York: to Brooklyn and the leafy streets of Park Slope; to her friends; to the cafés and bookstores she knew so well. Spring had come, the flowers were out in Central Park. She had been offered leave but refused it, afraid of spending long hours on her own, preferring to accept a post as a desk editor. She sank with relief into the cosy rituals of daily deadlines, the morning editorial meeting, the mounting frenzy as the paper was put to bed, drinks parties, dinners with contacts, the reassuring activities around her. Gradually, she began to put the strange experience behind her, or if not behind her, then at least she found that frequently she was not thinking about it, that there had been hours and then even later days when she had not really considered it. Somehow she buried it. She understood that this was the only way she could return to any sort of normality: Herzog’s worldview, his story in the cave, his dream, his nightmare, his world where demons and masters controlled mankind’s destiny, had to be buried under the mounting noise and activity of ordinary life. And morbid though it was to dwell on the fact, she was relieved that Herzog was dead. He was wrong, or mad as Jack put it. He hadn’t been rescued by monks from Shangri-La and he had never fulfilled the destiny that he thought he had been promised by the Oracle. And this was what made it easier to view Herzog’s account as an aberrant way of looking and thinking about the world, and his story of reaching Shangri-La and discovering the truth about the Oracle as a fantasy.

And then one late summer’s day, the phone rang. It was seven a.m., she was at home in bed, gratefully re-established in her old routine, listening to the radio and just thinking about getting up. She picked up, wondering why it couldn’t wait until she arrived at work, and then she heard a voice so familiar, so significant to her, that her hands began to tremble.

‘Nancy, it’s Jack,’ said the voice.

For a moment she couldn’t reply. He said, ‘Nancy?’ again, as if he was worried the line was bad, and she said, ‘Jack, what a surprise,’ trying to inject her response with ordinary friendly warmth. Old travelling companions, that was what she was aiming for.

‘Look, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. I – well, perhaps you understand why. The reason I’m calling is – I’m passing through New York. I’m at the airport now, I wondered if you’d like to have a coffee this morning. Deadlines permitting of course?’

She tried to laugh at his joke. But she had tensed up, as if she was back in the jungles of Pemako, unsure where to turn. She was afraid, afraid of seeing him again and afraid of revisiting her memories of those days in Tibet that she had worked so assiduously to suppress. She had consciously chosen to accept the banal world, to bury all knowledge of the alternatives, and it was not solely a negative act. She had come to understand it as a positive one as well: she was taking sides with history, with a general view of the universe, and it was probably the only way of staying sane. And besides it upset her greatly even to think of Anton Herzog, left to die, alone, in the gloomy jungle.

‘You know, it would be really nice to meet,’ she said. ‘But this morning is difficult. I have – a lot of things to do.’

‘Come on, Nancy, just a quick coffee. I won’t take up much of your time.’ He knew why she was reluctant. He understood, she was certain. That made her easier in her mind. She heard herself saying, ‘OK, outside the Bagel Zone – it’s on Tompkins Square Park, in Alphabet City. The cab-drivers all know the park. I’ll see you there in forty-five minutes.’

Deeply troubled, but trying not to admit it, she jumped in the shower, threw on some clothes. Briskly, she walked out of her apartment and found a cab. It was a fine clear day. The green grass at the centre of Tompkins Square Park was already filled with people enjoying the morning sunshine: bicycle couriers waiting for their next jobs, passers-by drinking coffee and glancing at the headlines, lolling lazily on the lawn, chatting in small groups. Nancy found a bench and sat down, though she didn’t have to wait long: Jack’s cab pulled up at the kerb, almost right by where she was sitting. He got out, looking around for her. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw him – he looked the same as ever – handsome, agile and dynamic, and yet she knew now how much else lurked beneath his macho veneer.

‘Hello there,’ she called out, in a voice that sounded high and nervous. He turned and smiled. As he approached he extended a hand, then when she took it he pulled her to him, kissed her on the cheek. His breath was warm. She felt a wave of pure familiarity washing over her, and that made her all the more confused. She stepped back from him.

‘Nancy, it’s good to see you,’ he said, looking her up and down. ‘You look well.’

‘You mean compared with last time, when we were both half-starved in Tibet? I’m glad you think so.’

He laughed generously, sat down on the bench with her. For a moment neither of them said anything, and she could see that he wasn’t sure how to begin.

‘So, what brings you to New York?’ she said, helping him out.

‘I’m on my way to the Metropolitan Museum, it’s to do with my research; palaeontology of the Himalayas and all that . . .’

‘Oh yes, I remember.’

‘And how’s life back in sunny Park Slope?’

‘It’s good, thanks. I’m a section editor, not quite as glamorous as being a foreign correspondent.’

‘Well, I guess there are fewer run-ins with the Indian secret police,’ he said, smiling.

‘Yes, not much of that. Just the daily hazards of New York supper parties and endless office politics.’

‘Sounds treacherous enough to me,’ he said.

There she was nodding and smiling at him, and all the time she was thinking it was crazy; they’d shared so much together, had really gone to hell and back, and now they were talking in this stilted formal way. It made her so frustrated, and she was angry with herself for not being able to say what she wanted to say.

‘I’m sorry . . .’ she blurted out. ‘This is not what I really think . . . Not what I really . . .’

He put his hand on hers; she felt the warmth of his skin. ‘Nancy, I know what you mean. I understand.’

‘I’ve been . . . trying to get things back to normal. For months, I’ve managed not to think about it. I find it all too upsetting.’

Jack watched her silently. She wanted to say more but nothing came out. Finally he took his hand away from hers and reached down to his bag.

‘I want to show you this.’

He pulled out a copy of the morning’s
New York Times
and discarded it on the table and then wrestling hard in the depths of his rucksack he pulled out a box. He swept the newspaper to one side and then very carefully placed the box on the table and proceeded to take its top off, revealing what appeared to be a piece of bone.

‘What on earth is that you’ve got there, Jack?’ said Nancy, trying to recover her wryness.

‘It’s a human skull. The skull of an anatomically modern hominid. A
Homo sapiens
. This skull could fit on the body of almost any Caucasian man alive today.’

‘It looks like a piece of a tree.’

‘That’s because there is a tree growing out of the skull – it has broken through the top. If I lift it up then you can see: this part is the skull and this is the tree. A seed must have fallen into the skull, many millennia ago. Perhaps the brain provided the moisture for the germination of the seed, or perhaps there was rainwater in the upturned skull. However it happened, the skull acted as a kind of flowerpot.’

‘And?’

‘It’s perfect. The wood and the skull together vastly improve the reliability of the dating.’

He looked at her as if expecting a response. ‘It’s the oldest hominid bone ever discovered in Asia. It’s what I’ve been looking for all these years. It brings my work to a close and proves – pretty much conclusively, it turns out – that I am right. Modern man did walk the earth a quarter of a million years ago. I won’t make any money out of it but at least I know I am right. I’m taking it to the Met today. They won’t believe me either, but I will show them all the same.’