Fellowship Of Fear

FIFTEEN

The three old men sat side by side on the ancient wrought-iron bench, looking like octogenarian triplets identically dressed and posed by a doting centenarian mother with a turn for the grotesque. On each head a shapeless black beret sat squarely, pulled down to the ears. The patched frock coats of rusty black, equally shapeless, might have been cut from a single bolt of cloth. And each gray, sparsely whiskered chin was propped upon a knobby pair of hands clasped over the handle of a wooden cane as scuffed and scarred as the men themselves. Their eyes followed the group of strangers-foreigners, city people-who had left their cars along the roadside just outside the little village and now approached the dusty plaza, self-conscious and out of place.

"Is that your professor and his students, Ignacio?" asked one of the three without turning his head. "They are grown-ups, not children. I can’t tell which is the professor. Do you think it’s them?"

"How should I know?" said the one on the left, with appropriate unconcern. Actually, he knew that they were, and he knew the others knew. Who else could they be? Not tourists, certainly. There weren’t any tourists in Torralba.

When the authorities had built the ugly little museo in the hills outside the village, they had said there would be hordes of tourists coming to see the elephant bones that had been dug up, and that they would stop at the village to buy food and soda pop and hats to wear in the sun. But Ignacio Montes hadn’t believed them, of course, and neither had anyone else. And naturally there weren’t any hordes of tourists.

For one thing, why would anyone travel all the way from Madrid or Zaragoza just to see some old bones? Now, if they had some old saint’s little-finger bone, that would be different. But these were just elephants’ bones, or so they said.

Only Ignacio knew there weren’t any elephant bones there, no matter what the authorities said. If those things were elephant bones, what had they been doing under the ground? Who could bury an elephant in that soil? He had been in that little building a thousand times, and he should know. Once he had borrowed Joaquin’s hammer to chip off a piece, and had satisfied himself that it was made of stone.

Besides that, everyone knew there weren’t any elephants around Torralba, and there never had been any. Elephants came from China. Even he, who couldn’t read and had never been to school, knew that. And even if there had been elephants, and even if those stones were bones, why would anyone want to see them when they could see real, live elephants-from China-in the zoo in Barcelona, only a few hours down the road? Last year, the schoolchildren had gone to Barcelona on a big bus, and they had gone to the zoo and seen living elephants tied with chains on their legs.

And as for those rocks the authorities said were cavemen’s tools, that was the most foolish of all. Was every chipped rock you could hold in your hand a tool? Then the authorities were welcome to come and dig all they wanted out of the wheat fields every year. That would make everyone happy.

Still, when he had been mayor four years ago and they had offered him the "honor" of being custodian of the museo, he had accepted, and he had quietly kept the post, although he was no longer the mayor. Putting aside the tremendous glory of it, if they were crazy enough to give him 500 pesetas a month for sweeping out the dust once a week (more or less) and for opening it up to the crazy professors who came to see it, why should he object? And then, of course, there were the propinas -the tips. If Rafael or Joaquin knew about those, they’d be fighting for the job.

Already today he had gotten a propina of 500 pesetas- a month’s salary-from the ugly man with the fierce eyes. He hadn’t liked the man, hadn’t liked his looks-a small, angry man with the body of a monkey and the cunning face of a weasel. And the eyes! Brr, a bad man. But he had paid good money, and all he had wanted was the key to the museo and Ignacio’s promise to let no one else in that day, even this professor and his students. And on top of it all, Ignacio had been promised another 500 pesetas afterwards. He doubted that he would really get it, but who knew? In any case, he would certainly follow his instructions. The weasel-faced man was not one he would care to make angry.

But the professor was going to be angry. He had already sent Ignacio a telegram two days ago-to receive his first telegram, he had had to live for eighty-two years-saying he was coming with his students to see the site. Well, let him be angry. Ignacio would claim he never received it. How was the professor to know?

Across the square, one of them spoke hesitantly to old Vicente, who pointed toward Ignacio. The man thanked old Vicente courteously and began to come across the square, followed by the others. So that was the professor. A big man, but with a soft smile. Better to make him angry than the other one.

Ignacio would have no trouble pulling the wool over his eyes. In his mind, he rehearsed what he would say: Telegram, senor? To me? Surely not, never in my life. And I am extremely sorry, but the museo is closed on Thursdays. Perhaps tomorrow? For a small deposit I can reserve it entirely for you…

Being denied admission to the little museum had been a severe disappointment for Gideon, so much so that he had angrily accused the old man of lying. At once ashamed of himself-although he was sure he was right-he had tipped him ten pesetas and then walked with the class up to the site to see if the day could be salvaged.

He found that it could indeed. For Gideon, it was enough just to be there, standing on the very site itself, delivering the lecture of a lifetime, the lecture of an anthropology professor’s dreams.

They stood in the middle of a flat depression a few hundred feet in diameter, at the foot of an arid, steep hill. In the distance, small, parched wheat fields ran irregularly up a broad, sloping hillside. Aside from those, the only sign of man was the squat little concrete-block museum at the edge of the depression. Five hundred feet away, a line of delicate trees marked the all-but-dry bed of the Ambrona River and provided the only relief in a scorched, shimmering landscape of dun, beige, and ochre. The sky was covered by a thin, gray-white cloud-sheet that muted the sun’s brilliance but offered no protection against its heat.

Around him was a semicircle of fifteen rapt students, so enthralled that note-taking was forgotten.

Professor Gideon Oliver was giving it his all: "It was on the spot on which we stand, then, that Homo erectus ceased to be a scavenging animal that moved in straggling, starving bands. It was here that man was born. It was here that mankind began, here that the first seeds of civilization were sown… three hundred thousand years ago…ten thousand generations."

The rich words, describing an unimaginable expanse of time, thrilled him as much as they did the students, and his voice vibrated and soared with emotion.

"It would have been this time of year, during the fall migration to the lowlands. Thirty of them- Elephas antiquus, the huge straight-tusked elephant-would have come screaming and trumpeting over this hill from the northwest." Fifteen heads swiveled to follow his pointing finger; fifteen pairs of eyes peered anxiously up the parched hillside, as if the long-extinct monsters were about to come pounding down upon them.

"Where we are now was a bog; this barren hillside was covered with trees and long grasses. Driving the elephants was a gigantic grass fire. The wind was blowing toward the southeast, and the elephants were swept down the hillside into the bog. Over there"-he pointed again, this time toward the trickling river-"other fires had been set to prevent them from crossing to solid ground."

Gideon paused and took a deep breath, savoring the struggle that was as alive as the twentieth century for him. "And so here they stayed," he said in a deeper, quieter voice, "panicked and stumbling in the deep mud; giant males, females…infants. At the edge of the bog stood the hunters, the fire-setters. They had only to wait-and they were patient-for the mired elephants to become helpless. Then, one by one, they were killed with stones and wooden spears. The next day they were butchered. It was the earliest known evidence of such an enterprise in the entire history of the world."

Gideon breathed deeply again. He was tired. The site held deep meaning for his conception of man, and he had tried his best to convey it for thirty minutes. From the glazed, worn looks of the students, he had been successful.

"To sum it up then," he said a little wearily, "what makes Torralba epochal in the history of mankind is that here, for the first time, a project was undertaken that required two, or maybe even three family groups of twenty or thirty individuals to cooperate -to trust each other, to take risks. It was the beginning of everything-language, mathematics, laws. Here we took that first tentative step from caring only for blood kin toward being members of a society of man."

The beginnings of a breeze ruffled their hair and made a soft sound in the dry brush on the hill. For perhaps twenty seconds, a respectful silence endured. Gideon’s words echoed in his own mind, as he knew they did in the minds of his students. Two or three of them bent toward the gravelly ground and contemplatively picked at embedded fragments with their fingers. Gideon knew exactly what they were wondering: Is this stone right here in my hand one of the rocks they threw at the elephants so long ago? Has it lain here undisturbed for three thousand centuries, until I, here and now, picked it up? Was the last person to touch it a naked, savage ape-man?

It was precisely the kind of near-mystic musing that had first attracted Gideon to anthropology, and it still sent chills down his spine.

The mood was broken by one of the less receptive students, a glib, bearded civilian from the personnel office.

"A couple of questions, Dr. Oliver." From his tone, Gideon knew they would be arguments, not questions. He steeled himself. "One, from what you say, was this the start of civilization, or wasn’t it really the start of our rape of the environment? Just what do we mean by ‘civilization’?- The ability to kill animals by the hundreds?"

Gideon glowered at him, to no effect.

"And I keep wondering about the anthropologist’s usage of ‘man’ and ‘mankind.’ Shouldn’t it be ‘people’ and ‘personkind’? Were there only cavemen? Weren’t there any cavewomen?" He looked quickly around the circle for approval but got only bleak stares.

Gideon was half-heartedly putting together his response when one of the women, a uniformed lieutenant down on her knees in the dirt, saved him.

"Oh, for Christ’s sake, Dennis, I don’t want to deal with that crap now."

There were several muttered "Right on’s." Mentally, Gideon applauded. He couldn’t have said it better. Dennis opened his mouth to speak, but the lieutenant cut him off.

"Dr. Oliver, what kinds of things would we have seen in the museum if we’d gotten in?"

"I’m not really sure, Donna," Gideon said. "Possibly, some of the elephant bones in situ. There wouldn’t be any human bones, because none were found. Probably some of the stone tools from the site. Maybe some spear fragments; the oldest known weapons in the world were found here, you know."

"Now, you see, that’s my point," said Dennis, warming up for a speech. Again he was interrupted, this time by a shout from a student who had wandered over to the squat building.

"Hey, the museum’s unlocked!"

With the others, Gideon walked over to the structure. When they had first arrived, several of the men had stood on each other’s shoulders to peer through the high windows into the dark interior, but no one had thought of trying the door. Now Gideon could see that there was no padlock on the rusty hasp. The student who had called out had pushed the green metal door open an inch or two and was looking at Gideon for approval to open it all the way.

Instinctively law-abiding, Gideon hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment. This was Torralba, and he might never come this way again. Besides, the incident with the old caretaker had brought out his refractory side. He nodded, and the student pushed the door farther open.

"Something’s blocking it," the student said, leaning his body against it. Suddenly, he stiffened and jumped back. "Hey, there’s a guy in there!"

The door remained about three-quarters open. Spotlighted in the shaft of soft sunlight that streamed through it, a body lay on its left side on the earthen floor, its back toward the doorway. Its legs were bent at the knees so that the feet prevented the door from opening completely. It was a dark-haired man wearing a tan windbreaker. Where his right ear should have been was a hideous mess of torn flesh and sinew. A great, red-brown stain glistened dully on the jacket’s back and had discolored the pale earth around the man’s shoulders and head.

Two of the students, a man and a woman, dropped to the ground and put their heads between their knees. The others stared in dumb, greedy shock. Gideon’s courage failed him. He felt an overpowering sense of onrushing doom, an urge to turn and run, to leave undisturbed whatever lay within.

"Well, let’s see what this is about," he heard himself saying quietly.

The students wordlessly parted for him. At the entrance he was caught by a terrific smell of blood, a slaughterhouse stench. He steadied himself momentarily with a hand on each side of the doorway, closed his eyes, and willed himself not to be sick. The warm perspiration on his body had turned cold; an icy globule ran freezing from his armpit down his side. He forced himself to breathe in the fetid atmosphere. Then he stepped over the body, carefully avoiding the blood, and turned firmly to look at the man’s face.

It wasn’t John.

Until then, he hadn’t even realized what the irrational fear had been, but now the flood of relief dropped him to his knees, heedless of the blood and the gaping students.

He closed his eyes again and thanked the ancient primitive gods that had hovered there since mankind’s dawn.

But behind his lowered eyelids a flicker of recognition sprang up, an uneasy memory…

To his mind came a long-forgotten anecdote of Sartre’s in Being and Nothingness: You are late for an appointment with your friend Pierre in a cafe. You are not sure if he has waited for you. As you come in, you quickly scan all the customers in the crowded room, and you see that he is not there. But what exactly have you seen? Would you know any of the hundred customers if you were to see them again? No. You have not really seen them. You know they are not-Pierres, that is all. Only when you have given up the search for Pierre will they become recognizable entities in their own right, foreground rather than background…

So it was with the maimed thing by which he kneeled. At first he knew only that it wasn’t John. Now he knew who it was. He opened his eyes and looked.

Ferret-face. With pity and revulsion, but also with the sense of a great load lifting from his shoulders, he studied the dead man. There was little remaining of the right side of his face. Through shreds of red muscle and gleaming ligament, Gideon could see the round yellow condyle of the shattered mandible. One eye was half-open, one was closed, and the lower part of the face was queerly askew because of the broken jaw. Even so, and even with the drying blood that covered the features, it was unmistakably Ferret-face.

The hunter had himself been hunted down. But by whom? Almost indifferently, Gideon turned the question over in his mind, but he couldn’t concentrate. He was more absorbed by a glow of triumph-vicious, but undeniably satisfying. I am still here, alive, his thoughts ran, and you are dead. I’ve won; you’ve lost. With an effort, he put aside the ugly thoughts and looked up at the students clustered around the door.

"Well, he’s certainly dead," Gideon said, his voice echoing in the cool concrete structure. His words jogged a young, crew-cut student out of his stupefaction.

"You better not touch anything, Professor." When Gideon looked up at him, he blushed and added self-consciously, "I’m in the military police. We’ll have to inform the Guardia Civil." Again, a self-important, embarrassed pause. "This looks like homicide."

Gideon resisted a strange urge to laugh. Looks like homicide. What did he think-that a heart attack had blown away half the man’s head? He rose to a standing position, conscious of the bloody stains on the knees of his beige trousers.

"You’re right, of course," he said. "Maybe there’s a telephone in the village."

The MP came forward and offered Gideon his hand to assist him in stepping over the corpse and the blood-soaked ground. As Gideon took it and came back through the door, the boy stiffened and froze, eyes wide with dismay.

"Jesus Christ, there’s another one!"

Gideon spun and looked within. At the far end of the narrow twenty-foot-long aisle that bisected the building lay what could have been a discarded, life-sized puppet. It was on its back in the gloom, its arms akimbo, its legs outflung, and its head and shoulders propped against the base of the concrete wall.

It was the man from the Prado: the man with the umbrella.