Authors: Barry Unsworth
“I see.” Somerville did not for one moment believe in this drunken, fishlike German draftsman; the account had been too circumstantial: the name, the appearance, the details of the dismissal; he had noticed before that Jehar was one who fell under the spell of his own stories. But it would not do to show doubt, as then the story would be embroidered and elaborated; Herr Franke would figure increasingly in it until, bald and gasping, he became a permanent element in the saga of Jehar’s existence from day to day. He himself, the benefactor who had to be coaxed and deceived, he too was part of the tale.
“Have they resumed work on the line?” he said.
“Not yet, noble one, but it cannot be long now, they say the rails have come from Alexandretta to Aleppo. They can soon be brought to Jerablus from there. The cost of obtaining the map was twelve Turkish pounds. Herr Franke would not accept less.”
“We agreed from the beginning there would be no refunding of expenses. I am tired of telling you this. However, I will mark you down for eight pounds. You showed enterprise in obtaining the map, and this should be rewarded. You will have it in a few days when the money is drawn for the payment of the wages.”
Jehar rocked his head from side to side in the manner of one dubious, then compressed his lips and nodded slowly as if making the best of things. In fact he was delighted with this promise, which almost doubled his stock. He still had a long way to go; but he was optimistic by nature and a stroke of fortune like this renewed his faith. He rejoiced inwardly as he walked away from the slope. Deir ez-Zor with its white minarets and green gardens, Ninanna’s face, her smile, the wonder in her eyes, which was the wonder of their future together, all came close before him.
Somerville stayed where he was awhile longer, holding the square of paper loosely in his hand. Within a few days work would begin again on the line. He had no very precise idea of how much track could be laid in a day. Five miles? It would depend on the nature of the terrain. The map, with its apocalyptic red line and exact topographical detail, had been a shock to him, but it added nothing essential: He had known, since arriving in February and seeing the German storage sheds already half constructed, lying so close below the eastern side of the mound, that the line was making straight toward him. It would pass west of Tell Halaf, where the Germans were excavating under the direction of von Oppenheim. But von Oppenheim was wealthy and had powerful friends; it was said that he had been one of the advisers on the route the line should take; he would take care that there was no danger to his operation. He himself had one solitary possibility of bringing some pressure to bear: He had mentioned it to no one, but the present British Ambassador to Constantinople, recently appointed, while not a friend exactly, would be likely to remember him because they had been at school together.
All doubts were resolved now. It was as he had dreaded—dreaded and hoped in almost equal measure. He felt a gathering of resolution. Things had changed enormously in the few days since he had last stood alone here. It filled him with wonder now to think how a few apparently ill-assorted objects could so transform his prospects. A piece of ivory, a piece of carved stone, some few marks on a clay tablet, a wall with kiln-fired bricks and a stone base . . .
A heavy clatter of metal came from somewhere close below him. He took some steps to the eastern side of the summit. Arab workmen, supervised by a man in blue overalls and a white sun hat, had hoisted a sheet of corrugated iron onto a framework of timber; two others were preparing to rivet the corners of the metal to the support poles. There was no room for doubt now; that anguish had been lifted from him. The line would not come to save him from failure and defeat but to blast these new hopes of success. Finally, unequivocally, he knew it for an enemy.
When Somerville left the site in the evening, the base of the wall had been exposed for a length of two yards. It followed the line of the hillside and showed no sign of coming to an end.
The map Jehar had brought him he spoke of to no one. He was preoccupied at dinner and ate hastily and mainly in silence. Edith was not at the table; he was told by Hassan, who always knew the movements of people about the house, that she had eaten earlier and retired to her room. Rising from the table, he felt a sudden weariness descend on him, a heaviness that made every movement of his limbs seem like a huge effort. The exhilarating discovery of the wall, Jehar’s map with its remorseless red line, his lonely travail of spirit that had followed, the long hours of anxious supervision while they worked to uncover the wall, all this had taken a toll on him only recognized now. He had intended to spend some time in the workroom after dinner but decided against this and went almost at once to bed.
He was asleep within seconds of his head touching the pillow and slept profoundly without stirring, for several hours. He had not been conscious of dreaming or of any questioning that might have continued below the surface of his sleep, but when he woke, in the deepest silence of the night, it was with an immediate conviction: The ivory might have been part of the plunder Ashurnasirpal carried back from the rich lands of the west, the hawk-headed guardian might once have stood at the portals of his palace at Kalhu, but they could not have been brought here during his reign or during that of his immediate successors; the Assyrian Empire in those days did not reach so far, not with any certainty of control; it would take another century of conquest for this to be established. Someone else then, someone later . . .
Fire had touched all of them; there was the evidence of the ash, the run of the bitumen, the clay tablet baked hard. But it could not be the same fire that had devastated Kalhu and signaled the end of Assyrian power. Their cities had gone up in flames, the inhabitants massacred by the invading Medes and Chaldeans with the fury of long hatred, a sort of ancestral revenge for all the centuries of Assyrian wealth and dominion. At a time of such chaos who would have thought to rescue such things from the conflagration, to bring them so far, all the way from the banks of the Tigris? To what purpose? No, they had been through some different fire.
He sat bolt upright in the bed. “Some different fire,” he muttered, the words coming without volition, as it seemed, almost as if uttered by someone else. It seemed to him, in the impenetrable darkness, as if the bitter ash of that distant conflagration were present to his nostrils. A scent of hatred and revenge and desolation. It was here that the burning had been; this had been a place of importance; only places of importance were worth the pillage and burning.
The intention followed so closely on this thought that it seemed always to have been there, in some weaker form, waiting for a fire such as this to harden it; he would go, in person and without delay, to Constantinople; he would see the Ambassador; he would explain the importance of these recent finds, the new scope of the excavation, the evidence of an Assyrian presence here, where none had been suspected, the possibility of valuable objects being found, the fame and prestige this would bring to the nation. The Ambassador would listen; he would bring pressure to bear, through the Foreign Office, on his German counterpart in London. The railway company would be induced to take a different route, perhaps keeping to the west of Ras el-Ain . . .
He groped for matches, found them, lit the lamp at his bedside, saw the flame flicker behind the glass, then grow into a perfect roseate globe as he turned up the brass rod that operated the wick. He was wide-awake and radiant with purpose. He felt a sudden need to tell Edith of his decision. He got up, crossed the room, holding the lamp in one hand. He tapped at the door that connected their two rooms, heard nothing, opened the door, and intruded head and lamp. He called his wife’s name, saw her form stir under the bedclothes. “I’m sorry to wake you,” he said. “I felt that I needed . . . I have decided something.”
He advanced, set the lamp down on the floor, and sat on the edge of the bed, near the foot. “I didn’t want to wait till morning,” he said, feeling some compunction now as he saw her sit up, raise her hands to her hair, which she had untied for the night and reached down to her shoulders. The lamplight fell softly on her bare arms as she made this instinctive gesture, a response to exposure, in which, however, there was perfect precision, half asleep as she was. There was a bowl of flowers on the table beside her, long-stemmed dark blue anemones and the narcissus that came in early spring, single white flowers edged with crimson. Knowing her love for flowers, people who worked in the house would gather them on the stream banks and bring them for her. The shortness of the season made them precious to her. She arranged them herself and always perfectly.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
Edith drew the sheet up over her chest, as if cold. “What is it?” she said. “Is something wrong?”
“No, nothing wrong, it’s just that I’ve come to a decision and I wanted to tell you about it.”
“In the middle of the night?” There was a softness of tone in this, and it came to him with some surprise and a certain stirring of excitement that she might have misunderstood his purpose and not been displeased. She had always valued alacrity of feeling, setting it above what was cautious and considered, both in herself and in others; there had been little enough of it between them of late. But he knew that it had not been the sort of impulse she would value that had brought him here. Not impulse at all in fact: He had wanted to confide his decision to her so as to make it irrevocable, prevent him—under pain of her scorn—from changing his mind in the cold light of day. He would never be able to tell her this or she to imagine it, let alone sympathize. She could support strength with all the strength of her being, but she could not support weakness, not in men—in women it was to be expected.
“I wanted you to know of it,” he said. “There are always other people round in the mornings.”
Edith reached for the woolen wrap on the chair beside her and settled back against the pillow, actions that conveyed more clearly than any words could have done that she had revised her first idea of the purpose of his visit.
He told her then what his restraint had only allowed her to surmise before, his worries about the encroaching railway; he told her of the map Jehar had presented to him that very morning. It was easier to talk of it, now that the former paralysis of divided feeling was no more; she would not have understood how he or anyone could half desire defeat as a release from struggle. So as not to alarm her he said nothing about the financial difficulties that were facing him. Keeping his face at first turned away, he described the recent discoveries they had made, which pointed to something momentous, something that could make his name, make this site famous in the annals of Mesopotamian archaeology, bring great financial reward and an assured career in the future.
He had spoken with increasing passion, and now he turned and looked at her. In Constantinople were the blinkered ones, the British authorities who sat at their desks and allowed this monstrous thing to happen. Letters were no good. He would go in person; he would confront these people. He and the present ambassador had been at school together; it counted for something. He would make them see that it was not just a mound of earth that was in jeopardy but a part of the story of humanity. He would show them that he was no mere futile dabbler but someone to be reckoned with, someone who would not take this outrage lying down.
He raised his head and fixed her with his eyes. His voice was vibrant with the passion of his rage, released now after long repression. He saw that her eyes were bright and she was flushed.
“But it is splendid,” she said, and quite unexpectedly, in the midst of his fury, he was carried back in memory to the May evening four years ago, when they had met for the first time.
He had talked about an excavation at Tell Barsip on the Euphrates, from which he had just returned. He had spoken with enthusiasm and had seen the warmth of this reflected in her face. Encouraged, he had confessed to her his intention of leading an expedition himself after these years as an assistant, and putting all he had into it. “But how absolutely splendid!” she had said. Looking at her across the table, at her bright eyes, her mouth that smiled upon him, he had felt they were both bathed in a visionary light. There were others there at the restaurant table, but they were in some area of dimness, excluded. Pagani’s, the restaurant—all the rage in those days. They had been to hear a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society given by the American explorer Robert Peary, who had reached the North Pole in the previous year. She had been disappointed in Peary, he remembered now; he had not lived up to her expectations, he had spoken in an ordinary kind of way, making the whole thing sound more like a well-organized business trip than a feat of endurance. Indignation in her voice. It had occurred to Somerville later—considerably later, when that light no longer enveloped them—that he had been lucky in the occasion; he had served to repair this disappointment, restore her faith in the heroic ideal . . .
“You will prevail, I know it,” she said. “You speak as you did when you first told me of your decision to give up that dreary business and venture everything on your dream of exploration and discovery.” She sat forward a little now, and the wrap fell from her shoulders. “You are still that man. Nothing and no one can withstand you when you are truly yourself.” She held out her arms to him. “My love, come here beside me.”
Her body radiated heat; the skin of her face and arms was hot to his touch as if she were burning with his own fire of purpose. Her will, her wish for him to conquer and triumph, fastened on him now again, proof against all disappointment. But he knew, as she panted beneath him, as his own excitement mounted, that the man lying between her thighs had ceased very early in their life together to be truly himself with her and would never now be able to find the words to explain why this was so.