Land of Marvels

by Unsworth, Barry

  This final call on his sense of the miraculous was more than Somerville, irritated as he already was, could endure. “Well, Palmer,” he said, cutting in brusquely and ruining the speculative silence that Elliott had intended as the crown of his story, “shall we give out our little bit of news? Not much perhaps, but at least it is about people who once lived in the world and not about commodities.”

  Quite why he called upon Palmer in this way was not altogether clear to him; Palmer himself seemed for the moment taken aback at the abruptness of it, recovering fairly soon, however, and restricting himself to his own part in the work. A clay tablet in good condition had been found near the remains of the stone doorway, and he had been able to decipher most of it.

  “Baked hard,” he said. “Nothing like a good blaze. It’s in cuneiform and seems to be one of a series—we haven’t found any others yet. It contains two clauses of an agreement or treaty—demands for the allegiance of the desert tribes east of the Euphrates.”

  “That is roughly the area where we are now.” Somerville sat back and glanced around the table in what seemed, at least to Edith—and she disliked herself for the thought—a sort of paler imitation of Elliott’s narrative style. “The tribes must have been causing trouble at the time,” he said. “That might help us to date the tablet.”

  “The date is missing if there ever was one,” Palmer said. “But the tablet bears the name of Esarhaddon, who was king of Assyria in the early seventh century B.C. It seems reasonable to suppose that the inscription was made here on his orders.”

  “He died in 670, on his way back from campaigning in Egypt, so the treaty must have been made well before that.” Somerville waited a moment to lend dramatic weight. Then he said, “Taken with the other things we have uncovered, it is conclusive proof that Tell Erdek was a residence of the Assyrian kings for a very considerable period of time.”

  “It’s really exciting,” Patricia said. “Well, it is now anyway. Quite frankly, I was finding it fairly boring before.”

  She had spoken directly to Elliott with some vague idea of including him, making it up to him. With the increased sensibility that had come to her with love, she had felt distressed at the snub he had received. “I often go with them now,” she added, rather lamely. “I had no idea it could be such fun.”

  Edith too had registered her husband’s unmannerly brusqueness, the edge of contempt there had been in his words. It was unlike him. He was often distracted in manner and aloof-seeming, but this had been deliberate rudeness. Strange, when he was so clearly elated by these recent discoveries. But what was like him or unlike him she was no longer certain about; it was as if the structure of his character was loosening somehow into incongruous components. He looked exalted now, almost feverish, she thought, as he glanced about. She was about to repair the breach in manners by asking Elliott something more about oil, anything would do. But the American forestalled her. “I must take issue with you,” he said, “in this matter of people and commodities. It seems to me you are taking the wrong view.”

  He was looking down the table at Somerville and on his face the blaze of sincerity seemed intensified. He had, Edith realized, been waiting all this while, all through the talk of Assyria, waiting to make this justified retort. She should have known he was not the man to take a thing like that lying down.

  “Oh yes?” Somerville looked for a moment bemused, as if encountering some obstacle in a path he had thought was clear.

  “It is a big mistake to separate the two. Gold is a commodity, people seek it and die for it. Tea is a commodity, hundreds of thousands of people in your British India get a living from it who would otherwise starve. In the African slave trade people were commodities, it was one and the same thing.”

  He paused briefly, aware of a distinct dislike for this cold fish he was addressing. “Yes, sir, one and the same thing. What you are digging up is commodities, as I understand it, bits of pots and so on. Is that people? It is all a long time ago in any case. Oil is a commodity, right, but it is the future of humanity, it will change the lives of millions. Millions of people, sir. It will change the face of the planet. It will flow like the milk and honey we are told of in the Good Book, a blessing to the children of earth. Now I ask you, what is this Esarhaddon guy compared to that?”

  With a gesture only half conscious Somerville raised his fingers to his temples on either side. The heavy, blurting falls of the speech had sounded in his ears like the pistons of a machine working with a rhythm that was relentless, inexorable, like the pounding blows of a hammer on metal. That was the future this interloper stood for, with his odious rhetoric, a future that would see it as virtuous to obliterate the human past and substitute for human speech a hideous, universal hissing and clanking . . . A feeling of desolation rose in him, like nausea. He got up abruptly from his place at the table. “Excuse me,” he said. “I need a breath of air.”

  Without pausing further he quitted the room, walked out to the courtyard, and crossed to the gate, which he unbolted and passed through. He walked rapidly, wanting to put some distance between himself and the house, so that no one would be able to follow and find him.

  As he walked, the agitation he had felt, the pounding of his nerves and the nausea that had come with it, grew less, and the silence of the night settled around him. After a while he stopped and stood still. He could feel that his hands were trembling slightly. There was no moon; but the night was clear, and the stars gave enough light to see by. There were lamps here and there in the village, and the distant sound of voices came to him. He felt no slightest kinship with the people of the place or with the land that stretched around him. All his ambition, all the passion of his nature were centered on the mound of earth that lay not far from him now; he could make out the dark shape of it, with its irregular crest, higher on the west side, where they had first started digging.

  Kings of the royal line of Sargon had walked here. Once again the mystery of the fire came to him. It could not have been in Esarhaddon’s time; so much was certain. The Assyrian Empire had been at its greatest extent in his reign, its power and authority unquestioned. One of the wisest of their kings, coming to the throne after the murder of his father, Sennacherib, the brutal and cowardly. Sennacherib had sacked Babylon and desecrated the temple of Marduk. He had been stabbed to death while at prayer, it was said by one of his sons—perhaps even this one, the youngest. Conflicting stories surrounded this distant murder; the truth would never be known now. Patricide or not, he had lived here; he had issued proclamations from here. But it had not been during his rule, this devastation. Whose then? And whose the hand that lit the fires?

  He might not be given time to find the answers to these questions. No word had come from his old school friend or from Rampling. He had been a fool to believe them. It seemed to him now that this belief, his trust in them, even the rush of relief he had felt at their promises, in fact his whole behavior that afternoon in Constantinople, had been a sort of fabrication or display, designed to placate the demons of doubt that plagued him, not to drive them out. He had been his own dupe. And Elliott’s presence was hateful to him because it was a constant witness to that fact.

  9.

  Rampling, at the moment Somerville was standing in the starlight, bitterly attributing deceit and falsehood to him, was in the dining room of the Hôtel d’Orient in Damascus, in the company of several others. And he too, in his own way, was occupied with the Baghdad Railway.

  During the meal the conversation had been general. But now, over the coffee and the excellent Armenian brandy, to the strains of a trio dressed in Tyrolean hats and lederhosen playing tunes from The Merry Widow amid the Moorish arches, they came down to business. It was Donaldson, principal secretary at the Foreign Office, who began this shift toward a more serious tone. “We were wondering,” he said, speaking in French, “whether you have given more consideration to the proposals of my government in regard to the joint financing of the railway south of Mosul.”
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br />   Here was one who would end up with a perforated duodenum, Rampling thought, looking across at the pale, drawn face of the man who had spoken. Not yet forty and a knighthood already, a brilliant career foretold on every hand. So impatient of these social preliminaries, so eager to come down to brass tacks, as he would have put it, that he had done no more than pick at his dinner, had drunk only water when there was a first-rate wine of the country in plentiful supply. No capacity for enjoyment, no ease in company—a man would not go so very far without that, no matter what was prophesied for him. He himself had both, in good measure. He listened to the predictably cautious reply of Donaldson’s French counterpart, Chapot. Yes, full consideration had been given to the British proposals, but very little could be done without Turkish agreement; the whole length of the projected line, all the way to Basra, ran through territories indisputably part of the Ottoman Empire . . .

  “The Turks have everything to gain from the line.” This came from Cullen, the British Resident at Baghdad.

  “As consultant to the Turkish Ministry of Finance,” Rampling said, “I can give absolute assurances that the British offer of a twenty percent participation in the enterprise will be guaranteed by the National Bank of Turkey, which as you know has recently been established by Sir Ernest Cassel with the express purpose of promoting investment of British capital in the Ottoman Empire.”

  It was to offer these assurances in his own voice and person that he was there at the table. He had been invited by the Asquith government, on very lavish terms, to take part. But it was not the fees and expenses that were his main reason for being there. Of course money was always desirable, however much of it one already had; it was through following this principle that he already had so much. But he had business of his own in Damascus, and the invitation had come as a convenient cover. In any case, he had no belief that there would be any concrete outcome from this meeting. There was a German director of the railway company at the table; but there was no Turkish representative, and this was because everyone knew that the Turks would make demands in return for concessions, and there was no concerted policy on this. Everyone also knew that the line south of Mosul would pass through some of the richest oil reserves so far ascertained in the Near East.

  It would be just another in a long series of meetings. Most of the men there had traveled weary miles to attend; they would return home, submit their cautious, inconclusive, mendacious reports—further proof, if proof were needed, of the division and distrust that reigned among the powers of Europe. The only difference lay in the choice of meeting place. This Damascus hotel had been the brain wave of the Foreign Secretary himself: an informal atmosphere, bonhomie, a frank and free exchange of opinion. Then he goes and sends a man like Donaldson . . . No, threats to national interest might create international alliances, but these did not lessen the likelihood of war—rather the contrary. Only money might do this; below the patriotic bluster and the public pronouncements, money worked in silence to make partners of enemies, to form alliances of a different kind, too profitable to risk breaking.

  The Tyrolean trio, whose smiles were wearing thin, had now embarked on excerpts from Gypsy Love. Rampling rose from the table and bade the company good night. He had done what was required of him; he could see no further need for his presence.

  The following morning he embarked on his more private program. It was some years since he had last been in Damascus, a city he had always liked. He decided to set out from the hotel early enough to allow a stroll before the first of his appointments. He was accompanied by the fearsome Dikmen and by his secretary, Thomas, whom he did not trust completely—that would have been against his principles—but trusted more than anyone else. Thomas had been in his employment now for more than twenty years and had always proved the soul of discretion. With them was also a dragoman hired through the hotel, a Syrian who spoke French and English as well as his native Arabic; he would be useful in easing the way with small bribes if need be and would know the streets and which ones to keep clear of.

  Rampling had dressed with his usual care in a suit of shantung silk of a very pale blue color and a pearl gray shirt, also of silk, with a fashionably narrow collar. On his head was a panama hat with a turned-up brim; in his right hand one of his silver-mounted canes; in his nostrils the occasional whiff of lavender from the handkerchief sprouting from his breast pocket.

  It was a fine spring morning, still cool and pleasant. The apricot trees were in splendid flower in the gardens bordering the Barada. To the south lay the cone of Mount Hermon, the snow on its summit radiant in this early sunshine. They went some way toward the citadel, then crossed the stream by the little bridge at the beginning of Gayvet Avenue. As they walked, the dragoman, who announced his name as Richard and had a family to support, while shooing mendicant children out of their path, told Rampling a story he had told others before, thereby gaining goodwill and extra payment. The Prophet Muhammad, standing on the hill called Samaniyeh, gazing over the beauties of the city, had remarked that since there is only one Paradise, it should not be sought on earth and therefore he would not enter Damascus.

  The offices of the Crédit Lyonnais lay just past the Palace Hotel. Rampling left Dikmen and Richard in the waiting room below and together with his secretary was shown up to the expensively appointed boardroom on the first floor. Awaiting him were the president of the bank in Syria, the manager of the Damascus branch, and a senior partner in the Imperial Ottoman Bank, which was largely under French control.

  Armed with statistics provided by his secretary, Rampling spent two hours there, seeking by all means possible to allay the suspicions and quieten the fears of the French bankers. It was vital for his own interests and those he represented, both commercial and political, that French capital should be invested in the Baghdad Railway to an extent of 20 percent of the total holding. This would bring France to a parity with Britain and make them equal partners, and this in turn—and more important—would enable agreements to be reached about zones of influence in the territory traversed by the line. The grip of the Ottoman state on these territories was loosening from week to week.

  He was given a courteous hearing, but it was no easy task that faced him. There was deep hostility to the railway on the part of certain French commercial interests. It was feared that this new line would divert traffic from the existing route across Europe, thus seriously reducing the importance of the port of Marseilles and involving significant losses to French railways. Then there was the question of silk exports, which Rampling had studied while still in Constantinople. The powerful and influential silk manufacturers of Lyons were afraid that since the concession was after all in German hands, whatever the source of the capital invested, the railway would bring about a rise of German economic power in Turkey and threaten the supply of cheap raw silk from Syria, practically the whole of which had hitherto been consumed in French mills.

  These were serious objections, and Rampling took care to give them due weight, while reiterating the argument, which he felt to be his strongest card, that those who established a financial interest in the line would thereby establish claims on the territories the line passed through at a time when the Ottoman Empire was disintegrating. There would, in short, be a day of reckoning, a division of the spoils.

  Neither he nor the French mentioned the imminent threat of war, but it underlay everything that was said, as did the knowledge that their two nations were bound by treaty obligations and would be allies should war come about. To the victors would go the prizes, and the richest prize of all was Turkey in Asia, the wealth in minerals and fuel, largely untapped, the enormous potential for agricultural produce, the strategic importance for nations like their own that were seeking—naturally in a spirit of partnership and cooperation—an extension of colonial power.

  How far he had succeeded it was not possible to tell from the impeccable courtesy of his hosts on parting. But he had spoken as an associate of the Morgan Grenfell group, which had close
ties with French banking interests, and this would carry weight. He was, moreover, confident that his argument would carry the day, that his vision of the future was ultimately compelling: In this dangerous place that Europe had become, to protect your interests you must seek constantly to enlarge them; who held back, who played too safe, would fail and die, and the earth would cover him over.

  He was some minutes late for his noon appointment, which was with Kruckman, one of the German directors of the railway company, who had been at their table the evening before and whom he had known for some years, though neither of them had given any indication of that in the course of the dinner, having made this arrangement to meet by telephone earlier in the day. An open-air meeting had been decided on, without any presence other than their own. There were in any case no formalities to go through, no papers, no signatures. Agreements in principle had already been made; it was no more than a chat really, a handshake, an expression of goodwill.

  Very agreeable too, Rampling thought, with a certain sense of relief at there being no need to urge or persuade. The place they had chosen for their meeting was a small park between two of the gates in the old city walls, the Gate of Paradise and the Gate of Peace. The ground sloped upward gently, and from the summit of the mound they could look across to the dome and minarets of the Omayyid Mosque nearby and the gardens and orchards of Salihiyeh to the north. The midday sun was warm, and Rampling took off his jacket and gave it to Dikmen, walking some dozen yards behind them, to carry, having first asked him if his hands were clean.

  Kruckman spoke passable English, and he was a friendly man, easy to talk to, combining joviality and cunning and a sort of cynical good-fellowship, qualities that Rampling always found congenial. In addition to being on the board of directors of the Baghdad Railway, he represented the Deutsche Bank in Syria and was a trusted associate of von Gwinner, the president of the bank.