Paradise and Elsewhere (3 page)

She would not do what we told her to. From that moment on the choice was very stark: we must keep her, or we must kill her; we could not kill her. We knew this, and so did she; everything changed.

Now, she demanded things of us, rather than waiting for us to offer or set out our position. Land; help carrying the stones, branches and hides to build a house; tools, seed. She demanded, we debated whether to give—but the debate was a limited one, and each time we knew sooner that we would give her what she wanted, and soon it became automatic. When the house was built and the field had been levelled and sown, she began properly to learn our language which she then used to ask yet more of us: to learn our stories, songs, musical instruments… Even then the traveller was not content, and wanted to lie with us as we did with each other. It was I who did this first: I saw before anyone else that she had no mouth between her legs, but a thumb-like thing which swelled and grew in a way that to my mind was not entirely foreign, but which, to begin with, filled many of us with fear or disgust.

So I bear the blame. Many people say this physical union was one thing which might have been withheld, had I not set the precedent. But to those of us who did go with her it seemed that at least in this respect she had brought something to us. She fitted inside us and left our hands free to cultivate other gardens, new pleasures… And so after all there was a bargain to be had, we said, though at other times when we looked into her face and saw the set of it as she rubbed the inside of us, however exquisitely, we could equally feel unsettled and afraid. We were used to a passion that was knowing and intimate, but this face was the face of someone on a long and perhaps bitter journey, and only for a moment sometimes as she neared her climax did it soften, before reforming again to a gentler version of its former self: the traveller at the very beginning of her journey, one might say, not yet desperate, but already knowing that she would be so again… This, I privately thought, and not the things we had noticed in the beginning, nor the strange shape of the flesh between her legs, this was the difference we had always sensed.

From it, from the pleasure we made with her, something has lodged in the tender flesh of our commonwealth: the twin pearls of birth and death. The first of these made us more like ourselves; the second made us more like the traveller and that in turn changed everything by degrees. We became the same as the other beings, the birds that passed above and the plants which we grew and ate. And now there is no longer an infinity of time in which to talk and we have never agreed whether it is better or worse to be this way: in either case, we say, that was done, and now this is. The oasis as it used to be is an invisible landscape which we carry buried inside of us and now can reach only rarely, by intricate acts of memory and forgetfulness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ancient Siddanese

 

 

 

 

O
ur guide steps from
the shadows to greet us. He looks cool in his loose white suit and dark glasses; we, fresh from the dark-windowed hover-­bug, are reeling in the desert heat.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I don't believe in false modesty so I can tell you that you're fortunate to have me as your official guide for today! Do come inside, out of this terrible heat… ” He makes a little bow as he greets us. We eye the Perspex dome behind him suspiciously: the walls of pinkish stone beneath it look squat, plain and, frankly, ugly. It all seems terribly small, set in such an unremitting expanse of space.

“I have spent twenty-three years studying these ruins,” our guide continues as we wipe our brows and sigh in the shade of the reception area. He gives the faintest of smiles, “And I'm personally responsible for several of the discoveries which have at last made a definitive interpretation of the site possible. Furthermore, I'm one of the few people who can claim to be descended from the ancient Siddanese themselves… ”

Sidda, I've read in the monograph, has been open to the public for over a hundred years, though even now when everyone travels so incessantly, few people arrive here, it being so remote. That's part of the attraction, I suppose. We're an odd group, about fifteen, all different in our ages, nationalities and states of health. But we're all pilgrims of a kind: the couple bent with age, the father with his two sons, the photographer, the three girls, the woman with the baby and the sun-resistant clothes she has designed herself and constantly recommends to the rest of us.

“Everything covered!” she declares proudly. “Even the face. No need for all those chemical creams which are probably as bad for you as the sun itself.” She is an optimist, she told me in the hoverbug: “There's always a way.”

I suspect I am not the only one who wishes that the fat man with the peppering of dark growths creeping across his face and the backs of his hands would wear her outfit—would tuck the thin silvery veil into his collar, sit his hat back on top, slide his hands into the stretch gloves you can't even feel, and let us all forget. Not that it's easy.

“Before we move out on to the site, I must ask you to change into the soft shoes provided, and warn you about the light here. Despite the dome erected over the site to prevent wind-damage and cut out some of the glare, no one should venture outside without some kind of extra protection, particularly on their head and shoulders. The shading and air conditioning are efficient, but deceptive.”

Obediently we re-cream our faces and hands, search for hats and sunglasses in our bags. Except, that is, for Mr. Melanoma, who stands defiant and tries unsuccessfully to catch the guide's eye, as if to say man to man—what a silly, pointless fuss, shutting the stable door, eh?—and the veiled woman, of course, who quickly checks her baby's layers of protection, then waits—serene, I suppose, though, hidden beneath that silvery curtain, she could be weeping for all I really know.

“Terrible thing to do,” someone mutters, poking me in the side, “exposing a child like that.” I smile and shrug. I don't want to be distracted. I want to get what I came for. Our guide waits, unmoving, until we are finished.

“Despite the discomfort, what you are to see today is certainly absolutely unique and you'll all thank yourselves for having made the effort. Thank you.” He makes his bow again. “Come over to the observation panel, please.”

There is something about our guide that I like. I'm hopeful. It's a great responsibility, I think, watching how he stands, turning his head smoothly from us to the observation panel and back, telling us of the recent history of the site—as great a responsibility, if not greater than that of the pilot who bore me safely from home to here, speeding between the sun and the too-bright sea. A careless or malicious guide can ruin a trip like this, can leave you with nightmares and a very bitter taste in your mouth.

“Let's begin with an overview.”

The party falls silent. Through the tinted pane that makes all colours seem richer than they are, lending the desert an almost damp appearance, a tempting succulence, we gaze at the pinkish stones that are Sidda. Before this one, there have been other guides here, official and unofficial, and before them of course came explorers, those first archaeologists who sought such places out, and they in turn had guides of their own. Now there is him. It is his job to make Sidda complete for us, to add something to the things we can read in books.

“Mr. Sidney Carbourne,” he begins, “is credited with the discovery of Sidda… ”

 

two men, crossing the desert
. Both wear cloths draped over their heads then wrapped around their necks according to the local custom, but one of them is a European: Mr. Sidney Carbourne, gentleman. Behind the two men, three imported camels, heavily laden—not only with the necessities of life: tents, water, food, but also with notebooks, ink, pens and many lumps of stone.

“What is that, in the distance to the left?” Carbourne asks, gesturing at a small eminence, indistinct and pinkish in the haze of heat.

“To the left, sir?” The other man does not look up; although he knows the desert better than anyone alive, he has never seen it, for he was born blind. Besides, he is old and each journey he makes tires him more. This one he thinks—almost hopes—will be his last.

“That will be the old city of Sidda,” he says. “I don't recommend we stop: it's little more than a heap of stones.”

“Aha!” Carbourne's voice is always loud, and now it is jubilant as well. Since they set out he has continually suspected his guide of laziness and of trying to cheat him; were the man's eyes not so obviously useless, seamed shut as if by tiny stitches, he would suspect him of counterfeiting his blindness itself. “But that could be said of many sites. You people are so used to the ancient wonders of your land that you often fail to appreciate them. Let us go to Sidda. Perhaps we can camp there for the night.”

“It's a long way,” the old man says.

“Nonsense!” Carbourne smiles broadly. They have been together four months now. Sometimes he relieves his irritation by making faces at his guide, secure in the knowledge that his rudeness won't be detected. He straightens his back. “Sidda, by nightfall!” he cries.

“It is farther than you think,” the old man replies quietly, “and I need to rest.” Nonetheless, he alters direction. Carbourne begins to whistle a marching song. By the time it is dark they are perhaps halfway there.

“I presume,” Carbourne says, “you can find our way just as well in the dark?”

“Please give me some water,” the old man replies. “Yes. Besides, we are going the right way. Our mounts will take us there.”

After many hours, through most of which Carbourne has slept, something alerts him to a change and he wakes. The moon has emerged, and they are riding through a walled square. He stops, dismounts, then grabs the halter of his guide's beast.

“Wake up, you!” he shouts at the figure slumped in the saddle. “There's work to be done! I know your game!” He waits for the figure to start and straighten, but when the camel stamps, it slips further down in the seat. The old man has died, leaving Carbourne to tend the camels, tie them to a crude statue standing in the centre of the square, light a dung fire, unpack blankets and sleep alone till dawn.

When it is light he heaves the body, rigid but very light, from the camel, and carries it to the corner of the square: the death was obviously from the most natural cause of all, and not in any way his fault; the man, he tells himself, is too old to have anyone waiting for his return. Then he wanders around the ruins of Sidda…

 

“
I
mmediately,” says our guide
, gesturing gracefully through the panel, “immediately, you are struck by the central feature: a square of open ground a hundred metres across, bordered by four very thick walls roughly two metres high. Even from here you can see that these walls are in fact even thicker at their base than at the top, and that they're built from irregular but precisely interlocking pieces of pinkish stone. There is no mortar. These stones were mined, shaped and assembled here without the use of any tools other than other pieces of stone. You'll notice that this isn't strictly speaking a square at all, because the four walls do not join at the corners and show no sign of ever having done so. In the centre of the square, where the paths that pass through these openings meet, exactly where it was found, is a large statue made of similar stone but of a greenish hue.

“Beyond the confines of the square you'll notice the seemingly irregular disposition of thirty-nine circular holes surmounted with low stonework rims. I don't want anyone to try and get inside these holes—they are very deep indeed and do provide a cool resting place for several types of snake. Bear in mind that these rims were originally several metres high, but that early explorers of the site were driven to knock them down in order to make them conform to their mistaken notions about the purpose of the pits. Over there to the left of the site you can see one of the pit mouths which is in the process of painstaking reconstruction, and far out on the edge of the site that mound is where the stones so dishonestly removed were hidden. Many of these stones were used to construct the base for the protective dome so as to be in harmony with the site it protects and also as an experiment to calculate how long it would have taken to construct Sidda. Our low wall took a team of twenty men fifteen years to build, using the interlocking method. Sidda was not built in a day!

“Leading up to each of the square's open corners are what look like narrow roads or paths—these lead due north, south, east and west, and appear to peter out just beyond the limits of the site as defined by our dome, though it's my view that proper exploration would show them to lead straight on for very many miles. The paths are made from millions of brittle pottery shards, and among these have been found many which bear finely preserved examples of the letters of an ancient alphabet.

“Outside the north, south, west and east walls of the square you can see the remains of three hexagonal structures. In the southern hexagon were found the only human remains the site has yielded, and these can now be seen in the site museum. Now, let us go outside, and I'll tell you a little about the people who constructed Sidda, and the way they lived… ”

We follow him out into the tinted dome. You can tell he is right about the sun, for though it is cooler than outside, thin shadows trail behind us and the dry walls are hot to touch. We are a unique generation, skipping as we do from shadow to shadow, our skins screened to escape the fire that once created us. A generation of greedy travellers, living in the last days and wanting to see it all, the world as onion, layer on layer going back beneath today's crisp, dry skin.

 

S
idney
C
arbourne lived
in a different world and saw different things. He missed the interlocking stones entirely, had not the slightest thought of alphabets. He stepped out protected only by a cotton cloth wrapped over his head. He examined the numerous circular holes in the ground: wells, he thought, now gone dry, and the reason, probably, for the city being abandoned. The hexagonal structures he judged to be fortifications. If the old man had still been with him, he would have pretended a greater interest than he felt, but, alone, he could admit that the city was indeed little more than a heap of stones piled together to form a courtyard—without ornament other than the crude statue. He was disappointed, but there was no point in staying.

It was only as he walked back to the square that he was struck by the enormous thickness of its walls and noticed also that, whereas their inner surface seemed roughly perpendicular, the outer one sloped ever so slightly inwards towards the top. He stood back, shielded his eyes and projected this angle into the sky. The stones of Sidda leapt to life. He saw the place, as new. He stood, filled with it, a great smile carving up his sunburned face.

In a fever of excitement he returned to unload his drawing and measuring instruments. If only he had taken the risk of bringing a whole team out! If only he had more water! If only his guide had not chosen such a moment to die! All day he worked, recording Sidda in plan, section and elevations, all to scale, on fine cartridge paper, his ink drying instantaneously in the heat. Here and there he embellished the scene with a scrubby tree, a lizard or some imaginary birds wheeling in the sky, for it was all rather plain. He drew until dark came, suddenly as it does in these latitudes, then wandered restlessly around the ruins in the dark, feeling the stones, collecting handfuls of pottery shards. It would take him two months to organize a proper expedition and he felt he would be unable to sleep until he returned.

In the morning he spent an hour with his maps and a compass. Sidda was unmarked, which gladdened his heart, but also made his way on perilous—a matter of estimating degrees and times and speeds. As a precaution, he composed a letter to his fellow enthusiast, Dr. Fellows, and fixed it to his bundle of drawings and notes before packing them safely away:

 

Here, my esteemed friend and fellow enthusiast, and quite unexpectedly, I have at last made a real discovery! I believe this ruined city of Sidda to be indeed the cradle of civilization, a crude thing, but of immense scientific importance. It would seem to me that the courtyard walls—so immensely thick—were meant to support some further construction, since disappeared. From the evidence of the numerous wells, one can conjecture that this land was not always so dry, not always such a perfect desert as it is now. Many years before the birth of Christ, I think it quite reasonable to assume that some kind of trees may have grown here in reasonable abundance. Hence I conclude that the structure erected above these four walls was made of timber, and that has disappeared due to the action of the voracious ants and termites found in these parts. Projecting the angle of the walls skywards (see drawing numbered 14), you will see that we have a pyramidical edifice—not one such as is found in Egypt based on the equilateral triangle, but rather one that conforms exactly to the rule of isosceles. I have sketched out the possible method of construction for such a pyramid, using only short lengths of timber such as might have been available. It is my conviction that Sidda became subject to prolonged drought and was gradually abandoned. Some few of the inhabitants may well have taken the long route by sea to Egypt itself, and there, in the course of many years, refined their original structure.