Dan Simmons - The Fifth Heart

“Incredible coincidence,” said John Hay.

“I always say, ‘It’s a small world’,” said Clara Hay.

James felt that he might be having a heart attack. His chest felt so constricted that he had to will himself to breathe in and out.

“I asked Mr. Sigerson about his surname,” continued Vollebæk, “since ‘Sigerson’ is not a common Norwegian name—or at least not a common spelling of it. As I expected and as Mr. Sigerson explained, his family name had been Sigurdson but his grandfather had married a German lady—they had lived a few years in England—and the spelling had been changed for convenience’ sake during that time and never changed back.”

Henry James’s mind was churning. Obviously “Jan Sigerson”—or “Sigurdson”—was not the English consulting detective impersonating a Norwegian explorer; rather, Jan Sigerson/Sigurdson was a real Norwegian, a real explorer, who—for reasons probably not sane—was pretending to be the most likely fictional English personage known as Sherlock Holmes.

Then to whom was I introduced three years ago at Mrs. O’Connor’s benefit party with Lady Wolseley?

The most logical guess—the only logical guess—was that it was Jan Sigerson playing out his fantasy of being the written-about detective.

But the Sherlock Holmes stories had not yet begun being published in The Strand in 1889 .

True, thought James, but he was vaguely aware of Gosse or one of his Holmes-fanatical friends mentioning that the first Holmes novel or novella (he was not sure which)— A Study in Scarlet —had appeared as early as 1887, to be followed by—what was the title?— The Sign of the Five? The Sign of the Four? —something like that—in Lippincott’s Magazine 1889. Gosse had said that the book version had come out the following year. Only after these initial forays into print did Sherlock Holmes begin to appear regularly in The Strand Magazine . A demented Jan Sigurdson/Sigerson would have heard much talk, both in England and on the Continent, about the London detective.

James later vaguely remembered something baked being brought for dessert, but whether he’d eaten a slice of cake or pie or baked Alaska, he later had no memory.

The men gathered in John Hay’s impressive study. Clara Hay and the Vollebæk ladies had conferred and decided that they were not that interested in images of cold, high places. Hay, King, Sigerson, Emissary Vollebæk, and James were served their brandy in the study. Servants had already set up a screen and Sigerson’s rented magic-lantern projector—all polished wood and brass—and had fueled and primed it. The men took their seats in various deep leather chairs or couches. James was so rattled that he drank off half his snifter of brandy without agitating it or inhaling the fumes in preparation.

The silent servants drew the blinds and let themselves out. Sigerson ignited the projector lamp and a rectangle of bright light illuminated the square screen that covered one wall of books.

“I only brought a few of my glass slides,” said Jan Sigerson. “There are few crimes more heinous than boring one’s audience.”

“Bored by images of the Himalayan peaks and Tibet?!” cried Clarence King. “I hardly think so!”

“Clara will be sorry she missed this and may ask for an encore,” said Hay.

“I will be most happy to provide it,” said Sigerson with a short, quick, northern-European bow. “This first image is of our approach to the Himalayas in northern Sikkim.” An image filled the screen.

“Dear God,” cried King. “Are those tiny specks beyond the moraine there men and mules?”

“Men and mules and Tibetan ponies, yes,” said Sigerson.

“It gives one perspective on how truly astounding the Himalayan Range is,” said Mr. Vollebæk.

“They make the Alps and the American Rocky Mountains look like molehills,” said King.

“Here is the Jelep La that we mentioned earlier,” said Sigerson. “ La , of course, means ‘pass’ in Tibetan.” An image changed to a line of small ponies and heavily bundled men—no more than two dozen—crossing boulder-fields amidst near vertical snow slopes on either side. “It seemed formidable at the time but was no more than fourteen thousand feet at its summit.”

The slide changed. The room was filled with the smell of the projector’s limelight fuel.

“This is Tang La,” said Sigerson. “The last real gateway before the Forbidden Kingdom of Tibet. Tang La, which means ‘Clear Pass’, was a bit more of a challenge since it is exposed to snow avalanches, even in the autumn when my small party attempted it, and its high point above fifteen thousand feet saw severe blizzards. You can see that both we and the ponies were liberally caked with ice.”

These photographs were not taken by “Sigerson” , thought James. He’s come into their possession somehow and passes them off as his own, but one always sees the Europeans and Tibetans from a distance. One can never make out the so-called Sigerson .

The next photograph was a close-up of Sigerson in padded clothing—mustache and eyebrows caked with ice—sitting astride one of the ponies. Behind him, out of focus but solid, was the trail down the pass to a high valley rimmed with countless giant peaks.

“The Tibetan pony is a tough little creature,” said Sigerson, “but with emphasis on ‘little’ as much as on ‘tough’. As you can see, my boots constantly dragged on the ground. If the pony attempted to take me somewhere I did not want to go, I would simply stand up and let the pony run out from under me. At other times, if I did not want the pony to go somewhere it wanted to go, I would grab that uncomfortable-looking Tibetan wooden saddle and lift the pony off its hooves until we agreed on a direction.”

The next photographic slide showed palm trees, tropical plants in giant pots, and Sigerson standing with a much younger blond man on a terrace of some sort. Women in saris stood in the background.

“Sven Hedin!” cried Mr. Helmer Halvorsen Vollebæk.

“Yes, I’m sorry,” said Sigerson. “This slide is out of sequence. I asked an acquaintance to take this photo in Bombay when I stopped there to see Sven Anders Hedin.”

“May we inquire who Mr. Sven Anders Hedin is?” asked Clarence King, rising to pour himself more brandy from a decanter on a side table.

“Oh, Mr. Hedin is one of Norway’s most promising young explorers and alpinists,” replied Mr. Vollebæk. “He is only twenty-eight yet already he has shown glimpses of his great accomplishments to come.”

“In Bombay, Sven told me that he decided to become an explorer when he was fifteen years old,” said Sigerson, stepping back from the heat rising from the projector’s chimney. “He witnessed the triumphant return of our nation’s great Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld and then and there decided his future profession.”

“I am surprised that young Hedin did not cross the passes into Nepal with you, Mr. Sigerson,” said Clarence King.

Sigerson nodded. “Hedin was seriously ill with recurring malaria when I visited him in Bombay,” he said softly. “But this autumn he should be embarked upon his first great quest—a multi-year exploration of Central Asia.”

The large glass slide rasped in its mechanism, and the image on the screen changed. Most of the men in the room gasped.

“The Potala . . . the temple-residence of the Dalai Lama in Lhasa in the heart of Tibet,” said Sigerson.

Henry James, who had also gasped at the photo, tried to take in the impossible scale of the palace. Were those saffron-colored specks at the bottom of the golden staircase actually human beings?