Land of Marvels (16 page)

He had told her about this Englishman and his search and his vast wealth—hundreds toiled at his command—and his shorts and boots that made his legs look thin and his feet look big. He had told her too about the railway line that was heading for the place where the treasure was. The Englishman feared this line because he was one who always believed in his heart that he was a target for God’s anger. Because of this secret belief, he had a constant need for news, now more than ever, as he was beginning to find things. And for news he was willing to pay.

She listened to him without always seeming to, busy as she was. The uncle had paid something and had been allowed to fence off a small piece of land adjoining the shoulder of a nearby siding; a dozen hens and a rooster lived together in this small space, fluttering and squawking in alarm at the occasional hissing sound of compressed air released by the locomotives. When Ninanna came out to tend to them Jehar was able to keep her in talk for a little while. Here in the open she felt less constraint; she smiled more often at Jehar and sometimes asked him questions. The black fields of Hit engaged her imagination. It was like Gehennem, the place of fire and torment where the damned were sent. What did they look like, the swamps of pitch? Did people live among them? Were there also some at Deir ez-Zor?

No, no, he told her. Deir ez-Zor was all white and green and golden. It was true that the pitch fields of Hit resembled what the Holy Writings said about Hell; they were black as far as the eye could see, and they steamed and bubbled in places with the heat lying within and below. But sometimes these black fields could look beautiful. There were salt springs among them, and the salt water mingled with the pitch and made rainbow colors around the edges of the spring. In the evening sunshine these colors glowed, and it was as if they were cast upward into the sky, like a promise of paradise.

Love aided native talent to make him supremely eloquent. She listened spellbound. Her lips, which were beautifully formed, parted a little with the interest of it, wonder passing to laughter without pain of thought. No one had ever talked to her like this, brought such pictures to her mind. They came to her sometimes at night as she drifted into sleep, the minarets, the stream, the palm groves, the fez with its gold tassel. Now there were these black fields that could be both ugly and beautiful. He was handsome too, with his level brows and pale eyes, and his talk was full of fire and promise.

The bitumen was scooped up with palm leaves, he told her, and stored in large pieces. It was diluted with lime and sent downstream on rafts. It could be sold at al-Felluge, and from there you could bring back grape honey and a kind of rice the people there called
tummen
. By this trade one could make a lot of money, and with this money they would buy land and plant palms. A hundred trees they would have . . .

Sometimes, in his desire to impress her with the wealth that would be theirs, he might go too much into detail and exhaust her powers of attention. He might be explaining that the people of al-Felluge needed the pitch for sealing and waterproofing the great straw jars that they then weighted with stones and hung on their waterwheels to make them turn and so irrigate their fields, and in the midst of his words he would see a sort of stillness settle over her face, and he would know she had lost her way somewhere in this chain of causes and effects. Then he would go back to the marvels of Deir ez-Zor and get lost in his turn amid the thickets of what was real, what was exaggerated, and what was invented. Amid the gardens that belonged to the fabulously slothful and permanently absent Pasha there was a spring, and the water came out of it with so much force that it bubbled and sang as it flowed. There were times when the water burst forth so strongly that fish came leaping out with it. If you waited by the well, no fish ever gushed out, however long you waited. But if you were passing at the right moment, you would have your supper provided for you. For this reason the spring was named Abu Simac, Father of Fishes, by the people who lived there.

8.

I
t was late in the morning and the sun was high when Mansur, who was her personal servant, came to tell Edith that strangers were approaching the house: three men, two on horseback, the third riding a camel. She followed the procedure laid down by Somerville in the event of visits during his absence, telling Mansur to summon two men, make sure they were armed, and wait with them inside the gate until these people were near enough to state their business and be clearly distinguished. She herself waited in the common room, whose windows gave a view across part of the courtyard but not the part that included the gate.

After a short while Mansur returned to say that the men were now two, the third having retired to the nearby village; it seemed he had acted as guide to the others. One of these was a white man; the other was an Arab, or at least spoke Arabic as if it were his own tongue, but he was not from these parts, he was a man of the city. “The other speak to him in English, tell him what he have to say,” Mansur said, and smiled brilliantly, Edith was not sure why or whether there was any reason. He had not seen any arms about the Arab, but the white man had a rifle in his saddle holster and a revolver at his belt. “He say name Hellhot, sound like.”

“You can open the gate to them,” she said, accompanying this with a gesture of one unlocking and opening. She went to the hall, took her sun hat from the peg, put it on without looking in the mirror, then opened the door and stood waiting just outside it.

Elliott’s eyes were strained from the hours of riding in a light stronger and harsher than he was used to, and sunlight was reflected from the white walls of the house, confusing him further. As he crossed the courtyard he saw a tall, full-breasted woman in a long white dress, her face shaded by the wide brim of her hat. She did not move as he approached. He removed his hat as he drew near. “Elliott, ma’am,” he said. “This is my interpreter, Alawi.”

His voice was deep, slightly nasal, with an accent she thought of vaguely as belonging to the American West, and it was drawling and sudden at the same time, as if his words were uttered on impulse.

“Edith Somerville.” She extended her hand and felt it gripped with considerable firmness. The interpreter was retreating already, in company with Mansur, avoiding thus the undue familiarity of a handshake with the lady of the house.

This left the two of them standing together. “You will be the geologist,” she said.

Sight restored, he was able to see that she was beautiful, the mouth full but delicate in its molding, the eyes a tawny color, set wide apart. “Your husband told you then?” he said.

“Yes, of course. Naturally he told me.” He was very tall; she was aware of raising her eyes to his face. His head was still uncovered, and the thick fair hair glinted in the sunlight. The same glint of gold was on his face, and she saw now that there was a short bristle on his cheeks and jaws and around his mouth—he had not shaved, not that day, perhaps not the day before. His eyes were blue, and in the tanned face they had a steadiness of regard, an absence of shyness, that astonished her rather. “Well, come in,” she said. Her mother’s unfailing remedy for occasions of social strain came to her. “I expect you’d like some tea?”

“That would be just dandy.”

Afterward she was to reproach herself at not having thought more about, inquired more closely into, his immediate needs; he would have been tired from the journey, he might have preferred to be shown immediately to the room that had been prepared for him, where he could wash away the dust of travel and rest for a while. But she had wanted to talk to him, perhaps listen to him rather, wanted it from the first.

“So you know I am a fake then,” he said, with the same effect of suddenness, when they were seated together.

“Well, I know you are not an archaeologist.” Anyone less like a fake it would have been difficult to imagine, she thought, as he sat there rather awkwardly, his long body inclined forward in his chair; with his straight regard, the irregular rhythms of his speech, at once drawling and impulsive-seeming, he bore sincerity with him like a lighted torch. “I suppose you are a genuine geologist?” she said.

He laughed at this. “You mean I might be something else? Two layers of disguise instead of only one? It wouldn’t be so strange, I guess. Mesopotamia seems to be full of people engaged in some business that is not the one they tell the world about. No, nothing so interesting, I’m afraid. I’m just a feller that knows something about old stones. Correction, something about old stones that act as hosts to petroleum. Jailers would be a better word.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there are some types of rock that keep the oil imprisoned.” He smiled at her suddenly, an attractive smile, wide and exuberant. “You know, kind of like the genie that got trapped in the bottle. He’s been there a very long time, millions of years. We want to let him out, let the poor devil get up to the air.”

“So you can trap him all over again and put him in some other kind of bottle.”

“No, ma’am, we don’t aim to do that. Once you take the stopper out you can’t put it back again—no one can.” He raised large hands to make a shape in the air, a gesture that seemed almost worshipful to her, as if he were holding up a chalice full of blessings. His smile died, and there was suddenly a naked look of seriousness about his face, something rapt, as if he might be one of the apostles at the moment of being called. “He is right here below us, waiting for the word of release. It’s not like the story. This genie isn’t vindictive or vengeful, he is a benefactor, he is the greatest boon ever bestowed on the human race. He will bring prosperity and ease of life to millions of people who have never heard his name. He will light their lamps, warm their houses, drive their engines. This genie will be the harbinger of a golden age.”

There was a quality of rhetoric in this, a rhythm in his words that seemed practiced. These were things he had said before. But the habit of talking in bursts, like pulses in a flow, saved him from seeming pompously oratorical. And she was attracted by the throb of the feeling in the words and the way they came out, not like a lesson learned and oft repeated but with a warmth that seemed natural to him.

He had lowered his hands now, and something of the smile had returned, though chastened. “I guess I’m talking too much, Mrs. Somerville,” he said. “It’s a bad habit of mine, especially when it comes to the subject of petroleum. We hardly know each other yet, and that makes it a whole lot worse. But I felt from the beginning you were a lady I could talk to.”

This had come too easily, or perhaps too soon; some slight warning bell sounded in her mind. Despite this, she felt pleased by it. In accents she took care to make as neutral as possible, she said, “You are going to be here with us for some time, I believe. We don’t stand much on formalities. Please call me Edith.”

“My name is Alexander. My friends call me Alex.”

This said, they sat and looked at each other for a moment or two. It came to Edith that something—anything—needed imperatively to be said. “But why have they sent you here? I mean, to this particular area?”

“The reasons are technical. Do you really want to hear them? Rule number one for visiting geologists pretending to be visiting archaeologists is to wait at least twenty-four hours before you start boring your hostess with stuff about rocks.”

“No, really, I’d like to know.”

“Right, here we go. At Hit on the Euphrates and a few miles south of Mosul on the Tigris there are springs of bitumen coming up from belowground. Bitumen is a kind of tarry substance, it is one of the components of petroleum. These springs, or fountains you might call them, are dotted around for miles, quite small, nine or ten inches across at most. The thing about them is that the bitumen that comes out is almost pure, unlike practically anywhere else in western Asia—in most other places the bitumen comes out swimming on the back of the water, if you get me. Now we already know there is oil there, we don’t know how much exactly, but we know it is a lot. We know that for certain. But not very far from where we are sitting right now, a few miles to the east, there is an extensive oil seep and a number of fountains, some putting out salt water and bitumen mixed, some putting out an almost pure bitumen. We have reports on it and some maps, but the area has never been properly prospected for oil. It’s going to be my job to have a good look round and make some reports of a more detailed kind.”

He paused here and looked at her for some moments in silence. She was interested, he could see it in her face; it was no mere polite attention she was giving him. Wonderful eyes she had, wide apart like a cat’s. Easy to tell her things, easy to say too much . . . He said, “I am working for the Turkish Petroleum Company, which was formed two years ago in 1912. That is, I am working for the British interests in the company.” She would know this already, from her husband. She would know who had sent him. “We have to go carefully,” he said. “The company has not yet received a charter from the Turkish government. When they get that, they will be first in the field. They need to know as much as possible beforehand so as to keep a step ahead. That’s where I come in.”