Land of Marvels

13.

Somerville could never afterward recollect the exact words with which he had rejected this outrageous proposal; he knew only that they had been angry and emphatic. The proposal itself, on the other hand, remained in his mind with total clarity: all the circumstances of it; Jehar’s words and the eagerness with which he had uttered them; the look of joy his face had worn. All this remained vividly present to him in the time that followed, as he supervised the work of clearing the steps that were now seen to give access to a vaulted chamber.

It was during this period too that further visitors arrived, unexpected and unannounced, all on the same day, first a Swedish couple, man and wife, who smilingly introduced themselves as seekers after truth and were members of the Society for Biblical Research, which had links all over the world, they said. They were always grateful, as they also said, for the generous hospitality they had invariably found on their travels. They had come from Abu Kemal on the Euphrates, where there was a Swedish mission house. Then, some hours later, a Swiss journalist arrived. He had been commissioned to write an article about Mesopotamian archaeology and in particular about the men and women engaged in it, the successors to the great figures of the mid-nineteenth century, Botta, Layard, Rassam. He was hoping, he said, to interview Somerville and anyone else who cared to talk to him at Tell Erdek. He had a camera, and he was proposing to include photographs in his article—photographs of the people and the places.

It was thus a strange and ill-assorted company that sat down to dinner that evening, the newcomers in their different ways adding to the incongruities already existing, the Swedish couple effusive in manner and frequently exchanging smiles, the softly spoken, gentle-mannered Swiss waiting patiently for the time when Somerville, who grew more and more secretive as his discoveries promised to be important, would grant him an interview. A certain atmosphere of constraint hung over the table, with the major seeming more stiff and bristling even than usual, Elliott silent and preoccupied, Somerville prey to a temptation still unadmitted, Edith absorbed in thoughts of how appearances could deceive: Who could have ever suspected that Major Manning, such a perfect type of British army officer, as she had thought, could be in the pay of a foreign power and working against the interests of his own country, was little better than a spy, in fact. And the Russians, of all people, so backward and savage.

It was the major who, whether advertently or not, brought an increased vivacity into the conversation. “I don’t really see where all this research business comes in,” he said, addressing the Swedish couple, who had asked if the seating plan could be changed so as to allow them to sit side by side—something, they explained, they always liked to do no matter what the company. “I mean, either you are a believer or not. It’s a question of faith, not proof.” He had spoken in his characteristically clipped manner, though rather more irascibly than usual; he was feeling the strain of keeping up a constant watch for false moves on Elliott’s part, and he had, in any case, a rooted aversion to missionaries of any persuasion, regarding them basically as troublemakers who unsettled the subject peoples and made the colonies more difficult to govern. “Look at India,” he was fond of saying. “Look at the Siege of Lucknow and the Black Hole of Calcutta. That’s what comes of busybodies meddling with people’s beliefs.”

“Excuse me, if I may ask, since you have raised the subject, are you yourself a believer?” This came from the husband, whose name was Johansson.

“Certainly I am,” Manning said. “God and the King.”

It was a remark of such baseness, made worse by the fact that for some reason the major had glanced toward Alex as he spoke, that Edith could not forbear a look of contempt in his direction, though she did not think he noticed this and after the first moment hoped he hadn’t; she had been sworn to secrecy, which meant of course behaving normally toward this wretched man.

“Well, I am glad,” Johansson said. “But it is our view, as members of the society, that faith in the message of salvation contained in the Scriptures is strengthened by showing beyond question that the facts are as related there.”

“Not the truth, that is absolute,” Mrs. Johansson said, “but our belief, our readiness to accept that truth.”

“Exactly, my dear,” Johansson said. “You do well to make the distinction.” The two exchanged a loving smile. They were dissimilar in appearance, though clearly identical in their views and in the excellent quality of their English. Johansson had a slow and weighty manner and a heavy, crumpled-looking face, rather appealing, with some fugitive likeness to a teddy bear in it, one that had been knocked about a bit but not in any spirit of malice. His wife was sharper of face and quicker of movement. Her hair was very fair and rather neglected-looking; strands from it escaped the containing band and fell forward over her brows; from time to time she made a sudden birdlike, preening movement, raising both hands as if to clear her vision.

“We too are archaeologists,” Johansson said, smiling at Somerville. “We are biblical archaeologists. Let me give you an example. On the eastern side of the island of Malta, on the Munxar Reef, members of our society have found the anchor stocks of the grain ship from Alexandria in which St. Paul and the Apostle Luke were voyaging when they were shipwrecked off this island, thus demonstrating the truth of the account as related in Acts Twenty-seven.”

Mrs. Johansson raised her head and parted her hair on her brow and spoke toward the ceiling: “ ‘Then fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern…” Her expression, solemnly exalted while she uttered the words, grew severe as she came to the end of them. “There are those,” she said, “and unfortunately there are members of the society among them, who try to belittle the importance of this discovery by insisting that the shipwreck took place off the coast of Dalmatia. They have no case, they have found no anchor stocks.”

“Then take Sodom and Gomorrah and the Cities of the Plain,” Johansson said. “Members of our society have located these cities, all five of them. They have found balls of brimstone embedded in a wide area of ash near the Dead Sea. Now, if you consult a dictionary, you will find that ‘brimstone’ is another word for sulfur. Golf-sized sulfur balls with burn marks all around them! You could not have a clearer truth of the words in Genesis Nineteen. No doubt you are familiar with them? ‘Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah…’ Chemical analysis of these balls has revealed that the brimstone is composed of ninety-six to ninety-eight percent sulfur, with traces of magnesium, a substance that creates an extremely high temperature burn. This is the only place on the earth where you can find this percentage of pure sulfur in a round ball.” He looked around the table, and his likeness to a battered teddy bear deepened as he broke into an upward-curving smile. “Quod erat demonstrandum,” he said.

“The sulfur was probably ordered up from hell,” Patricia said in low tones to Palmer, who was sitting opposite her. As often happens, this remark, which was not really intended to be heard by the Johanssons, released feelings of irritation in Patricia that had been building up all through this talk of the firebombed cities. “Do you really mean to say,” she said loudly and furiously, “that you think God put the magnesium in the mixture to make it burn hotter? I can’t believe that people spend time and money and go to all that trouble in a futile attempt to prove the truth of a myth, and a pretty nasty little myth at that.”

Johansson’s smile was now full of tolerance and understanding. “We can only guess at God’s purposes, we cannot know them. When we speak of myth, we are acknowledging that fact. It is a confession of our ignorance.”

“It was a warning,” his wife said, directing a look of kindly reproof toward Patricia. “A warning that this rain of fire will one day be visited again on the wicked.”

“As long as it is clear who the wicked are,” Palmer said. “I mean, a lot of people who weren’t particularly wicked must have gone up in smoke too.” He had spoken mildly, with some vague idea of reducing the emotional level—Patricia was looking distinctly cross at having been called ignorant.

“It is not clear to us, but it is clear to God,” Johansson said.

“That must be terrible for him,” Somerville said. “All the darkness of all the hearts in the world.” He was conscious as he spoke of the darkness he had harbored in his own heart since Jehar’s proposal. Neither Johansson nor his wife seemed in any way put out by the obduracy they were encountering. Of course, he thought, they are the ones that have the proof.

“Just one black heart would be enough to go on with,” Edith said, taking care not to look at the major again.

“God bears this burden of the soul’s darkness through our Lord Jesus.” Johansson’s face had returned to gravity. “ ‘Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.’ ”

“ ‘And with his stripes we are healed,’ ” Mrs. Johansson said.

“Statistically though,” Palmer said, “it is unlikely that every single inhabitant of these cities deserved to have fireballs rained on him. Unless of course by wicked we mean simply those who are in line for firebombing, come what may.”

The Swiss, whose name was Spahl, spoke now for practically the first time. “It is interesting, what you say. But Malta, the Dead Sea, these are places far away. May I ask why you are here, what in this place you are doing?”

The Johanssons looked at each other and smiled, a smile of affectionate complicity. “There is no harm to speak of it now,” Mrs. Johansson said. “Now that we have the lease.”

“For fifteen years now my wife and I are engaged in one single quest,” Johansson said. “And that is to discover the exact site of the Garden of Eden. We have devoted all our time and efforts to it. I tell you now, with a full heart, that our efforts have at last been crowned with success.”

“Over the years we became convinced that it lay in Mesopotamia,” his wife said. “On grounds of climatic conditions first of all. The description of the plants in the Garden is very suggestive of a tract of land lacking in rainfall, to which irrigation has been brought. ‘And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight.’ He did not send rain to make the trees grow.”

“Also there is the fact,” Johansson said, “that Adam and Eve, when detected in their sin, had nowhere to hide but among the trees God had made to grow. Outside the Garden the land was bare, there was no other vegetation. We lost much time searching at Kurna, where Arab tradition places the Tree, but this was a great mistake. Kurna is in the south, where the floods are heavy, much of the time it is swampland. Would the Lord God have set our first parents down in a swamp?”

The Johanssons paused on this question to exchange a smile in which all such mistakes and disappointments were dissolved in joy. No one else at the table said anything.

“We believed for a while that it might have been at Aman on the Euphrates,” Johansson said, “but in the end it was the evidence of the four rivers that convinced us. ‘And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.’ Four is a symbolic number, it stands for the four quarters of the world. Once we had understood this, we realized that the earthly paradise must have been set dead in the center of the known world. After that it was only necessary to identify the four rivers. They are the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile, and the Persian Gulf. We had some uncertainty about this last, but it is a narrow inlet, it can be regarded as a river. Now, if you join the mouths of these rivers with ruled lines, with the Nile and the Gulf at the base, you will get a perfect equilateral triangle. And if, within this triangle, you bisect the Belikh and Khabur rivers at exactly the same latitude, you will form a perfect diamond shape. At the very center of this diamond, the one unique and indisputable place, that is where the Garden was.”

The Johanssons sat back in one identical movement and smiled one identical smile of triumph around the table. For an appreciable while nobody spoke. Then Palmer, with a certain sensation of coming up for air, said, “And you have identified the spot, you say? The actual bit of ground, I mean.”

“We inspect it tomorrow,” Johansson said.

“It is not far distant then?”

“It is less than a mile from this very place where we are seated. It is between this house and the little hill where you are digging. That is close to where the railway will pass, but it will not touch the sacred place where the Garden was.”

“How can you be sure of that?” Somerville said, not knowing, in his own quandary, whether to envy or pity such blithe confidence.

“Because, my dear sir, my wife and I, on behalf of the Society for Biblical Research, have obtained a lease of the site to the extent of four acres of ground. Let me tell you now of our further design. We intend, naturally with the blessing and financial backing of the society, to build a beautiful hotel surrounded by gardens on this site, and we will call this hotel the Garden of Eden.”

“Or the Paradise Hotel,” his wife said, with sudden sharpness; it was clear that there had been some disagreement between them on this matter.

“It will be a great success. People will come here from all the four quarters of the world; the railway will bring them. It will be a sort of pilgrimage, you see, being built in such a sacred place. And it will be unique in all the world. A luxury hotel that will also have a spiritual atmosphere. We are proposing to incorporate a mission house and a chapel with a minister of the church in permanent attendance. How happy it makes us that we can speak of this now, now we have the lease.”

Once again, as in his earlier question, the Swiss showed himself interested in immediate, practical matters. “And this lease that you have,” he said, in his soft, slightly purring voice, “this lease, from whom you have obtained it?”

“Why, from the Ottoman government, of course. It bears the stamp of a high official at the Ministry of the Interior. They have granted us a lease of ninety-nine years.”

Elliott quitted the table shortly after this. He was grinning to himself as he made his way to his room. The Johanssons had provided some light relief, much needed. They looked so happy, which made it funnier. Someone at the Ministry of the Interior had made a tidy little sum. All the same, it wasn’t such a bad idea; there would be plenty of people ready to shell out for luxury with a spiritual atmosphere. The waters of Jordan coming from the shower—nicely warmed up. Especially honeymooners, he thought. Quite a kick in it, having your nuptial couch directly over the spot where Adam and Eve had theirs. Of course, they didn’t have long to enjoy it before being kicked out… The lease wasn’t worth much. The Ottoman government might have legal title, but they had no firm hold on the region and if war broke out those who came off best would have the say-so and it was pretty unlikely to be the Turks. But of course it was not just the Johanssons; the agreement was with these biblical research people, an international organization with members in every country of Europe and the United States. It would survive the war. It was like oil: Common interest, common profit, these would survive any upheaval. A multinational, multilingual luxury hotel with a spiritual atmosphere and spacious honeymoon suites—and a lake of oil not far away.

He had decided against locking his door when he was inside the room and awake. It gave the wrong message; he wanted to appear confident that Manning would keep his word and allow him the time they had agreed on. However, he kept his revolver always within reach, in the drawer of his table or under his pillow. And while he slept he kept the door locked.

He had cause for self-congratulation this evening, in spite of his troubles. He had completed his investigations, more or less; he had sufficient evidence. It was only necessary now for him to get out of here and back home with a whole skin.

He had been since early in the morning on the site of what he was now convinced was a gravity-induced, piercement salt dome, a vast pillar of Cenozoic and Mesozoic salt something like three hundred million years old, which had traveled through several miles of sedimentary rock to reach the surface. Everything had confirmed it. The caprock was composed of limestone, anhydrite, and traces of calcite over a large part of its surface, the result of groundwater interacting with the salt and causing mineral changes. A good deal of the calcite had dissolved through this exposure to water, forming cavernous expanses; he had discovered the existence of a system of linked caves not far below the surface, and he was now sure that these were filled with oil.

This promised extremely well in regard to the amount of oil trapped in the flanks of the dome; he had reason now to think it was there in vast quantities. But when a zone like this one was penetrated by the drill, the oil would come out fast and furious; there was danger of a gusher that could be sudden and violent in the initial stage, before it could be brought under control. This would make the operation more difficult and dangerous—and more expensive. The risk was increased by the difference in pressure between the strata that had been broken and pushed upward in the slow rise of the salt and the shallower strata these had penetrated. This meant there would be overpressured layers—floaters, as they were called—near the surface, and these posed a threat of violent outflow when attempts were made to drill through them.

All this would go down in his report, the one that neither the British nor the Germans would see. He would describe the site and give the exact location; he would specify the risks and give his estimate of the quantities; he would include sketches and diagrams and notes of depth and densities. And this report he would carry with him at all times. It would be with him on the morning, coming soon, when he rode out with his helpers as if for another day combing the ground, carrying with him the few possessions he would need. And it would be there, still with him, when he dismissed these men and paid them and made his way on horseback, accompanied only by Alawi, to Lataku, where the boats left for Cyprus and Smyrna. Here he would say good-bye to Alawi and give over the horses to him. Only in the evening would his presence be missed, and he would be well on his way by then…

He was disturbed in these reflections by a light tapping at his door. His first thought was that Manning had taken it into his head to come and inquire into the progress he was making with his report. No attempt was made to turn the handle, so it could not be Edith. “Who is it?” he called through the door.

“It is I, Spahl.”

Elliott opened the door to find the Swiss smiling on the threshold, a smile that looked as if it had been there already, prepared in advance.

“I hope you will forgive this lateness of hour,” Spahl said. “I wanted to lose no time.”

Elliott smiled and held the door open. He said, “I will have to come clean with you right from the start. I never give interviews after ten o’clock in the evening.”

“Ha-ha, no,” Spahl said as he entered the room. “It is not for that I am coming.” He was a big man, heavily built, but he moved very lightly, Elliott noticed now, and with short steps. He looked very carefully about him as he advanced into the room. “No, it is for business,” he said.

“Have a seat.” Elliott pointed to one of the two upright chairs at the table, the one on the opposite side to the drawer where his revolver lay. “Would you care for a drink? I’ve still got some of the Scotch that I brought from London with me.”

“Thank you, yes.”

“Water with it?”

“No, I like it straight, as you Americans say. Why make crooked what is made to be straight? That is a joke I am making.”

“Well, I agree with you. Your very good health, sir.”

“Gesundheit!”

“I was wondering,” Elliott said, “just out of curiosity, you know, which paper do you work for?”

“I work for this one or that one. I am freelance.”

“Freelance, eh? I see, yes.”

“But it is not for the newspaper I come to see you. For the newspaper it is to talk with archaeologists, not geologists, that is my purpose.”

These words cleared any doubt remaining in Elliott’s mind as to the true nature and purpose of his visitor. “Naturally,” he said. “We are a lesser breed altogether.”

“Ha-ha. Lesser breed, very good. You Americans have a sense of humor very special. My good chap, I do not want to take up your time, so I will come to the point without delaying more. I am carrying a letter from Herr Kruckman of the Deutsche Bank giving me authority to collect the reports that so far you have made and take them back with me to Berlin when I return. Herr Kruckman is a close friend of your Lord Rampling, they have many interests in common.”

“You mean Zurich, I suppose.”

“Eh? No, no, I am stationed in Berlin.”

By this time Elliott was feeling constrained to keep to the lines of the dialogue as far as he could remember them, as if there were an audience somewhere that expected it of him, having enjoyed the first performance. “I have not made any reports as yet,” he said. “It was not part of my commission to make reports at this stage. There must be some mistake.”

“No, there is no mistake. I have the letter here.” Spahl’s hand went to the inside pocket of his coat.

“I don’t need to see the letter; I have no doubt it is genuine. I mean some mistake in the instructions, some misunderstanding about the terms on which I was employed.”

“If reports you do not have, it will be enough to take your notes and papers.”

“How is it that you were landed with this job?”

“Landed? Oh, yes, to land from a ship. It is an accident. They know I am leaving for Mesopotamia to do the article, they know I am traveling here in this region—”

“I see, yes. It seemed a good idea for you to pick up the papers as you were passing by.”

“Exactly, yes.” Spahl shot a sharp glance around the room. “You have them here, the notes?”

Elliott explained—he was more fluent now than on the first occasion—that he had notes, yes, but for reasons of security he had used a private language of symbols that no one else could possibly decipher. He would need some days in order to summarize these in the form of a report and add some important facts that had come to light recently and had not been written up yet.

He watched Spahl considering, guessed at the calculations going on behind those small, sharp eyes. And it was now, in these few moments, while he was hoping Spahl would understand that he had to be kept alive, at least until the report was made, that the idea came to him for a radical departure from the script. It was a difficult decision to make; Manning was keeping a watch on all his movements; it was almost certain that he would already know about this nighttime visit. He would have guessed immediately what Spahl was up to. He would have decided to kill Spahl to make sure no private arrangements were made, no privileged information passed on to him. Spahl would be a sitting duck; he could have no idea that the major was any other than he seemed. Was that more, or less, dangerous to himself? If they were both in the know, it might give him a breathing space. And there was a chance that one of them would succeed in killing the other, thus halving the opposition.

“Let us say three days then,” Spahl said.

“Agreed. It is odd, you know, an odd coincidence, but Major Manning, the British officer you met at dinner, he came tapping at my door at just this time two or three nights ago, and he too was carrying a letter that authorized him to collect my papers and take them back with him. We had a conversation very similar to the one I’ve had with you. Similar in some ways, at least. He wanted to take the papers to London, not Berlin.”

The way his visitor took this news confirmed Elliott’s first impression that it was a dangerous man he had to deal with. He made no comment, showed no emotion. After some moments of silence he said, “Three days then, it is agreed,” and shortly after this he got up and took his leave.

When the door was safely locked behind him, Elliott sat down at his table and began to compile his report. He had made notes and sketches over these last few days; they were the only papers he had of any value, those concerning the salt dome, the mineral constitution of the disk cap, estimates of the quantity of oil in the upfolds of rock and the closeness to the surface and consequent risks of drilling. The report would contain only the essentials; folded into an envelope, it would remain on his person day and night until he could get clear. The notes he would destroy.

It became ever clearer to him as he worked that his original escape plan would have to be abandoned. He could not just ride out one morning and go on riding; it was too risky. There were two of them now; they would be watching each other, but they would also be watching him. At a distance, unseen, waiting for a chance to pick him off… It might not be so, but he could not take the chance. Both were in their ways opponents to be respected, the fanatical major with his highly developed sense of duty, Spahl with that soft-footed, watchful, professional look about him—a Secret Service man probably. A freelance, he had said. I’ll bet you are.

He was beginning to doubt the wisdom of describing his earlier notes—still in the custody of Edith—as being comprehensible to no one but to himself. This gave him no protection, rather the opposite. He could make a false report, but that would not save him either. False or not, as soon as it was handed over his hours would be numbered. His only safety lay in these few days of grace, the belief on their part that he had knowledge of value. He must use the time to his advantage; he must somehow find a way of taking the initiative.

It was true, as Elliott had surmised, that the major had kept his room under watch, witnessed Spahl’s visit to him, and come to the only possible conclusion. But Manning had done more than this: He had kept all the other rooms under observation too, which was made easier by the fact that the house was built in the local style; though some of the rooms were interconnecting, they were all entered from the courtyard. On the day following his talk with Elliott he had seen him return from his day’s work in late afternoon, seen him emerge with a jacket over his arm—suspicious in itself at this hour of the day—seen him make his way to the common room, which Mrs. Somerville had entered sometime before. They had remained there together for an hour, a fact that already raised some questions in the major’s mind. When they returned to their respective rooms, one ten minutes after the other, Elliott still had his jacket, but Mrs. Somerville was now carrying a cardboard folder.

He continued to keep them under observation. On the next day too they had tea together at the same time; also on the day following. This led to certain conclusions on the major’s part, which condensed into a deepening contempt for the treacherous geologist. The scoundrel had somehow inveigled himself into the good graces of the lady of the house and in an effort to save his own skin had made her the depositary of his papers, thus abusing her trust and putting her in danger of harm. Thinking of this, the major could hardly find words in his mind for it. The fellow deserved to be strung up. Well, he promised himself grimly, he couldn’t be the hangman, but he would be the next best thing; he would be a one-man firing squad when the time came, though he might have to deal with the odious, soft-voiced Swiss first.

He saw it as a clear duty to warn Mrs. Somerville, even though it meant a breach of his instructions, which were to preserve strict secrecy. An opportunity for this came when he found her sitting alone in the workroom, cleaning and assembling some pieces of ceramic. But he had not gone far with the relation of Elliott’s contemptible behavior when he found himself being regarded with eyes of fury and scorn.

“How dare you.” It was the last straw; she could contain herself no longer; such insolence was not to be borne. “How could you be so base, to hide behind this appearance of an officer and gentleman, to come here to me, a woman, to try to make a fool of me, to lay your own treachery at another man’s door, one who is worth twenty of you? Alex has told me everything. I know you are not what you seem. I know you are in the pay of the Russians.”

The major had brown eyes, amber in shade, something like the color of marmalade. They were open now to their widest extent, and his jaw had slackened as he regarded his hostess. “In the pay of the Russians? He told you that?” His face was smoothed out. Astonishment had dispelled all sign of the nervous mannerism that twisted his mouth from time to time. He seemed about to speak but then fell silent. After a moment or two a strange, uncertain smile came to his face, one in which incredulity struggled with reluctant amusement. “By God, that’s rich,” he said.

It was the smile that did it, more than the words that followed. That and the doubts that had been gathering in her mind for some time now, doubts about that fiery sincerity that Alex seemed to exude from every pore. But mainly it was the smile. Astonishment could be faked, but a smile like that never. Except perhaps by some superbly gifted actor, and the major was not that; he was too unmistakably the genuine article. Unless he had all this while, ever since his arrival, been acting the part of the genuine article, which Edith could not believe. The reasoning that had led Elliott to distrust the major led Edith now to believe him. It was Alex who was the actor. It was Alex who was in the pay of a foreign power, the Germans, the major was telling her now, Britain’s great enemy; that was why he had wanted to hide the papers. It was Alex who had done what she had just been furiously accusing the major of doing, even worse, because he had come as a lover, a more heinous offense, he had lied to her and deceived her and laid the blame on another man…

Conviction of this, when it came, was total. And the distress of it brought sudden tears to her eyes. She could not listen to the major any longer, and she asked him to leave her, but in tones that told him he was believed. When he had gone the tears came faster. How could she have been so foolish, how could she have believed that a man like Major Manning was a hired assassin? It was someone else Alex was worried about; naturally he had not told her who. But it didn’t matter anymore; he could sink or swim as far as she was concerned. She had felt contempt for John because he had been Rampling’s dupe, and now she had been Elliott’s. That is the truth, she thought through her tears. No good trying to hide away from it. She and John were alike; they belonged in the army of the gullible. It is because we are believers, she whispered to herself, and the thought calmed her tears. He and I, together in this, perhaps we should try to believe each other.

She felt soothed at this thought, though less than fully convinced by it. And it was followed by a strange feeling of relief. The major was genuine, and that meant that everything else was too, all the things that Alex’s lies had made her doubt, the honor of the British Army, the values of loyalty and devotion to duty, the foundations on which the British Empire was built. She would never forget the night of the fire, but she knew Alex now for what he was, a man who used fire to warm himself and fuel his lies and burn other people with.

“I can’t say I’m sorry that the Johanssons have gone,” Patricia said.

“They got on your nerves rather, didn’t they?”

“Well, didn’t they get on yours? Darling, your glasses could do with a bit of a clean.”

Palmer took off his glasses, which were often dusty owing to his habit of rooting about among dusty things, and, peering closely at them, fumbled in his pockets for a handkerchief, failed to find one, and gave the lenses a brisk rub on the front of his shirt. “I didn’t take them all that seriously,” he said. Patricia took things pretty seriously—he knew that—or she didn’t take them at all. She was feeling sorry now for having spoken so crossly to the Swedish couple, instead of being worldly and ironical.

“I suppose it sounds ill natured,” she said, “but I think it was that rather awful joy of theirs that got me down most of all. I mean, they were totally out of reach. Neither of them has any sense of metaphor. I’m a member of the Anglican Church, I go to communion, but I can spot a myth when I see one. We all aim at happiness, I suppose, but I wouldn’t want to find mine in a literal belief in some vengeful brute up in the sky raining fireballs down on whole populations.”

“They are happy in each other, more than in anything else, I think. Talk about common interests. Hand in hand they have discovered the earthly paradise. It’s enough to put a smile on anyone’s face, isn’t it? Personally, what I find really surprising, and somehow depressing, is the refusal to make comparisons, to allow the mind a bit of room. They will labor to prove the Genesis version of the Deluge, for example—I daresay that members of the Society for Biblical Research are combing Mount Ararat at this very moment, looking for fragments of the rudder. What they will never do is sit down quietly somewhere and read a bit of comparative mythology. They won’t say to themselves: Well now, this story already existed in both Sumerian and Babylonian as early as 2000 B.C. The names are different, of course—God is called Ea and Noah is called Uta-napishtim—but the instructions are all there: Build a boat, fashion it so-and-so, bring all seeds of life into it, and so on. I haven’t got the text here with me but I have it at home, it’s in volume four of Rawlinson’s Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia. I’ll show it to you when we are back in England, if you like.”

Patricia smiled at him. “I’ll look forward to that,” she said, and rarely had she meant anything more profoundly. Sumerian mythology and working for the vote and friends by the fireside and a glass of sherry and the house they shared together…

“Take this Garden of Eden business,” Palmer said, warmed and encouraged. She was interested in what he said; she approved of him—he had never felt so much approved of. “They have found similar accounts in Sumerian records, strikingly similar accounts actually. The whole story of an earthly paradise belongs to the mythology of the ancient Near East. I mean, the term itself derives from the Akkadian edinu, which was borrowed in its turn from the Sumerian eden. In the Sumerian story there occurs the word Nin-ti, Lady of the Rib. There are some variations, naturally. There were eight fruits forbidden to the Sumerian pair, and instead of a serpent the seducer was a fox.”

“It’s the same thing, though, isn’t it? Whether they were tempted by a fox or a snake, it’s still about the danger of human overreaching, wanting to be like the gods, wanting to know more than we should.”

“Notions of paradise differ,” Palmer said. “The Johanssons think of it in terms of an apple tree inside a diamond inside a triangle. Some see it in terms of speedboats. My idea of it is bound up with knowing more, not less. You with me day by day, a regular income, a reasonably spacious house in Bloomsbury, not too far from the British Museum…”