The man waited until al-Kalli said, “Yes, Jakob, go ahead.”
Jakob came in and lowered the box like a baby onto the desk; even so, it made a pronounced thump. The box was still closed, with huge, rusty hasps. At a glance, Beth estimated the box alone, like others she had seen, was as much as a thousand years old.
Jakob stepped back silently and hovered in the open door, as al-Kalli turned to Beth. “Just as I promised,” he said, shaking her hand across the desk. His skin was as smooth and dry as silk. He sat down in one of the guest chairs, taking care to pluck up the knee of his trouser leg, and Mrs. Cabot — a bit to Beth’s surprise — commandeered the chair beside him.
“I wanted to see where my precious one would be,” he said, surveying her office. “Is this where you do your work?”
“Some of it,” Beth replied, sitting back down. “The research library is actually in the institute, which is just across the plaza. The conservation work is done in what’s called the East Building.”
“So many different buildings,” al-Kalli observed.
“Yes,” Beth conceded, “the Getty can be confusing at first.” She remembered her own introduction to the place, and having to learn just where various collections were housed in the cluster of galleries and pavilions that made up the sprawling complex.
“But The Beasts of Eden,” al-Kalli said, “will never leave this hill?”
To Beth, his English accent made him sound like Rex Harrison on her old My Fair Lady album. “No, it will always be up here,” she said, “safe and sound.”
He appeared satisfied, and Beth could no longer contain her very genuine excitement.
“May I?” she said, gesturing at the closed, but unpadlocked, hasps.
“I thought you would never ask,” al-Kalli replied with a small smile.
Beth loosened the hasps — some flakes of rust fell onto the clean desk — and then raised the lid; the box was almost three feet square, and inside, it was lined with musty, threadbare red velvet. But in its center, neatly cradled — the box must have been built expressly to house it — rested the single most exquisite book she had ever seen.
And she had seen hundreds.
She paused, unwilling even to touch it yet, and al-Kalli noted her amazement with pleasure.
“You may remove it,” he said.
Beth still didn’t say anything, but reached in, reverently, to lift the book out. It, too, was very heavy, and it was no wonder why. As she took it out, into the light of the office — my God, she thought, it must weigh twenty-five pounds — the fantastically tooled and bejeweled cover winked and sparkled, as if happy to be seen and admired once again.
Jakob silently came forward and took the box out of her way; Beth laid the book down again.
Although the covers of most such manuscripts were made of leather or vellum, this one was far more valuable. This one was ivory. Elephant ivory. Not whalebone or walrus tusk, with their buttery yellow color and tellingly coarse grain. Ivory. Almost white, finely grained, one of the most precious materials in the ancient world. The only cover Beth had ever seen that even approached this one in beauty had once adorned the Psalterium Latinum that belonged to Melisende, the wife of the Comte d’Anjou, who succeeded his father-in-law to become the King of Jerusalem in the twelfth century.
But this one surpassed even that. The Psalterium was decorated with garnets and turquoise; The Beasts of Eden was decorated with deep blue sapphires and glittering rubies. They studded the four corners of the cover, and marked the borders of the six roundels — the carved circles — that formed most of the design. In each of these roundels, a stunningly intricate creature had been carved. Griffins, gorgons, dragons. Beth would have to study them further to determine what each one was meant to be. In the very center, in a larger circle carved in the shape of a serpent, was a bird that looked a lot like a peacock, with an elaborately fanned tail and a high proud beak.
“Oh, it’s magnificent,” Mrs. Cabot put in, “and didn’t someone tell me the peacock is on your family crest?”
“That’s true,” al-Kalli said, though his eyes were still on Beth, “though this is not a peacock.”
The flames that curled up around its feet had already told Beth that much. This was the mythical phoenix, the bird that never died, but instead made its own funeral pyre, and then emerged, reborn, from its own ashes.
“From what I know of your family,” Beth said, still absorbed in the beauty of the cover, “the phoenix would be apt. As I understand it, the al-Kallis have survived, under difficult circumstances, for many centuries.”
“That we have done,” Mohammed admitted, though there was a surprising note of something — resignation? doubt? — in his voice. “And this book has survived with us.” He cleared his throat and looked directly at Beth. “And that is why it is so important to have the book restored… and thoroughly translated.”
“Oh, surely the book has been translated before,” Mrs. Cabot put in.
“It has,” al-Kalli said, but without even bothering to look her way. “But not reliably. The Latin is difficult, the text has faded, and the peculiar hand of the scribe makes some of it hard to decipher.”
Beth hadn’t opened the book yet, so she couldn’t comment on the text. Still, she wanted to put his mind at rest. “We have some of the most advanced computer programs here,” Beth explained, “that are capable of scanning small sections of text, breaking them down, and then extrapolating that information to the rest of the book. In other words, once we know how this scribe tends to form each letter, the computer will be able to identify all further examples of that letter, or word, or design element, wherever and whenever it appears.”
“How long would such a process require?” al-Kalli asked, with an urgency that surprised Beth. After all, the book had been around for a millennium or so — what could be the big hurry now?
“It depends,” Beth said. “But the job could probably be done in a few weeks.”
She thought he would look pleased, but his brow remained furrowed. “Not sooner?”
“It’s possible,” Beth said. Already she could see that this project — enticing and enthralling as it was — would also have its political dimensions. Al-Kalli would not be an easy taskmaster. “We have to handle every step with extreme caution. Just this binding,” she said, lifting the front cover less than an inch, “is extraordinarily fragile — and rare.”
“Of course it is,” Mrs. Cabot said, “inlaid with such beautiful gemstones.”
“It isn’t just that,” Beth said. “Something like this — what we call a treasure binding — is almost never found on the book it originally belonged to.”
Mrs. Cabot looked confused — the esoterica of illuminated manuscripts was not her forte or her field. But Beth guessed, from the expression on al-Kalli’s face, that he knew a great deal about his Beasts of Eden; she also felt that he enjoyed hearing her expatiate on it. “No, these covers were so priceless they were often recycled,” Beth continued. “They were removed from the wooden boards that were used for backing, and then reused on later books or codices. This one, however, is still wedded not only to its backing, but to the book itself. That alone makes it a near miracle.”
Al-Kalli had a half smile on his face now; he liked hearing his legacy praised. “Go ahead and open it,” he said with a tilt of his chin, and Beth, feeling a little like a kid on Christmas morning, did so.
Even though the centuries had indeed taken their toll, the book was still resplendent. The ink had faded, the colors had dimmed, the vellum leaves were creased and cracked, but Beth had never seen such a vibrant, rich, and original work. As she carefully turned each page, it crackled in her hand, and once or twice, she felt a tiny grain of sand… a gritty reminder of the book’s Mesopotamian provenance.
The text was inscribed in gold ink, on what had once presumably been an imperial purple background; now it was a very faint lavender. The script was so intricate and compacted that it was impossible for Beth, wi
thout much closer inspection, to pick out more than a word here and here, but what she did see confirmed her opinion that the book dated from the eleventh or perhaps twelfth century; the style of the script was somewhere between the Carolingian — promulgated by the emperor Charlemagne hundreds of years before — and the Gothic, which gradually came to the fore in Western Europe thereafter. Even with the help of the advanced computer programs that the Getty employed, decoding the densely inscribed and miniscule writing — much of it entwined or overlaid on elaborate drawings and illustrations — would be extremely difficult and time-consuming. Al-Kalli, Beth knew, was not going to be happy about that.
“Have you ever seen anything like it?” al-Kalli murmured now, leaning forward in his chair. Beth picked up a scent of expensive cologne.
“Yes,” she said, to be perfectly professional, “it reminds me of the Vienna Coronation Gospels and the Xanten Gospels in Brussels.”
He looked deflated. Mrs. Cabot looked annoyed.
“But this is, if anything, more exquisite.”
Both al-Kalli and Mrs. Cabot appeared mollified. “What I am particularly struck by,” Beth said, thinking aloud, “are the illuminations.” Indeed, she was trying to come to terms with her own opinion of them; they were not quite like anything she had ever seen before, especially in a work of this age. While many such manuscripts displayed artwork that was finely controlled — almost mathematical in its precision — these illustrations were bolder, more impressionistic. They were executed with bold, blotchy swatches of color, and imparted to the animals they depicted a cunning sense of movement and life and reality.
Which, given that this was a bestiary — largely a catalogue of mythical creatures, unseen by anyone, ever — was particularly impressive.
Beth turned another heavy page of the book, and was greeted by the baleful glare of a manticore, a legendary creature with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the scaly tail of a serpent. In most such illustrations, the creature was shown in a static pose — often while being skewered by a party of equally static hunters — but not in this one; here, the manticore was in motion, leaping from a stand of palm trees, its head turned to the reader. Below its claws, drenched in vermilion, lay the remains of its prey — what might have been a camel, perhaps. It was surprising, even shocking in a way, to see such a fluid, powerful rendering in a manuscript so old. Most of the pictures from this era were drawn and colored by monks who worked from other, previous versions. And even when they depicted an actual creature, one that the illuminator might conceivably have seen — a crocodile, a whale, even an elephant — the work was formal and postured.
But in this book, the manticore, the chimera — a fire-breathing goat with a serpent’s tail — the unicorn — a horse with the horn of a rhinoceros — all were drawn in a style that seemed far more sophisticated, more expressive, than anything else from their time. It was as if, Beth thought, the creatures in the al-Kalli Beasts of Eden had been drawn from life.
And she said so.
Mrs. Cabot beamed, pleased to see Beth pay their guest such a compliment, but al-Kalli didn’t smile, budge, or react in any way. His lack of reaction was in itself puzzling; he looked to Beth as though he were suddenly filled with too many feelings to sort through, too many thoughts to express just one. He looked as if his mind had traveled to some far distant place… perhaps the desert that his family had inhabited — and ruled — for so many centuries.
“It will be my honor to work on this book,” she said. “It’s simply magnificent.”
But he still said nothing; he just offered a small, cryptic smile.
And when she closed the book — very carefully, and using both hands — on her desk she saw a fine silt of white sand glinting in the overhead light. Even the sand she wanted to preserve and keep with the book. It was as if it had come, like the strange beasts depicted in the illuminated pages, from a place as old as Eden.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was preclsely the carnival atmosphere Carter had predicted — and dreaded.
Gunderson had issued the press release to the media, the L.A. Times (among many others) had dutifully written up the story of the early human, only the second one since 1915 to be unearthed at the La Brea Tar Pits, and the public imagination had in fact been captured.
Today, looking up from the bottom of Pit 91, Carter could see dozens of faces pressed against the glass of the upper observation deck, all waiting to see the grisly skeleton of their ancient ancestor released from its unmarked grave. Security guards occasionally moved them along to make way for the next wave, but the faces kept coming. Carter could tell it made Rosalie and Claude, normally two of his most reliable workers, self-conscious: Miranda, on the other hand, it seemed to have sprinkled with stardust. Gunderson had gone along with Carter’s suggestion to share the credit for the discovery with the budding young paleontologist, and now Miranda had transformed herself into some interesting cross between Paris Hilton at the MTV awards and Louis Leakey in the Olduvai Gorge. She was dressed in tight khaki shorts with many zippers and velcroed pockets, a sleeveless green T-shirt that simply said PIT 91 EXCAVATION TEAM (where, Carter wondered, had she had that thing made?), and clunky black work boots that served chiefly to show off her long, tanned legs. Periodically, she leaned back on her haunches to dramatically wipe the sweat from her brow, and scan the upper deck for admirers.
Right now, the most dedicated of the observers was a La Brea regular, the Native American the museum guards referred to as Geronimo. Carter had seen him glaring down into the pit most of the morning, his lips moving in what seemed like some kind of inaudible chant.
“If I’d known I was going to be on Eyewitness News,” Rosalie said, glopping out another handful of muck, “I’d have gone on a diet.”
Claude chuckled, and said, “I’d have bought a toupee.”
“What can I tell you?” Carter replied, wiping his own hand on the edge of a black bucket. “You’re celebrities now, and there’s no going back to your ordinary lives.”
Eyewitness News had indeed sent a crew the day before; they’d clambered down into the pit with a camera and a mike, and shot some “spontaneous” footage of Carter and his crew continuing to disinter what the anchor later called “the first man ever to walk down Wilshire Boulevard.” The coanchor had wondered if, back then, traffic was any better than it was today.
“Careful you don’t cut yourself,” Carter said to Claude, who was digging deep in the quadrant where the human bones lay. In order to facilitate the dig, extraordinary measures had been taken — discretionary funds, Carter discovered, could be found when they had to be — and one of the first things Carter had done with the money was install slim steel plates to keep the tar from neighboring quadrants out of this one; the plates were inserted, to a depth of ten feet, on all sides, and though nothing could be done to keep the tar from welling up from below, it did help to keep the surface area relatively clear.
At Gunderson’s own insistence, high-power hoses, hooked to a massive turbine that now rumbled on the lawn up above the rear of the pit, suctioned off debris and what was called the matrix — the rocky, gooey material that surrounded the find. Carter had strenuously objected, on the grounds that this material could be ineffably important to deciphering the remains, but Gunderson had only partially relented; he wanted these human bones unearthed now, but he was willing to let the matrix be stored in a massive holding tank, steam-cleaned beforehand from top to bottom. Part of Carter had wanted to weep, but another part told him to be practical — this was a momentous find, and if he didn’t want Gunderson to hijack it completely, and turn it over to some hack who would unwittingly do it great damage, he had to compromise.
Still, it wasn’t in his nature — and he tried not to focus on the hoses.
“Don’t you think we’re ready to start plastering?” Miranda asked, innocently. The glopping could be fun, and photogenic, for only so long. The next step, once the fossils had been exposed, was usually to
plaster them in situ, to protect and preserve them during the extraction process.
But they were days away from that, at best. “Not yet,” Carter replied. “First we’ve got to clear away more of the tar.”
Miranda exhaled, loudly.
“And then we’ve got to ascertain where, and how deep, these remains go. We don’t want to chisel away anything germane.”
Miranda looked even more deflated.
“Then we can think about how to extract them safely.”
“What are our choices?” Claude asked, pushing his bifocals back up onto his nose with the knuckle of one tarry hand.
“We’ve got several,” Carter replied, though he was reluctant to go into it now. Yes, there were the usual methods of fossil preservation — plaster of paris casting, transparent resin application, polyurethane foam over aluminum foil — but he hadn’t yet decided on how he wanted to proceed. He knew that this find was special not only in the scientific sense, but in a political one, too. These were human remains, of an aboriginal ancestor. As a result, they had to be treated, at all stages, with a heightened degree of responsibility and tact.
As if in response to his thoughts, there was a sudden thumping from above. Carter looked up at the observation deck to see Geronimo banging his fist against the Plexiglas and shouting something indecipherable.
“I knew he’d go off one day,” Claude said.
“But why now?” Carter said.
“Maybe,” Miranda said, “because of this.” She was pointing at a spot in the quadrant where, miraculously, the top of a skull now protruded. Only minutes earlier, that area of the grid had been covered with tar. Now, a human skull, its empty eye sockets staring upward, emerged like a swimmer coming up for air.
Even Carter was speechless.
The banging got louder, and Carter could see a security guard grabbing Geronimo’s arm and pulling him away from the window. The other spectators backed off, too, though not before one or two had snapped photos of the fracas.
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