It was confusion on a grand scale, and she realized she had to do something, so arbitrarily she divided the world into Asia, Middle East, and Europe. And then divided those into time periods and phoned the history department of Columbia University and asked to speak to professors of European, Greco-Roman, Near East, and Asian history.
“All at once, or will you take them separately?” asked a secretary.
Claire found herself starting to apologize. She had always been an apologizer back in Carney. It seemed to make life go easier, even if she didn’t do something. She was always ready to take blame and get on with things. But now, she just didn’t have time.
“I am going to pay one hundred dollars an hour. And I do consider it important, and please convey this information to the professors, please.” Claire’s voice was ice-pick sharp and just as unyielding.
And it was like a miracle. The secretary started apologizing, and Claire cut her off, saying it wasn’t necessary.
A weak winter sun did little to warm the cold stone and concrete walks of the city campus of Columbia University when Claire arrived the next day. She had never told her parents, but one of the reasons she had declined going to Radcliffe, in addition to its being so far away from home, was that it was an Ivy League school. And that frightened her. A small town in Ohio mattered so little there.
In a small, somewhat untidy office, Professor Hadrian Vitas of Classical History (Greco-Roman), a handsome young man in his early thirties, in a too-stuffy tweed suit with a vest, gave Claire a strong lecture on how the things that lasted were things of the mind, plays, poetry, speeches. He seemed most interested in a gold pen he kept tapping on a very thin red book, which was Cicero’s Orations. A stale pipe that smelled more like sulphur than tobacco lay in a large ashtray, its bowl opening toward Claire.
“Time has a wonderful way of weeding out the trivial, Miss Andrews. And whereas I am impressed by your generous offer of one hundred dollars an hour just to talk to me, I am afraid I can’t undo what time has done. A sapphire with Poseidon engraved on it just doesn’t stand out for me,” said Professor Vitas.
“It would be one hundred and twenty-nine siliqua,” said Claire.
Vitas twirled the pen on top of the book. He seemed interested in that.
“Translated from karats. It would be one hundred and forty-two today. That’s a very large sapphire,” said Claire. “They did believe in the classical era that sapphires could make them safe at sea.”
“Yes, but why do you think there should be some reference to it?” Professor Vitas allowed a weak smile, apparently of immense tolerance. He checked the pen for the smoothness of its opening mechanism. And he sighed.
Claire spoke to his high forehead.
“Because one hundred and forty-two karats is a very large stone, and only important people would own such a major gem. So really there should be some mention somewhere in the ancient world of this Poseidon sapphire.” She felt a hostile edge to her voice.
Professor Vitas took the cap off his pen and replaced it.
“Miss Andrews, a sapphire might be important to someone today, it might even have been important to someone then, but commercialism isn’t quite my field.” He looked at her. Finally.
“If there were commercial recordings, I wouldn’t be bothering with you,” snapped Claire. “As much as you may look down on businessmen, they got their weights right. Most of the ancient records, the ones that are found preserved, are of business. And they’re accurate. It’s your religious leaders, poets, and politicians who have to be washed of bullshit before you can trust a fraction of what they say.” On politicians she nodded to the small volume of Cicero, who had delivered his orations in the Roman Senate. And then she added bluntly, “Why did you agree to see me? I told your secretary the topic I was interested in before we met. I outlined it clearly.”
Professor Vitas lowered the pen and looked at Claire with the amusement of a biologist discovering an odd sort of fly.
“I wanted to see who would pay one hundred dollars an hour to talk about classical history. Now I have. Let me take you to lunch with that fee?” He was grinning.
Claire wanted to throw something at that condescending grin, and then in a bolt of insight, she realized Professor Vitas was insecure. An Ivy League professor in his own office on an Ivy League campus was insecure. And why not? Why shouldn’t he be?
And in that moment Claire realized she could hurt him. But she also didn’t want to go out with him or nurse him along for the rest of the day. So she explained carefully that she was in search of the meaning of gems on a saltcellar her family had once owned, because she had been stymied in identifying its recent history with only a drawing. History was in a way her last resort, but not really the worst resort because famous people, as she had said before, were the owners of these sorts of stones, and they were the stuff of history. She was so clear about her own place and direction, she didn’t even have to address any emotional rejection to him. It was clean. It was clear, and quickly Professor Vitas, perhaps insecure because he was so young in this prestigious position, jotted down many references to large blue stones, the most probable regarding her sapphire occurring at the great sea battle where Octavius, soon to be known as the emperor Augustus, defeated Marc Antony, of Cleopatra fame.
Unfortunately, there was no indication of any other special meaning of the sapphire, or more specifically where it had gone after that battle.
Professor Vitas was sorry he couldn’t help more, but he did have one last question. Why didn’t Claire use graduate students for her research instead of a full professor. She could get them for twenty dollars an hour, or possibly even less.
“I’ve used graduate students as researchers. They would take a week looking up what you just knew off the top of your head in forty minutes. I’m paying a full professor a hundred dollars an hour because it’s cheaper.”
Claire spent less than an hour with each professor, and with each professor she came prepared, and she became known around all the history departments as the sapphire lady. But of all the myriad of references that came up for a sapphire that size, none seemed definite. She saw one large sapphire, probably the Poseidon, transfer from Asia to the west with the conquests of Alexander. She saw several references in Byzantium, the eastern Christian half of a declining Roman empire, which had been built on a fallen brief Greek empire, which had been built on a fallen Persian empire, which had at one time straddled two worlds, the easternmost region of which was probably where the big blue stone was discovered.
But after A.D. 1000, no one could find even an improbable mention of a big blue stone with Poseidon engraved on it, not in karats or obols or drachms. It seemed to have been swallowed up like the six diamonds centuries later during the Spanish Inquisition.
And then a Pakistani graduate student at Columbia phoned her asking if she were still purchasing research about a large sapphire in the ancient world.
“I have heard you were, so therefore, madame, I have made bold to ask if you wished further data on the very stone you sought?” His name was Ahmed and his voice had a singsong quality to it.
Claire contained a sigh.
“I’m sorry, but I have all the researchers I need. Thank you.”
“Oh, that is no problem, but I do have a reference already in an Islamic text.”
That was just about the second thing Claire didn’t need. A religious text. She had been fortunate with Maimonides, who had led her to the even more exact Spanish references, but since then, she had come to believe that holy men were too much of another world to help her accurately in this one.
But Ahmed was so polite, she thought she might at a twenty-dollar-an-hour fee give him one chance, more out of charity than anything else.
“All right, read it to me,” she said.
“It is about measures of things, and what something weighs, and does weight really make something more important in the measure of things.”
“Most certainly does when y
ou need accuracy,” said Claire.
“I am sorry. I am referring to the religious text, what the mullahs deemed of value in their hierarchy of values.”
“Go ahead,” said Claire.
“Though this exceeds one hundred qurots, it is less than nothing because it weighs against the soul. It is an abomination.”
“How many qurots?”
“A qurot is an Arabic weight. It’s not the same as a karat. I’m not sure of the exact difference.”
“I am. Is it one hundred and six qurots.”
“More than one hundred and five, they say, because the language flows better in Arabic with more than one hundred and five. It is poetic, too.”
“Why is it an abomination?” asked Claire, her body electrified, her lower lip precarious between her teeth, praying for the answer she hoped might come.
“Because there is an engraving on the sapphire. You may not be aware, but engravings, any likenesses of people are an abomination to a Muslim.”
“I most certainly am,” said Claire. “Bring the text right over. I’m in Queens.”
Claire ended up paying Ahmed one hundred dollars for twenty minutes of his time and felt she had even at that almost cheated him. His text referred to the general Omar’s conquest of Jerusalem from the Christians and a sapphire that, because it was an abomination, presented a problem to Omar the Great. His solution, according to the text, was to make it part of “the lesson.”
And this abomination weighed more than one hundred and five qurots. Claire Andrews had found her sapphire at the first Muslim conquest of Jerusalem because a mullah had thought it an important example as to the measure of things, which was a way of saying the worth of things.
Claire Andrews had found it. When Ahmed left her apartment, having dutifully translated the entire text for her while she typed it into her computer, Claire waited until he was well down the hall to let out an Ohio State cheer that would have set off a stadium. She had found it. She had found the Poseidon sapphire for absolute sure.
“Give me an ‘O.’”
ZASKAR REGION, 600 B.C.
It was big. Bigger than the eyes of Shiva in the great temple of the valleys beneath the Kashmir. And the boy had seen it. He had gone with his father to dig into the hard white rock looking for such blue stones as befit the eyes of the gods, and it was he, not his father, who saw the first spot of darkness. And it was he, not his father, who cautioned that it might be big and that the digging should begin far around. Four iron picks were broken taking it out, but such a stone as that, a melon of a stone, a cat’s head of a stone, a man’s fist of a stone, was worth a hundred picks. It could be a god itself, such was its size. It was far too big to be sold in the village, because only poor things were sold in the village. In the village one sold a fingernail of a stone, a shard of a stone, a pebble of a stone, but never a stone such as this, so blue and so big. One could only imagine what it would look like when it was cut from the marble host rock, cleaned, and polished. It would have the power to bring down the night sky itself, and everyone agreed it should be sold in a city, for a village would not have the price worthy of such a stone.
But in the city, where there were priests who could cure the worst of ills, and scales that miraculously measured weights the same every time and every season, there was not one person who could properly cut and polish such a blue stone of almost sixty-eight obols. For something that grand one needed craftsmen in a larger city farther to the west.
Yet none of the villagers who had accompanied the father and the son to the city, an assurance of safety such a stone demanded, could afford the great trek to the west, so it was sold to a man rich enough and strong enough to make the journey, not, of course, for anywhere near its true price. But the great blue stone was, after all, too big for such a villager to protect on such a long journey.
And so, like all great gems it left the hands of the poor never to return, and like all great gems it made its way to the level of society that could own it. And so great was the sapphire, not only in size but in the intensity of its blue, that learned men understood it had the power to protect the wearer at night because it held the night in the mystery of its soul.
And so that was the new measure when it passed from the Persian emperor to the new Greek conqueror whose wise men understood what every seafarer knew, that sapphires protected one on the journey across the waters. And fittingly, the sea god Poseidon enthroned was carved onto it before it went from Greek to Roman, to kings and emperors and wealthy men, even to a pirate briefly before he was crucified on the mast of his ship, returning the stone to the rulers of the world.
By the year 634 of a new God, Poseidon did not pose as great a pagan threat in Christian Damascus as it did in Constantinople, where Byzantine emperor Heraclitus demanded the Monophysite bishop appear before him to answer charges of heresy.
And he pointed to that great sapphire in the bishop’s mitre as just the sort of abomination Christianity was being punished for.
“Even now, Islam is threatening not only your Damascus, Bishop, but Christian Egypt and Jerusalem of our Christ. Why now is that possible for such as Islam to challenge our great armies?”
The Monophysite, who this day before the emperor wore his mitre with the Poseidon sapphire, a thing he was in no way ashamed of, understood the crucial word left out of Emperor Heraclitus’ lament. The armies of Islam were Arab. And it was omitted on purpose because the Monophysites were Arab. How could Arabs defeat armies of eastern Rome?
The Monophysite answered: “Our Lord Jesus suffered. And we suffer in His name.”
“We are being told something. Why did Christianity take over Rome? Why, because the gods were false gods, and now we have elevated the false gods again, the gods of superstition, the defeated ones. Poseidon is not worshipped except in your churches, Bishop, your churches closest to the advance of those desert pagans.”
The emperor was coming close to that word he had avoided. The bishop answered again: “All things are made by Him, so too the holy power of this blue sapphire, radiating its holiness upon all those who see it.”
“Poseidon is a false god.”
“God certainly made such a wondrous and mystical sapphire.”
“Get that abomination off your head, Arab,” said Emperor Heraclitus, signaling a guard to sweep the abomination from his sight. Almost like cuffing a stable slave, a guard knocked the mitre from the bishop’s head to the mosaic floor before the emperor.
The bishop said nothing. Nothing could assuage this indignity. He did not even answer the ensuing commands to clean out heretics from Damascus, meaning the removal of Monophysites from religious posts. He retrieved his mitre himself, not even letting servants bend to the task, and repeated every word upon his return to Damascus.
There was a clear choice. Either the Monophysites stay with the Christian West and suffer the same degradation as that visited upon their bishop, or see what their brother Arabs might offer in the way of religious tolerance. The facts turned out to be too good to be true. In the Moslems’ own writings, they guaranteed the right of Christians and Jews to practice their own faiths according to their own ways as people of the Book. They did not care whether Poseidon was on a sacred stone or if a Christian thought a stone itself had power. Christians had that right. And not only were Christian rights written in one Koran shown to them by the Moslem general, Omar, but in every Koran they examined to make sure this was not some trick.
Only one question remained: What gift to seal this alliance would they give Omar? It should be a relic, but all the great relics were in Jerusalem except for the cup of the covenant, held in the great Cathedral of Damascus. Yet this was just a plain clay cup with no grandeur, certainly not a worthy gift for the great Omar. There was only one solution, add another token of probable value, and that was the great Poseidon sapphire from the bishop’s mitre.
Omar looked upon the gift not in measure of the stone, because the graven image for him as a Muslim made it unac
ceptable. Even if the sapphire were as big as a mountain, it would be worthless because of the image. It was set into silver that held a clay bowl that the prophet Christ had used. But how could he refuse a gift, especially one that came with two entire Monophysite legions that had once secured the eastern wall of the Christian empire? The answer was he could not. But it troubled him, and he knew another solution would have to be found, but first he had wars to fight.
Blessings came immediately with the two legions at the crucial battle of Yarmuk, when a sudden sandstorm blinded the opposing Christian armies and a great slaughter ensued. It was only a short time before Damascus fell to Islam as well as Jerusalem.
For Jersualem he allowed the Christian patriarch Sephronius to remove all his relics to the west, for who wanted them in the city from which Mohammed rode to heaven? This left Omar with the abomination of the graven image. Some of his captains pointed out that the sapphire was an awesome hundred and six qurots, but Omar answered only that its weight would weigh against him on the judgment day.
Yet it was a gift and he could not discard it. What to do with a graven image that would weigh more than a hundred and six qurots against him? And then it came to him in the laughter of a woman. For she thought how funny that anyone would worship a drinking bowl. And with that he knew. The one hundred and six-qurot stone would go down in his conquest of Jerusalem as “the lesson” that showed that while Christianity, like Judaism, contained some truths, here was an example of something so silly as to show, of course, it was not the one whole perfect truth like Islam. And Omar took the graven-imaged stone that would have weighed against him on judgment day and had it put on that bowl now called “the lesson.” What once would have weighed against him because it was an abomination of a graven image now on judgment day would weigh for him in the scales of justice because he was using it not for its image but for its furtherance of Islam.
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