The Gold of Thrace

by Aileen G. Baron

  Irena lifted her glass. “It is not so bad. We have fine Bulgarian wine.” She reached over and clinked glasses with Chatham. “To our friendship.” She smiled at Chatham and leaned toward him when she put down her glass. “My brother is bitter. Things are hard here. You must excuse him.”

  “How do you make a living?” Chatham asked him.

  Dimitar shrugged. “A little of this, a little of that.”

  “My brother is very good with his hands. He has a shop where he repairs clocks, and he has a dental laboratory. Neither does well, but between the two, we can keep food on the table.”

  “Thanks for my sister for that. We say in Bulgaria ‘God provides the food, but he doesn’t bring it into the house.’”

  Irena pointed to the platter of food. “These are local specialties, the roasted peppers, the salami.” She put a few slices of salami on his plate. “Try it.”

  Chatham hated salami. It sat between his teeth, heavy with garlic and fat that clung to the roof of his mouth. He swallowed it almost whole and took a sip of wine to get rid of the taste.

  “Delicious,” he said and felt the lump of food stick in his gullet.

  He tried to swallow once more and choked. Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe, felt as if he were being strangled. He gasped for breath and the room began to dim and throb. He rested his head in his hands, waiting for the blackness and dizziness to pass.

  “You all right?” Irena asked.

  “It’s nothing,” Chatham rasped out in a whisper. “Went down the wrong channel.”

  “Take bread, take wine.”

  She filled his glass. He drank it down as if it were water and she filled it again.

  Somehow, he got through the meal, watching Irena cut her sandwich into small portions, watching the movement of her lips as she chewed, savoring the delicious flick of her tongue as she licked her lower lip. He sipped from his glass whenever she lifted hers. All the while the seat of the ladder-back chair pressed into his leg and he was giddy with wine.

  His eyelids began to droop and he yawned.

  “You will stay,” Irena said. She pointed to the faded sofa.

  “You can study the Thracian hoard,” her brother added, while visions of visits to the sofa from the beautiful Irena in the dark of night danced in Chatham’s head.

  “The Thracian gold,” Chatham said. “I should study it, at the least I should draw it.”

  Dimitar nodded in agreement.

  “And photograph it,” Chatham said. “You have a camera?”

  “No photographs. Too unsafe, someone will steal the gold.”

  Chatham wondered how photographs would be riskier than drawings, but said nothing. At least he could publish something, authenticate his find with drawings.

  “I need to go to the stationer’s,” Chatham said. He had difficulty thinking. “Get some supplies.”

  “There’s one not far from here,” Irena told him. “On the other side of the cathedral. I’ll take you.”

  Downstairs, the warm stillness of the summer air braced him like a tonic. They started toward the park, past tumbledown buildings with sagging roofs and chipped stucco.

  “All other places in the world, you see building, buildings all going up,” Irena said. “Here in Bulgaria, the buildings are all going down.”

  They had gone as far as the cathedral when two well-muscled men with short-cropped hair, wearing jeans and Oxford shirts, parked a Porsche at the curb.

  Irena hesitated, took in her breath and grabbed his arm. “Bortsi!”

  The men got out of the Porsche, slammed the door, crossed the square and ambled toward the park with a smooth, athletic gait.

  She looked after them, still clinging to Chatham. He moved closer to her.

  “Bortsi means wrestlers,” she said.

  “More brawn than brain?”

  “They pretend to be body builders, ex-sportsmen.”

  She gripped his arm more firmly and Chatham felt the warm dampness of her body.

  “Don’t make them angry,” she said. “Even the police are afraid of them.”

  At the stationer’s, Chatham bought a pad of graph paper, India ink and pens, French curves and calipers, a protractor and a compass.

  He found a Telex machine in an alcove in the back of the shop. He paid for a Telex to the British Museum telling them about the Thracian gold, said he would get in touch with them later, and asked them to send a message to Prague that he would be delayed.

  For the next two days, he selected pieces from the treasure, measured and drew them, sitting at the table in a ladder-back chair until his back ached and his shoulders were sore. Occasionally, when Irena was near, he would get up to go to the kitchen for a glass of water, standing close to her, patting her arm, trying to edge closer. She would behave as if he weren’t there, not moving, and give him a sideways glance and a smile.

  In the evenings, he went out to the stationers and sent the day’s notes about the hoard to the Illustrated London News by Telex.

  Each night he dreamt of Irena. Each morning, he woke with a headache and a stiff neck. The sofa was hard, with missing springs, and the lumpy pillows smelled of mildew.

  After two days, Dimitar came to him and said, “We have to talk,” and told him to come to his shop.

  He gave him the address on a piece of paper and told Chatham he expected him at one o’clock. Chatham took a taxi and gave the driver the address. They drove to a dingy street with empty shops, some with painted windows. Chatham found the number and opened the door.

  He was surrounded by a cacophony of clocks, each ticking a different tock, each set at a different time, each banging out the hour, the half hour, the quarter to, from all four walls. Time assaulted him, with pendulums pitching in eternal arcs, with tinkling chimes and clanging tocsins, pushing one moment against the next with no chance of return.

  Dimitar sat at a bench in a small room in the back of the shop, visible through an open door next to a grandfather clock that was proclaiming the hour.

  “Come in, come in,” Dimitar said. “You are in the right place.”

  He got up and moved slowly toward Chatham, eyeing him, nodding his head.

  “Welcome to my shop.” He leaned toward Chatham, his breath as rhythmic as the clocks and pungent with undigested food. “You see. You come when I call. You can’t escape me.” He stepped back and gestured at the clocks on the wall and paused, turning to look at them. “And you are running out of time.”

  Chapter Eight

  Sofia, Bulgaria, August 9, 1990

  “What do you want of me?” Chatham asked, raising his voice to speak over the din from the other room.

  Another clock struck with a sonorous boom that quivered against the wall and shook small timepieces to attention. Dimitar seemed to be listening, counting. He pulled out a pocket watch, opened it, checked the time and nodded.

  “You work at the British Museum?” Dimitar said at last in a deep rumble.

  “I don’t have the authority to buy anything on my own.”

  “No, no,” Dimitar said.

  “Purchases go through the Keeper of Near Eastern Studies.” The discordant ticking from the next room beat at Chatham with a frantic rhythm. “It’s a complicated process, takes time. The Keeper is the chief curator. He recommends the piece to the Director, who has it authenticated before it goes to the Board of Governors, which meets once a month.” Chatham’s words came faster and faster, in rhythm with the frantic ticking of the clocks. “I can send the drawings first. That’s part of the reason I’m making them.”

  “I don’t want to sell the gold to a museum.”

  “What do you want?”

  “We need the money or we will starve.”

  “What then?”

  “I read somewhere that when something is exhibited in a museum, it gains value.”

  “That’s probably true.”

  “I want to sell the gold to private collector
s. That way I get more money.”

  Chatham’s tongue ran along his upper lip. “You want to take the collection to an auction house like Sotheby’s? And you think that if you lend the Thracian Gold to the British Museum for a special exhibit, you can get more money when you sell it?”

  “Exactly.” Dimitar nodded. “We sell the gold after the exhibit.”

  “After the drawings are published in The Illustrated London News, there’s a better chance that the museum will want to exhibit it.”

  “I give you a commission. The more money we get for the pieces, the more money you get.”

  Chatham thought about it, licked his lips and tried to calculate how much commission would he get. The collection would be worth millions if they handled it right.

  Dimitar gave him a sharp look. “I see you like the money as much as you like my sister. More, perhaps.”

  “We need to know provenience.” He felt he was speaking for the museum now.

  “Provenance? It’s been in my family for centuries.”

  “No, no. I know its been in your family, I know the provenance, the history of ownership. I mean where it originates archaeologically—provenience—the find spot. Can you take me where you found the gold?”

  Dimitar gave him another penetrating look while he listened to the chime of yet another clock.

  “Tomorrow,” he said at last.

  ***

  The three of them left Sofia early, at 6:30, after a hasty breakfast of pound cake and murky coffee. Dimitar pulled up in a dusty dark blue Mercedes with leather seats that were sticky with the heat.

  Chatham raised his eyebrows.

  “I got the car from a friend,” Dimitar said.

  They drove through towns with empty factories, their windows broken; through towns with houses with roofs that sagged beneath a scatter of broken tiles.

  “This is all that’s left,” Dimitar said, watching Chatham’s reaction. “Such is the fate and the evil of the crossroads. The Turks were wiser than the communists; they preserved the milk-cow. The communists cut off the head, destroyed the intelligentsia, and left the peasants.”

  Stop complaining, Chatham thought. They left you with the gold.

  Beyond the villages, the road ran through undulating country with fields of grain, of sunflowers, of small grapevines marching in rows over hillocks and through valleys billowing with acres and acres of roses. Here and there, stands of lavender dotted the hillsides. And over all hung a sweet, heavy scent of roses.

  They finally stopped at a farmhouse between a lavender field and a stand of trees on the edge of a wooded area. Dimitar parked the car behind a house next to a stable and riding ring. “There’s no road from here. We need to go by horse.”

  He got out of the car and called to a man working in the field beyond the stable. The man turned, removed his large hat to wipe his forehead, then came toward them, rubbing at his hands, slapping them against his jeans, rubbing them again.

  They spoke quietly, Dimitar gesturing in the direction of the woods. They disappeared into the stable and came out a few minutes later leading three saddled horses and brought them over to a small box on the ground near the riding ring.

  Dimitar positioned a horse next to the box and turned to Chatham. “You know how to ride horses?”

  He held the reins across the neck of a roan with a hefty rump and motioned for Chatham to mount.

  Dimitar adjusted Chatham’s stirrups. “You’ll be all right?”

  He held a creamy Palomino for Irena and helped her settle in the saddle, and mounted a small chestnut himself.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  They rode along a path toward the woods at an easy lope for a while, until Dimitar made a clicking sound with his mouth and kicked his horse slightly, spurring it into a faster canter.

  Irena followed. Her lips parted; her cheeks flushed; her shoulders moved in elegant repose at one with the horse, her back straight, as she sat astride the saddle, gripping it with her thighs. Chatham rode next to her and watched her, hair pulled back with a ribbon from her perfect face. He watched the ends of her hair streaming behind her, brushing against her cheek as she eased gently back and forth, back and forth, in rhythm with the canter. He watched her and watched her. This is what I want forever, he thought, to ride next to her and watch her, and he kicked his horse lightly with his heel and moved along beside her, back and forth, back and forth in the saddle.

  They rode through the woods until they reached a chain-link fence topped with rolls of barbed wire.

  “My own land, my patrimony, no longer mine,” Dimitar said. “Fenced in and hidden from me.” He gestured in the direction of a small mound.

  “There it is, beyond the fence. I found the gold there, buried with an ancient Thracian horseman.”

  “You found it?”

  “It was here to be found. My forefathers were horsemen. I was conceived among the horses. I am the guardian of all this, the guardian of time.”

  He dismounted and gripped the fence. “Our minds are naked without the past, exposed to the cold winds of time. Everything we know is preserved but is warped by fire and hatred.”

  “How did you find this place?”

  “I told you, it’s my own land. Was. My heritage rests in the rocks, hides among the horses. As a boy, in the night, I walked among the shadows of dead ruins and heard the beat of horses’ hoofs in the distance. Each night I returned to that spot. Each night the horses came closer, until one night the horseman emerged from the darkness. And I followed.”

  “What happened?”

  “The horse was not shod, so I knew. I knew the horseman was an ancient one. ‘You know this place? You know what happened here?’ he asked me. And then he told me, ‘In the forest where no human voice had been heard, the ancient Getae came and built a sanctuary to the great God Zalmoxsis. Here they begged him for success in battle and sent a messenger, a brave warrior who had led in battle. He went over the cliff onto three sharp spears and they whispered their prayers while the spears still shone bright with his blood. They carried the warrior to the tomb, his drops of blood shining like rubies on the ground. From each drop grew a scarlet rose.’”

  “Where did you hear this? There are texts?”

  “I know. I just know. I heard it from the horseman.” He shrugged and held out his hands. “Eternity rests in the rock and hides among the horses.”

  He walked back to his horse and remounted, pulling its head sharply in the direction of the farm where they had borrowed the horses. They ate under the trees at the farmhouse, a light lunch of bread and soup thickened with yogurt.

  And then they drove back to Sofia, through the Valley of the Roses, through fields of roses burning scarlet in the sun.

  Chapter Nine

  Basel, Switzerland, August 9, 1990

  Tamar took the airport bus from Mulhouse, the little airport in Alsace that serviced Basel, and checked into the Euler.

  The desk clerk eyed her Indian gauze blouse and her jeans, her thick sandals. He pasted on a smile of mild disapproval. He asked for her passport and a credit card and looked pointedly at her dusty duffel bag while she rummaged through her purse.

  Sedate ladies with pearls and portly businessmen in three-piece suits with gold watch-chains across their vests moved quietly through the staid lobby.

  The clerk asked, “You’ll be here how long?”

  Tamar wasn’t sure.

  “A week,” the desk clerk said when Tamar didn’t answer. “Business or pleasure?” He rang for a porter and handed him the key. “Room 238. Elevators are around the corner to the right,” he said without looking up from the registration form.

  A bellboy picked up her bag and led her to the elevator. Upstairs, Tamar followed him down a long hall to a room near the service elevator and across the way from the pantry that the floor concierge used for morning coffee. The bellboy opened the door, handed Tamar the key, placed her battered bag on th
e luggage rack in the closet, opened the drapes, smiled, held out his hand, palm up, and said, “You are pleased with the room?” He waited. “Everything is all right?” he asked.

  She scrambled through her purse and found a dollar bill. “Dollars okay? I haven’t had time to stop at a bank.”

  His hand was still out. She gave him another dollar.

  He looked over the bills and turned them in his hand as if they were counterfeit. “Bottled water is in the refrigerator bar.” He gestured vaguely past the dresser, put the money in his pocket and edged into the hallway. “Call if you need something.”

  He left, closing the door behind him.

  She examined the room: the wood-paneled walls; the antique armoire; the small refrigerator with a false wood front in the corner next to the dresser; the feather bed, puffy with the pristine downy white of the comforter and thick pillows.

  She stared blankly at the walls and thought about the mosaic, about the last day at Tepe Hazarfen. Something wasn’t right that day, even before she knew the mosaic was gone.

  What was it? Something Mustafa said? Or was it earlier, was it Chatham?

  Tired and thirsty, she rummaged in the refrigerator for a bottle of water and took a long draught before she fell on the bed and slept for an hour, dreaming of Alex again, as she always did.

  This time, they were sipping iced tea on a terrace floating over an orange sea flecked with stars that blinked on and off, and Alex was saying to her over and over, “Be careful. It isn’t what it seems. It isn’t what it seems.”

  When she awoke, she checked herself in the mirror and fingered the amber beads against her blouse—heavy, dark, strung on a leather thong.

  This will never do, she decided. I have to look rich, like I can afford to buy a mosaic floor. She had little in her suitcase besides clean underwear and two light cotton dresses that she saved for weekends. She had thrown away her torn digging clothes in Turkey, as she did every year.

  She unpacked, found a terrycloth robe in the bathroom, found the soap and shampoo on the counter next to the sink, and climbed into the shower.