Caravans

by James A. Michener

  Captain Verbruggen took charge of the picture and asked, “Is there any possible clue as to why she would marry an Afghan?”

  Richardson had seen something in the photograph the rest of us had missed, and he said, “She looks to me like a girl who would often whine, ‘Oh, Mother!’” Verbruggen, who had a daughter, chuckled, and Richardson continued, “We all know that girls of twelve are driven to anguish by their parents’ inadequacies. Thank God this passes. But this girl looks as if she’d maintained this attitude right into her twenties.”

  I studied the photograph again, and I must admit that I could hear her crying, “Really, Mother!”

  The acting ambassador asked, “Do the reports substantiate this?”

  “Yes,” Richardson replied. “Ellen Jaspar attended public school in Dorset through her sophomore year, and did well. Then she grew discontented with everything and her parents transferred her to a good private school in Philadelphia, where she also did well.”

  “All-around girl?” Verbruggen asked, implying that only such girls did well.

  “Oh, yes!” Richardson assured him. “Hockey, glee club, tried out for the senior play. Boys took her to dances and in the summer she was counselor at a camp. Well adjusted.”

  “Any desire to travel?”

  “None evident, but she did excel in nature work. Led the camp in this respect.”

  “College the same?” Verbruggen asked. “Hockey, singing, dramatics?”

  “You’ve hit,” Richardson said, as Nexler sat silent, looking straight ahead. “Except that in college her singing became good enough for her to join a semi-professional chorus that sang with the Philadelphia Orchestra.”

  The acting ambassador leaned back and looked at the roof. “Where does the flaw come in? That she would enter such a marriage?”

  “We’ve gone rather deeply into that,” Richardson replied. “First clue we get is from an interview with one of her high-school steadies. Boy who did well in the navy. He told the investigator:

  “‘When Ellen came home from boarding school she was pretty stuck up, not socially I mean, because she always stayed a neat kid and we all liked her, but she said screwy things like, “This town is a real bore,” and “Can you imagine living the rest of your life in Dorset and going to the country club every Saturday night? Big deal.” She talked this way so much that I stopped dating he.’”

  Richardson dropped the paper, smiled reflectively and added, “That’s his version. The facts seem to be the other way around. It was Ellen who stopped dating him. At least that’s what the others reported.”

  “Is Dorset so bad?” the acting ambassador probed.

  “I asked for a report on that,” Richardson replied. “Fine town. Good families, good churches, good schools. It’s no Tobacco Road, that’s for sure. Pearl Buck lives in the next county and so does Oscar Hammerstein. He’s the one who wrote Oklahoma. There’s a little theater not far away. I’d say Dorset was way above average. But when Ellen reached Bryn Mawr her antagonism increased. One of her roommates … And here’s a point I’d like to emphasize. Not a single person we interviewed said, ‘I knew all along she’d do something screwy.’ This fact alone is noteworthy. In every investigation you expect to meet the joker who foresaw everything four years ahead of anybody else. In her case, no. Listen to this:

  “Miss Jaspar’s first college roommate told us, ‘Ellen Jaspar was a dear, sweet kid. She was loyal, responsive, and trustworthy. We had three dandy years together and whatever she’s done, she’s done with her eyes open. And if you come back and say she’s committed murder I’m not going to say, it was in her all along. Nothing but essential goodness was in this girl.’

  “Her second roommate gave us a somewhat different version. ‘Ellen could grow quite bitter about what she called “the inescapable nothingness” of life in her family. She dreaded going back home to marry or live. I’d been to her home several times and I loved the place. Old town, old houses, real good people with lots to do. I didn’t understand her antipathy, but I can assure you it was real. Once she exploded, “In Dorset they don’t turn back the clocks. They shoot the man who invented clocks.” She told me she was determined never to go back there to live, but I used to ask her, “Don’t you think New York and Chicago are just as goopy?” She said, “Maybe so. But there must be some place in the world that’s different.” I never understood her bitterness.’”

  “I’m terrified!” Captain Verbruggen cried. “Sounds just like my daughter.” He passed around a picture of an intense, good-looking junior from Sarah Lawrence. “You see any difference?” he joked.

  “There was this difference,” Richardson replied. “In her sophomore year at Bryn Mawr, Ellen stopped dating. Told her roommate, ‘I’m not going to marry some jerk whose big vision of life is selling insurance in Dorset, Pennsylvania.’ We also have an instructive report from a boy who went to Haverford. Did very well in the army. He told us:

  “‘Ellen Jaspar was a real winner. She had a world of class. I took her to several dances in her freshman year and she was practically what you’d call a clock-stopper. Very popular with the gang. Real human too. It she hadn’t turned so difficult in her sophomore year something big could have developed. At least I was willing to make the try. What is was that changed her I’ll never know. At first I blamed myself, but later on I ran into a lot of chicks who just couldn’t get things straight. But I’ll take the blame for the bust-up, because I always felt somebody else might have kept Ellen on the track. But I will admit this. I wasn’t the man to do it.’”

  “It must have been about then that she met Nazmllan,” the acting ambassador observed. “How’d it happen?”

  Richardson, who rather enjoyed the limelight, went through involved motions lighting, his pipe, then explained, “Her first roommate covers that:

  “‘In March, 1944, there was this Saturday dance at the Wharton School and some joker invited four of us to go in to Philly. Well, actually he called me and asked me to bring along three warm bodies. So even though Ellen wasn’t dating at the time I said, “Come along. You may meet a glamorous Frenchman.” The idea struck her fancy and on the spur of the moment she joined us. We went in by train, and at the station my date met me with a jalopy, but there beside him was this dark-skinned fellow with a red Cadillac convertible and a turban. It was too much. Ellen took one look at him, and that was that. They saw one another a lot, then this other Afghanistan gentleman came up from the embassy in Washington and they all went up to Dorset to meet Ellen’s folks. It must have been a real fiasco. She came back swearing that she would rather die on the sands of the desert than marry some Dorset jerk. She left college before exams and that was the last I heard of her, except for one week end that summer. She appeared at my home in Connecticut sort of breathless. Nazrullah had gone back to Afghanistan without her, but she had a passport and a couple of hundred dollars. She needed another twelve hundred dollars, Like a fool I let her have it. I’ve never heard from her since.’”

  “Neither has anybody else,” Captain Verbruggen growled. “What did her father say?” Richardson was ready with a summary:

  “‘My name is Thomas Shalldean Jaspar. I own an important real estate and insurance business in Dorset, Pennsylvania, where my family has lived for seven generations. My wife is Esther Johnson Jaspar, and her family …’”

  “We can skip the begats,” the acting ambassador snapped, so Richardson casually discarded a page and resumed reading:

  “‘My wife and I have tried to remember anything that might explain our daughter’s behavior, but we come up with nothing. There is no explanation. She was a good girl, never gave us a bit of trouble till her sophomore year in high school, when she got fed up with everything in Dorset, including her parents.

  “‘When she reached Bryn Mawr we breathed a little easier, for she fell in with two of the nicest roommates a girl could have and also met some nice boys at Haverford College. Then everything went sour. Refused to date. Didn’t go out m
uch, and was downright hateful when she came home, which wasn’t often. Her behavior was ridiculous.’”

  Here Richardson stopped, drew on his pipe, and observed, “I’m not going to read all of this, but one thing does strike me every time I review it. Whenever Mr. Jaspar comes up against anything unusual, unknown or unfamiliar he describes it as ridiculous. He and his wife seem to have had a rather rigorous definition of what was not ridiculous, and God help anything that fell outside their pattern.”

  “Thank you for your profound analysis,” Captain Verbruggen said. At a normal embassy such sarcasm from an acting ambassador could blight a career, but in Kabul, an irregular post at best, we worked under an irregular discipline which allowed a rather broad latitude for jokes. Verbruggen’s wisecrack was directed at himself as much as at Richardson, who laughed easily.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I interrupted, “but I think we may have the clue we’re looking for in ridiculous. Since Mr. Jaspar stigmatized everything out of the ordinary with that word, his daughter was compelled by an urge to outrage the system. What was the most ridiculous thing she could do? Find herself an Afghan with a turban and a red Cadillac convertible.”

  “My dear Miller,” Captain Verbruggen said slowly, “when I observed that Richardson’s analysis was profound I meant just that, because frankly, what he pointed out had missed me. Now you have made it completely obvious, and I thank you, too.”

  Richardson relit his pipe, smiled at me and suggested, “Perhaps we should get back to Mr. Jaspar, who seems to have been a completely dull gentleman. Certainly his report is.

  “‘At a well-chaperoned dance held at the Wharton School, a fine institution in Philadelphia, Ellen met a young man from Afghanistan and before we had even heard about him she had fallen in love with him. We put detectives on his trail and found that he had a Cadillac, got good grades in college, and that he had been in Germany during the early days of the war. We reported this to the F.B.I. but they said he was cleared and was not a spy. After his examinations the young man …’”

  Richardson paused and said, “You’ll notice that Mr. Jaspar refuses to use Nazrullah’s name. Probably considered it ridiculous.”

  Nur Muhammad observed, “More likely he was confused because Nazrullah had no last name.” Captain Verbruggen looked up in approval and Richardson continued reading from Mr. Jaspar’s report:

  “‘You know the rest. Week before exams Ellen ran away from college and we don’t know where she went. She wasn’t with the young man, because the detectives kept track of him until he sailed for Afghanistan. Later she turned up at her roommate’s in Connecticut with a little money and a passport. She borrowed twelve hundred dollars, which I later repaid, and then went to England. How she managed this we don’t know, because at this time ordinary people couldn’t get to England … I suppose the world is impressed by ridiculous adventurers, especially if they’re pretty girls. We haven’t heard a word from her since February, 1945.’”

  Richardson shook his head dolefully. “No use reading the rest. Poor fellow never had a clue.”

  “Any reports from Bryn Mawr?” Captain Verbruggen asked.

  “Certainly.” Richardson brightened, shuffling a new set of papers into position. “Deans, professors, counselors all report the same: Ellen Jaspar presented no problems.” Satisfied with the completeness of his responses, the intelligence officer folded his file and smiled.

  During the former F.B.I. man’s report I had been impressed by the detached air assumed by Nexler, the State Department career man. Now he coughed modestly, produced from an inside pocket a letter which he unfolded with care, and said, “In this case it isn’t quite proper to claim that no one had foresight. I made some inquiries at Harvard University, where a Bryn Mawr professor is spending his sabbatical. A routine check by our people there …” He turned condescendingly to Richardson and said in an offhand way, “After the meeting I’ll give you the letter. It could prove relevant.”

  Richardson was justifiably furious that information had been withheld from him, but he masked his anger behind the ritual of lighting his pipe. “I’d like to hear what you’ve turned up,” he said with studied amiability.

  “Probably of no consequence,” Nexler replied deprecatingly. “Comes from an assistant professor of music your people overlooked at the time. Here’s what he says now.

  “‘I’m not surprised at what you tell me about the behavior of Ellen Jaspar, and without wishing to appear omniscient I must say that I foresaw almost everything that you report. In fact, I shared my predictions with her parents, but they paid no attention.

  “‘When Ellen first joined our group she struck me as one destined for tragedy, but I was not satisfied then nor am I now that tragedy was the word I sought. I saw her as a girl of good intention who was determined to disaffiliate herself from our society, and I wondered if she were strong enough to find something better to rely on.

  “‘I met her for the first time during the opening of college in 1941. Without my asking she said, “I want to get as far away from Dorset, Pennsylvania, as I can.” She spoke with transparent hatred, which did not disturb me at the time, for I encounter many young people who feel this way during their first year of college. But Ellen plunged into the field of medieval music with such intensity that I knew it was not the music she sought. I took the trouble to check with her other professors, and they found her to be normal and above average in performance. I therefore had to conclude that what I had witnessed was merely some temporary aberration.

  “‘But when Ellen returned in her second year with increased bitterness, claiming that the world seemed pointless, as if it were interested only in a perpetual Saturday night dance at some cosmic country club, I began to take her malaise more seriously, and I asked my wife to talk with her. Ellen brought her young Haverford boy to dine with us and we found him charming, but were forced to agree with her that his ambitions were as ordinary as her father’s.

  “‘My wife and I became so convinced that Ellen would fall into serious trouble that in the spring of 1943 we wrote a letter to her parents. We said— and signed it jointly lest it be thought that I was in some way enamored of the girl, as male professors sometimes are with erratic and attractive girls – that we were convinced Ellen might be in for serious psychological disturbance unless a solid attempt was made to reconcile her to her family and her society as represented by her home town. This brought her parents down upon us in full fury. They pointed out that I was not head of my department, that Ellen was doing well in her real subjects, and that it was ridiculous for an assistant professor of music to presume, etc., etc.

  “‘This was not the first time I had heard this distinction between real subjects and mine, and I confess that I was always irritated by people who raised the issue. Therefore, when Mr. Jaspar shouted for the third time that my letter was ridiculous I quickly confessed that it probably was and asked him to forget the whole affair, which he did. In fact, that December he sent me a Christmas card, and three months later, in early 1944, his daughter met the boy from Afghanistan.

  “‘So far as I know I was the only person with whom Ellen discussed her intention of marrying the young visitor. I took her immediately to talk with my wife, and we in turn called in the young man to interrogate him. He impressed us as one of the finest foreign students we had ever met, and if Ellen has fallen into trouble through her association with him, we cannot say, “We told you so.” We must say exactly the opposite. We told Ellen, “He’s a fine person, but he will not solve your problem.” “What is my problem?” she asked, and I said, “You have the disease that eats at our world. You cannot find peace in old conventions and beliefs, yet you are not sufficiently committed to anything to forge new ones for yourself.” She looked at me and said, “You may be right. But wouldn’t my going with Nazrullah be a step in the right direction?” I told her it would solve nothing, but on the other hand it would not make things worse. That’s the last discussion we had.

  “
‘When you find Ellen you will find that it is not Nazrullah who has wronged her but she who has wronged Nazrullah.

  “‘I’ll close this informal report with one observation. Ellen Jaspar is sick with the disease that is beginning to infect our ablest young people. She has disaffiliated herself from the beliefs that gave our society its structure in the past, but she has found no new structure upon which she can rely for that support which every human life requires.’”

  Primly Nexler handed the letter to Richardson, who accepted it without comment, but Verbruggen blustered, “I’d have acted precisely as the Jaspars did. If my daughter gets A’s and B’s in her real subjects and a music professor sends me a letter as garbled as that, I’ll be as stupefied as the Jaspars were.” Then he stared at me with his big, blunt face and demanded, “Miller, does that letter make any sense to you?”

  Having heard what he had just said, I didn’t want to insult him, so I equivocated. “It’s part of the picture, sir.”

  “What a hell of an answer!” he exploded. “As a father my reaction was the one I just gave. But as an outsider, trying to get a focus on this thing, the music professor’s letter is the only one that makes sense.” Nexler smiled with satisfaction.

  Abruptly Verbruggen turned to Nur Muhammad and said, “Nur, we brought you here today for a fresh look at an old problem. Considering what you’ve heard, what do you make of it?”

  Nur Muhammad was one of the indefinable Afghans who turned up at all embassies. He learned English—or French or German or Turkish as required—had a fair education, quickly made himself invaluable, and was surely in the pay of the Afghan government, to which he reported secretly. Nur was an agreed-upon convenience, for he told the Afghans what we wanted them to know; and through him the Afghans leaked official secrets to us. He had been invited to this morning’s meeting to warn the Afghan government that we expected full cooperation in Kandahar.