Land of Marvels

4.

Jehar found himself spending more time in the rail yards at Jerablus than he had ever intended. He had returned there in the company of a trading party, eager to gaze at Ninanna again and to pick up something further about the progress of the railroad that he could sell to the Englishman. But after that great leap of the bridge there had been what seemed like a pause for breath; work on the left bank had not begun; they were still waiting for the rails to come from Aleppo. It had occurred to him that he might invent some story of the line to take back with him, a strike among the workforce, a large-scale ambush by the desert Arabs with great loss of life. Storytelling came naturally to him, he had a gift for it, and the stories became true to him as he told them, as he embroidered them with detail. However, an elementary caution remained: He was held back by the fear that his employer might find the stories contradicted by others and so would cease to trust him and therefore cease to pay him for the information he took back.

Meanwhile, instead of adding to his stock of money, he was experiencing difficulty in holding on to what he had. He kept his eyes open, watching the movements of goods about the yards, the guard that was kept on the warehouses and storage sheds, the hours of opening and closing in the offices of the German surveyors and engineers, the quality of the locks, the fastening of the windows. There were moments of inattention, and one had to be ready for them. He succeeded on different occasions in stealing some pick handles, a tool kit in a leather holster, a three-gallon drum of kerosene. These things he sold for what he could get in the shanties that had sprung up in the area of the docks and by the riverside. The town had swollen greatly with the coming of the railroad and held now a good many people who did not ask where things came from. Sometimes he took serious risks for Ninanna’s sake. The police were not much in evidence here, but there was always the justice of the gang to be reckoned with. Once, in a dockside tavern, pretending to pause while he watched a game of dice, he stole a purse from a coat belonging to one of the players, which was hanging over the back of the man’s chair. He was seen, and only flight and the refuge of darkness saved him from serious injury. He went in some fear now of being recognized.

His consolation, which was also his torment, was that he could see Ninanna every day, for hours on end, from midmorning till nightfall, while she was there at the café. All that was needed was the price of a glass of tea. The café stayed open until midnight and later, but he had no hope of seeing her after dark; the uncle, aware of having a valuable asset, kept her carefully sequestered from view and from the temptations of darkness.

The sight of her filled him with hope. But all the men there could watch her too, as she moved about with her tray, serving tea and coffee and raki, gathering the empty glasses. Not only were they feasting their eyes on her, but also—in his imagination—nursing schemes similar to his own. He was not capable of distinguishing his own desires from those of others; anyone who set eyes on Ninanna, saw the candidness and beauty of her face, her grace of movement and her shapeliness, would be stricken by love for her just as he had been and would start getting together the gold pounds. He knew that the uncle would not hesitate for a moment if another came to him with the money.

This uncle, in Jehar’s eyes, had no fidelity in his nature, no sense of right or wrong whatever. He had complained that Jehar sat all day over one glass of tea and how was he to make a profit if everyone behaved like that? Such a shameless and avaricious person was no use to anyone; he simply cluttered up the earth. It had sometimes come to Jehar’s mind that he might put an end to this miserable man if a good chance presented itself, but he was uncertain how the girl would take it, whether she would trust herself to him, whether there were others with whom she might seek refuge…

Meanwhile he found ways of talking to her, though never for long. She came for water to the pump that was near the office of the German engineers, where he had first seen her; sometimes on these occasions she was alone and would have some little while for talking, or listening rather—she said very little. The small kitchen where the coffee and the tea were made had a door that gave onto the outside yard, which had always a dark smell of soot and hot metal and spent steam from the shunting of the engines, but which nevertheless was kept open because of the heat from the stove in that narrow place. Keeping a wary eye out for the uncle, who was generally behind the counter inside, taking the money, Jehar would cross the tracks and come to stand at the open doorway, and by these means he sometimes succeeded in talking to her for a few minutes, with the clangor and hissing of the shunting bays on one side and the voices from the café on the other.

Such scattered moments did not make for conversation as this is generally understood, and Jehar had seen from the beginning that he must find one single topic, one that could be resumed at every opportunity, which would in effect, in spite of all interruptions, make an unending story. He found it in a vision of their future together. This, with all that it contained of happiness and fulfillment, was situated in the town of Deir ez-Zor, on the right bank of the Great River, which he had seen when working on the rafts that carried the pitch upstream and downstream from the black fields of Hit.

He described the town to Ninanna, the green islet in the midst of the stream, the permanent bridge that went from one bank to the other, the six white minarets that rose above the roofs of the houses, the great mass of gardens and palm groves and cultivated fields that extended along the river for many miles to the east. Memory and invention combined with love to make him eloquent. Their future at Deir ez-Zor was an amazing story, and no one had ever told her such a story before. She listened at first with her face turned from him; but gradually, as the story took on more and more wondrous detail, she would look directly at him, beguiled alike by the repetition of what was already familiar and the constant addition of what was new. She would sometimes ask questions, and when he answered Jehar would add something more to the story, some novelty that had not been there before. No less than twelve pillars supported the bridge, and these pillars were of stone. The town was lawful and orderly; no one went in fear of his property or his life. Not only was there a garrison of Turkish soldiers, but peace was also ensured by the Bejt Ftejjeh, a very powerful and numerous family long settled in this region, who had prospered under Ottoman rule.

Many members of this family worked in the government offices, he told her, and they gave a sympathetic hearing to Arabs. The Government House was situated on the river, and it was tall and white with many windows, and it had a wide courtyard. There were always two guards at the gate, in uniforms of blue and red. Deir ez-Zor had several primary schools and a high school and a polytechnic school—their sons would have good instruction. And there was land. To the north of the town were the gardens of as-Salhijjeh, the property of the Pasha, the Turkish overlord, but much of it neglected because the Pasha lived in Baghdad and came rarely.

This Pasha entered increasingly into the story, becoming always more corpulent. He sat there in Baghdad, eating halvah and pastries filled with honey and cream and kebabs of every description, getting fatter and fatter and making Jehar, who did not get enough to eat in these days, feel hungrier and hungrier as he invented the dishes. He puffed out his cheeks to make her laugh; he had no idea what the Pasha looked like, or whether he truly existed, but it was obvious that soon he would cease visiting his lands altogether. He would become totally immobile, and Jehar acted out with staring eyes and rigid head this stricken immobility of the overstuffed Pasha. Laughter came easily to Ninanna, widening her eyes, replacing the look of wonder that the story had brought to them.

A piece of land could be rented for the price of the tax on it; the flush wheels that brought the water from the river could be repaired, the irrigation channels dug out again… In these snatched moments, amid the dirt and din of the rail yards, these two, who had not once touched each other, who owned nothing, created together a land full of promise, an earthly paradise.

Jehar knew he was gaining ground with the girl; he could see it in her eyes. But the knowledge brought him no peace, rather the contrary, increasing his sense of what he stood to lose. It was a pattern familiar to his experience and his general sense of the nature of life, the crushing of human prospects, just when they seem auspicious, by some stroke of fate, something not envisaged, unpredictable. He had known it often enough in his gambling days, this dark game of fate. It troubled his sleep now; he dreamed of unmaskings, disguised enemies, trusted faces turning ugly.

Driven thus, he visited the uncle in the small shed he called his office, where, in addition to a table made of planks scavenged from the yards and a single chair, there was a low pallet against the wall, because this shed served also as the uncle’s sleeping place.

Standing before the seated man, taking care to speak respectfully and show no sign of the contempt and hatred in his heart, glancing around cautiously in the hope of seeing something in the nature of a strongbox where the takings from the café might be kept, Jehar offered his services in any capacity the uncle might choose, as watchman, caretaker, sweeper, handyman. He would ask for no payment, only board and lodging. However, they would agree on a nominal wage, and this would be regularly deducted from the hundred gold pounds, and so, week by week, the debt would be paid and in the end Ninanna would be his.

It had seemed, as he sketched it out in his mind beforehand, a reasonable proposal. It would require patience and self-control, but he would be able to see the girl every day; he would be able to watch out for possible rivals; he might succeed, before the debt was paid, in persuading her to run away with him to Deir ez-Zor. In any event, he would be well placed to kill the uncle if he went back on the agreement or tried to make a whore of the girl or sell her to someone else. Yes, it had seemed eminently reasonable. But the fabulist is not always the best judge of his own fables, and the more hope he has in them, the more he is likely to deceive himself. Well before the uncle’s ugly smiling, Jehar had realized that the story would fail to convince.

The uncle chuckled in a way that seemed evil to Jehar. He was a heavy man and would remain quite still for long periods with his small eyes almost closed below the fringe of his headcloth. In fact it was he who had served as Jehar’s model for the palsied Pasha of Baghdad. He opened his eyes now, however, to look at the man before him. “Do you take me for a fool?” he said. “I am to give you free board and lodging for months on end and as a result of this generosity lose the bride-price? What work is there here for a watchman or a sweeper except to watch for coins that he can sweep into his pockets?”

He said nothing more, and indeed there was nothing more to be said. Jehar turned and left, confirmed in his antipathy, nursing murder in his heart. The uncle had as good as called him a thief, a gross insult, not to be borne. And what kind of man was it who would sell his own niece to someone whose honesty he doubted?

He thought of crossing the yard and looking in at the doorway of the kitchen in the hope of seeing Ninanna. But as he passed the company drawing office he saw one of the Germans emerge bareheaded and go around the side of the building. He did not lock the door; it was obvious that he was not intending to be away long. Gone around to the privy at the back, Jehar thought. He drew nearer. There was no one else in the office and no one nearby. The work of a moment to mount the wooden steps, enter, sweep together the several papers on the desk, clutch them in one quick handful, and leave as he had come.

For the work on the eastern side of the mound Somerville had decided on a method first used by Flinders Petrie at Lachish in Palestine twenty-five years before. Petrie’s mound had been steeper sided than this one of his, but that made no difference as far as he could see. A line was marked from the summit, and a shallow trench was begun, following this line of descent. Groups of six, each consisting of a pickman, a spademan, and four basketmen, were set one below the other three yards apart and, working from within the trench, told to cut a horizontal step. The objects found by each gang were to be kept separate and recorded separately. In this way, working in narrow shafts, he hoped to establish an exact chronological sequence.

On the seventh day, working at about twenty-three feet from the summit, one of the pickmen came upon the traces of a wall six or seven inches high. Somerville was called for and crouched for two hours, first with a small trowel and then with a narrow-bladed pocketknife, carefully scraping at the accretion of clay that obscured the base. At the end of this time he sat back on his heels. The habit of restraint in the presence of the workpeople, assumed for the sake of authority, kept his face impassive, gave no hint of the elation that filled him. The base was of stone, cut and shaped; the layer of bricks that surmounted it had kept their form, even under the weight of masonry piled upon them to make new foundations for building. They were not like the disintegrated remains they had found so far, made of compacted mud and dried in the sun: These bricks had been fired in a kiln. Only the rich and powerful had such walls built for their dwellings—and for those of their gods.

The import of this flooded his mind. He felt the need to be alone, apart from others, so as to be able to think calmly. He told the group they would all be remembered when the time for baksheesh came, instructed the pickman to follow the line of the wall with due care, and called for Elias to come and keep an eye on things. Then he made his way a little higher up, beyond the line of the new trench. From here he could look down at the railway buildings and beyond them at a vast and barren expanse marked by long rises of rock and gravel and the ridges of ancient canal embankments and silted irrigation ditches. In the days when that wall was built this land had been well watered, fertile, and prosperous. Always precarious, of course, for the people who worked on the land, because the season of floods was unpredictable and capricious. But for the rulers a green and pleasant land. He knew it as he stood there; this had been more than a stop on a trade route, more than a frontier post on borders contested by warring imperial powers. Higher than the delta lands to the south, cooler in summer, probably well timbered once, freshened by the streams between the two tributaries of the Euphrates. In their great days of empire the Assyrians held undisputed sway over all this ground. Could Tell Erdek once have been a summer resort for their kings, a place of rest and repose after the campaigning, after the washing away of the blood? If so, what more natural than they should have brought here things that they treasured or that held some particular meaning? That would explain the ivory plaque, perhaps even the guardian spirit…

“Noble lord, I have a paper for you to see.”

Engrossed in his thoughts, with the sound of voices and of metal striking on stone not far away, Somerville had heard no steps approach behind him. Turning, he saw Jehar standing at a respectful distance, holding a square sheet of grayish paper in his hand. “What is it?” he said. “What have you got there?”

Taking the question for encouragement, Jehar advanced and handed him the sheet. After a moment he saw that it was a map, carefully drawn by hand on graph paper. There was a dotted red line that crossed diagonally to the northwest, dipping slightly as it crossed the Khabur River, then rising again northward. There were contour lines indicating the steepness of the gradients, and at certain points a small black triangle had been drawn, with the altitude in meters beside it. He saw Zeharat al-Bada, 423, el-Muelehat, 411. These were the rises he had just been looking at. Following the red line to the edge of the paper, he saw that before reaching this edge it passed through the town of Ras el-Ain, a three-hour ride away. It was here that Fahir had his quarters. It took him a moment or two longer to realize that if the red line touched this town, approaching as it would between the hills and the eastern branch of the river, it must come very close indeed to the mound on which they were standing.

“It is the railway,” Jehar said softly, choosing the moment to speak when he saw comprehension come to the other’s face. “I did not want to show Your Excellency this very important document at a time when others were close by. I have traveled dangerously, without the men who should have accompanied me. The cowards deserted me, left me alone. Now, if they saw us, they would try to claim some credit for the obtaining of this map. They are liars from infancy. They would even ask Your Excellency for a reward, whereas it was I alone and unaided that obtained it.”

Even in the stress of the moment Somerville found himself struck once again by the ornately phrased, unfaltering speech. Jehar had probably never attended any sort of school in his life and almost certainly could not read or write and would not be capable of fabricating such a map, though Somerville had been briefly prey to this suspicion. It was as if some angel of eloquence had befriended him. Or demon, he thought suddenly—Jehar was the perpetual bearer of bad news. He felt a sudden throb of pain at his temples. Between the hills and the marshes, through his mound, through his prospects, through five thousand years of human life and death…

He was aware of Jehar’s gaze upon him with its usual blend, which he had always found unsettling, of intensity and simplicity. The gaze of a savage. He strove to let nothing show on his face; from obduracy, from the long habit of restraint; the other would know he had dealt a blow, but he would see no evidence of it, gain no advantage. “This is a survey map, drawn to scale,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

Jehar had been expecting this question and had prepared an answer that he thought would produce the best result. At first he had been inclined to tell the truth and describe how he had stolen it from the survey office. It was an exploit of which he felt proud and would have made a gripping and dramatic story, the adroitness and boldness of it, a miracle of timing. But in the end, not being sure the khwaja would appreciate how brilliant he had been, the risk of detection and punishment that the theft had involved, he had decided on a different answer.

“It cost me much time and money,” he said. “It was far from easy. There is always someone who can be approached, but it takes time and patience to find him. There is one there, one of those that make the maps, but he is too fond of the liquor they call eau-de-vie that they make from grain, he is often drunk and always in need of money, the more so now as he has lost his post, yes, he has been discharged. His name is Herr Franke. He was one of those that make the drawings, but then he is shaky, his hands he cannot keep still, his eyes are blurred, he cannot see to do the maps, he makes mistakes, so they dismiss him from the work and so he loses the stipend, but he does not lose the desire for schnapps, in fact it is increased by his misfortune. It was he who sold me the map. He has no hair on his head, and he has a way of opening and closing his mouth. Like this, like a fish.”

“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.