The Map

by T. S. Learner

  August joined her at the desk. He looked down where her finger was pointing. There it was, a small village on a peninsula between two rivers, in exactly the direction Shimon had described in the chronicle.

  ‘Jesus, you might be right.’

  The fontaine Médicis in the Jardin du Luxembourg was one of Tyson’s favourite locations for a drop. There was something about the baroque romanticism of the fountain, at the end of a small oblong pond, that provided a deeply ironic setting to the squalid and very unromantic business of espionage. It also had the advantage of being secluded and a little removed from the Parisians who frequented the gardens. Tyson was a few minutes early and, after checking his surrounds for any suspicious onlooker, he sat on a wooden bench opposite, tipping his pallid face to catch the sunlight. Then he watched a duck swim in the shallow pool at the base of the reclining figure of Polyphemus, while its mate, the drake, waded listlessly at the base of the fountain. The figure looked on two lovers immortalised in stone, who were apparently oblivious of his gaze. Was he the husband or perhaps some voyeur? Tyson could never decide, but he liked the cool detachment of the observer that the reclining figure embodied. It was decadent, uncaring. He related to the character’s isolation, the self-containment that appeared to be both aloof and superior. He looked back at the duck. The creature perplexed him, swimming in small circles as if puzzled by such a shallow body of water that appeared to have no fish in it. Such stupidity irritated Tyson; it seemed to go against the grain of nature, the expediency of evolution. A bird like that deserved to starve, he decided.

  Choosing to ignore its mate, the drake began waddling hopefully over the pebbled path towards Tyson, obviously used to being fed by the tourists that frequented the ornate gardens. Tyson checked his watch then touched the brim of his trilby, an unconscious nervous habit – his contact was a minute late. Another plane of his world slipping out of control. He looked around. Except for a couple of tourists that had appeared at the head of the pond, the place was empty. Leaning forward, he kicked the drake, his foot catching the bird across the breast, and after an indignant squawk, half-staggering and half-flapping, it flew off. He glanced back at the tourists and the woman shot him an appalled glance, before hurrying off with her husband. It was an immensely satisfying moment Tyson noted happily to himself. Then he felt a tap on his shoulder.

  ‘The Diamondbacks are having a challenging season,’ said the contact, a grey-haired man in his mid-forties, his face lightly beaded in sweat, also in a suit, carrying a folded newspaper under his arm. He sat down beside Tyson.

  ‘My money is on the Rockies,’ Tyson replied, delivering the coded greeting. The contact glanced around the park, then slipped off his jacket to cool down. ‘Hot, isn’t it?’

  ‘Pleasant enough.’ Tyson stayed friendly, but this wasn’t his usual contact and that augured badly.

  ‘You should know we have questions.’

  Tyson kept his eyes forward, maintaining the illusion that they were complete strangers.

  ‘This guy Winthrop, you know whose son he is?’

  ‘So, he hates him, the guy’s awol.’

  ‘If Winthrop was heading for Madrid, he’d be there by now.’

  ‘The Soviets are cleverer than that. He’s biding his time. There are other means of sabotaging General Kissner’s talks.’

  ‘We sure he’s KGB?’

  ‘C’mon, he fought in Spain, he’s a dedicated Marxist. Besides, I found evidence in van Peters’s apartment. Winthrop’s KGB,’ Tyson insisted. The contact breathed in sharply, both men careful to maintain their gazes out towards the fountain.

  ‘Hard evidence?’

  Tyson folded the newspaper he held across his knees. ‘In the drop.’

  ‘Again, if there’s any information that could potentially embarrass the US government, given the timeframe on this pact, we need to know now, not in a few weeks, understand?’

  Tyson nodded, the slightest of gestures.

  ‘Good, because if there’s a screw-up, it’s on your watch, understand?’

  Tyson made no response – physical or verbal. The contact slid across the newspaper he had under his hand. In an instant the two had swapped newspapers, both of which looked identical.

  ‘Van Peters, Jesus, that was a mess. Was that you?’ the contact asked, sharply, a veiled threat in his voice.

  Tyson scanned the horizon. There didn’t appear to be a living thing near them, except a red squirrel ten metres to the left beside a tree. Tyson doubted it contained a hidden microphone. Breaking basic protocol, he turned to the contact and met his eyes, memorising the face in a flash.

  ‘Interpol is convinced it was Winthrop.’ He smiled.

  ‘Fuck you, Tyson.’ The contact stood. Tyson stayed sitting.

  ‘Do I still have Winthrop?’

  ‘For now.’ The contact started walking away.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ Tyson’s voice was just loud enough for the contact to catch. In lieu of a reply he stopped and bent down to tie his shoelaces. ‘It’s in the drop,’ the contact directed back at Tyson over his shoulder.

  After Tyson had watched the contact disappear down the path toward the boulevard Saint-Michel, he opened the newspaper. Inside, embedded within an article about the French fighting in Algiers, there was a series of letters circled in red – together they made up the word ‘nongiva’. Tyson ran it backwards in his head – Avignon. He checked his watch. If he hurried, he could be there by sunset.

  Early the next morning Edouard bought August a blank fake French passport and took a photograph, promising he would have the new passport ready by the end of that day. By sunrise August and Izarra were on the road, driving along the bank of the Durance on an old motorcycle Edouard had lent them. Sunlight cut through the plane trees that lined the road like a strobe: black, white, shadow, light, the polarity flashing across August’s face, obliterating all thought except the feel of Izarra’s arms wrapped around his waist, the warm air streaming past them like hope and the beat of his own excitement drumming against his ribcage.

  About ten kilometres outside the outskirts of the city the signpost for La Rivière Rencontre le Ciel loomed up on the side of the road. Minutes later they roared into the small village. August, dressed in the soldier’s uniform with his black hair and fake black moustache, and with Izarra wearing a smart skirt and wool jacket, was convinced that they looked like a visiting French soldier and his girl out for a pleasant rural weekend. He pulled the motorcycle up at the local bar, set in the small square. In the middle of the square was a small green, upon which several older men were playing bowls, while a group of women, their wives presumably, sat in the sun, watching and talking among themselves.

  ‘Wait here,’ August instructed Izarra, then walked over to the women. He took off the officer’s cap he was wearing and politely bowed to the women, who watched him suspiciously from under their headscarfs and black shawls.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, in French. ‘I wonder if any of you lovely young ladies would be able to help me?’

  The women’s faces puckered into grins, displaying a variety of broken and blackened teeth; not one of them appeared to be under the age of eighty. One of them piped up, her huge bosom resting on a massive stomach, sitting in the centre with some crocheting spiralling like a spider’s web across her lap.

  ‘Depends what kind of help you need, handsome,’ she replied, in a broad rural accent, at which the rest of the women burst into gales of cackling laughter. August glanced back over to Izarra, who was watching, amused. He swung back to the women.

  ‘I was hoping to take my fiancée somewhere special and I’ve heard there’s a place near here where it is like the sky touches the water.’

  The women turned to each other, then, after a rancorous debate, the elected spokeswoman turned to August.

  ‘I think you mean the old villa on the other side of the village. Used to be grand before the Germans …’ and here she spat onto the pavement, ‘… burned it down. At
the bottom of the grounds there’s a place where if you lay down – or something a little more naughty …’ She glanced meaningfully at Izarra, then back at August and winked to his great amusement, ‘… and look over where the two rivers meet, you see nothing but the sky and the water. I’ve had three children conceived there and I’m a great-grandmother now!’ she concluded, proudly. The other women broke into laughter again. ‘Follow the riverbank, then veer left, you can’t miss it. And bonne chance!’

  The villa, a solid nineteenth-century bluestone building, had three walls standing and one tumbling out into an overgrown driveway in front. There was only a small section of the roof remaining, blackened from soot, the rest a charred skeleton of rafters yawning out against the azure sky. As August turned off the motorcycle engine, immediately the rushing cascade of a waterfall became audible and there was a fresh crackle to the air – the negative ions of colliding water – that was instantly invigorating. They disembarked and stood in front of the ruin before the remnants of a garden where lavender and roses sprung up between the tumbled stone and an old bent lilac tree was in the last stage of blooming. Izarra handed August his camera.

  ‘C’mon, let’s check around the back, I suspect that’s where most of the grounds would have been,’ he said.

  They walked around the wrecked building, disturbing several doves nesting in the eaves. The tranquillity of the landscape disturbed him. He had the unerring sensation that in some way the house was still occupied and he couldn’t rid himself of the sensation that he was trespassing or even that the house, with its broken windows, was watching him. Noticing that Izarra was also taking care to tread carefully through the overgrown weeds and grasses, August wondered if she felt the same unease.

  ‘Do you have your gun?’ Izarra asked, quietly, as if reading his thoughts.

  He nodded.

  ‘Good,’ she told him. ‘There is something wrong here. I don’t know what, but I feel it.’ She paused, August glanced across the grounds. Here the overgrown grass was almost waist-high, easy to hide in – not a reassuring sight.

  ‘Stay close behind me,’ he instructed her, in a low voice.

  As they made their way around, the full extent of the old grounds opened up before them. It had once been a grand garden – set on a gentle slope flanked by converging rivers on either side that led into a point at the bottom, where the two bodies of water met. Rising up out of the centre of long grass was what looked to be a tumbled mass of overgrown topiary, roughly in the shape of an oblong.

  ‘Do you think that was the maze?’ Izarra asked, pointing.

  ‘Possibly. I have to get closer.’ The ruined house was now behind them. August realised he would have to get an aerial photograph to get a clear topographical view of the maze, assuming that was the maze. He looked along the fallen walls of the ruin; they weren’t high enough.

  ‘I’m going to check whether the location matches Shimon’s description,’ Izarra told him, then began striding through the long grass towards the end of the peninsula, startling a pheasant that was ground-nesting along the way. August watched her receding figure then pushed on towards the tangled ancient shrubbery he suspected was the remnants of the maze.

  The wall of hedgerow was at least fifteen feet high and had vines of ivy and honeysuckle growing through it and over it. It was impossible to see whether it was the wall of the maze or whether there was a maze lying behind it without climbing over the hedgerow itself, and there didn’t appear to be an entrance.

  ‘August, come!’ He swung around. Izarra’s figure was a silhouette against the dark river behind her. She stood at the bottom of the slope, gesturing wildly for him to join her. ‘Please! You must see this!’

  Reluctantly, he pulled himself away and, pushing through the long grass, joined her.

  She was standing at the edge of the riverbank. Opposite and below there was a whirlpool of white water as the two rivers met, beyond which August could now see a small waterfall where the water cascaded over.

  ‘Look! It’s exactly how Shimon described!’ She shouted, excitedly, over the roar of the rushing water. August stared out over the churning pool. It was true that the water did appear to meet the sky as the landscape receded from the edge of the waterfall, but the bank below the waterfall and the trees flanking it were still visible.

  ‘I can’t really see it. Are you sure this is the point?’ August ventured.

  Izarra crouched down, looking out over the water’s edge. ‘You have to see it from a particular perspective. It only happens at this one point,’ she explained then gestured that he should squat down beside her.

  August, unconvinced, crouched and peered along her sightline. From this perspective it was magical, the illusion of two elements cleanly meeting each other – the aqua plane of the water and the sapphire of the sky – filled his gaze. It was like looking into infinity and for a moment August was almost overwhelmed by a sense of vertigo. Still in that position, he turned his head to look back up the slope at the house and the maze. Suddenly, he gripped Izarra’s arm.

  ‘Look!’

  Staring along the same sightline, it was obvious there was an entrance to the overgrown maze, a small low arch – not more than a crawl space – that curved out as if it were originally the half of a planted circle, the rest hidden within the maze. The first sephirot, August guessed.

  ‘It’s inverted. The entrance of the maze is facing away from the house, designed to be seen only after the place where the sky meets the water is discovered.’ August’s words came tumbling out in his excitement.

  ‘So this is really Shimon’s work?’ Izarra spoke in an awed whisper, as if in church.

  ‘If that’s the case, who has kept this maze alive all those centuries? We know your family tended the first one.’

  ‘It must be someone who understands the importance of the symbolism.’

  ‘But wants to keep it hidden.’

  They heard a sudden splash behind them, startling both of them. August reached for the gun hidden in his soldier’s jacket. He swung around.

  ‘Don’t worry, its only salmon.’ Izarra put out her hand to steady him, then pointed to the river at a flash of silver belly, a spray of water hitting the air, then another one as the salmon leaped upstream. August glanced back to the darkened entrance to the maze. It was hard to see, shadowy with a greenish light filtering down through the thick hedgerow growing overhead, and yet the lip of the tunnel had been clipped quite carefully. It wouldn’t be easy crawling through to the other side, and he hated the idea of placing himself in such a defenceless position, but he had no choice.

  ‘I’ll have to go in.’

  ‘I thought you might have to, so I brought this.’ She held up a ball of string. ‘I took it from the printer’s shop. It’s an old trick we used ourselves as children when we first went into the maze. Here, take it. I’ll be at the other end.’

  August dropped down to his belly and, using his elbows, began crawling along the tunnel entrance, overhanging twigs and roots brushing against his back. At the end he could see sunlight illuminating gravel. Shangri-La, the forbidden land, it is like I have become a character in a bizarre fairy tale, the soldier hero. The ball of string threaded through his trouser belt unravelled behind him as he inched along. He reached the end and wriggled out onto a gravelled path and into the secluded world of the maze. Even the light looked different to him as it bounced off pieces of flint hidden in the gravel path, glistening like jewels, the walls of the hedgerow arching high up around him, clipped and manicured, a disturbing contrast to the deliberately overgrown exterior. The thought of these invisible gardeners or guardians unnerved August. Where are you? Who are you? Staring across at the pruned branches, he felt more than a trespasser, he felt like he was committing a religious sacrilege. Was it possible they might be responsible for the rose left in his hotel room, the same rose that had been embedded into Jimmy’s corpse? Were they willing to kill to keep their secret? The sense of being cornered swept acro
ss him, as he fought both fear and claustrophobia.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Izarra called from the other side. Already she sounded as if she were miles away. August swung his legs out of the tunnel and stood blinking in the sudden sunlight, dusting down his clothes. The tunnel had led him to the outer ring of a sephirot he now recognised as Malkuth, or ‘Kingdom’. After weaving his way through the winding inner walls of the sephirot, he finally reached the centre. It was gravelled, unlike the one at Irumendi in the first maze, where it had been planted with lily and vervain. Frustrated, he took note, marking it mentally in his mind, as he searched for hidden meaning, then made his way back to the outer circle. The three definitive paths, one straight in front of him and two at sharp angles left and right radiated out from it. The whole design of the maze had to be the Tree of Life again, it had to be. The string attached to his waist tugged urgently.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he yelled back to Izarra. ‘Stay where you are. I’ll need you if I get lost!’

  He turned back and contemplated which path to take – this time the maze walls were made of yew, clipped and dense. There was something far more sinister about both the darkish colour and the height of the maze, which made it almost funereal. He envisaged the shape of the Tree of Life: the ten circular stations of spiritual enlightenment, the middle stem broken by four circles, the two other stems running parallel, on either side, each with three sephiroth, and the matrix of paths that individually linked each, symbolising the various paths of enlightenment a man could take to reach the highest plane of spiritual integration – Kether. Only in this living rendition each sephirot had its own maze designed around each centre. Casting his memory back again to his student days, he recalled Professor Copps giving an impassioned lecture on the various schools of esoteric philosophies that had sprung up around a single debate: which path would take the individual to the highest plane of enlightenment the fastest? From sephirot to sephirot, which was the correct path? From Shimon Ruiz de Luna’s lineage, the Spanish medieval kabbalists, to the Christian alchemists of the Middle Ages, right through to more contemporary witchcraft and the mystic beliefs of Aleister Crowley. The Tree of Life even had symbolic associations with Hinduism and Buddhism and was most certainly the hidden true meaning of the Tree in the Garden of Eden, August now remembered Professor Copps telling the class most emphatically. But which path should he take now? Would that affect his chances of finding the next key to Elazar ibn Yehuda’s journey?