Barry Unsworth - Land of Marvels

“It is true, please believe me. I used it every single day. The Germans, they have dynamite in a shed below us here. I have watched, I have seen it. It is used to make gravel for the bed of the track. This shed is kept locked, but a lock can be broken. I also have experience of breaking locks.”

“Are you actually proposing to steal their dynamite? Apart from being a crime, what good would it do? I can only think that you are joking.”

“Lord, the joke will be against them. We will blow up their sheds before they can start transporting the rails. We will use their own dynamite to do it, that is a good joke, no? It will be much better than blowing up the track. The line cannot proceed without these materials. It will take them weeks to replace them, as many weeks as it took to bring them here. If you will promise Jehar one hundred gold pounds, he will do this for you, he will save your treasure. You have but to say the word, and it is done.”

Somerville could never afterward recollect the exact words with which he had rejected this outrageous proposal; he knew only that they had been angry and emphatic. The proposal itself, on the other hand, remained in his mind with total clarity: all the circumstances of it; Jehar’s words and the eagerness with which he had uttered them; the look of joy his face had worn. All this remained vividly present to him in the time that followed, as he supervised the work of clearing the steps that were now seen to give access to a vaulted chamber.

It was during this period too that further visitors arrived, unexpected and unannounced, all on the same day, first a Swedish couple, man and wife, who smilingly introduced themselves as seekers after truth and were members of the Society for Biblical Research, which had links all over the world, they said. They were always grateful, as they also said, for the generous hospitality they had invariably found on their travels. They had come from Abu Kemal on the Euphrates, where there was a Swedish mission house. Then, some hours later, a Swiss journalist arrived. He had been commissioned to write an article about Mesopotamian archaeology and in particular about the men and women engaged in it, the successors to the great figures of the mid-nineteenth century, Botta, Layard, Rassam. He was hoping, he said, to interview Somerville and anyone else who cared to talk to him at Tell Erdek. He had a camera, and he was proposing to include photographs in his article—photographs of the people and the places.

It was thus a strange and ill-assorted company that sat down to dinner that evening, the newcomers in their different ways adding to the incongruities already existing, the Swedish couple effusive in manner and frequently exchanging smiles, the softly spoken, gentle-mannered Swiss waiting patiently for the time when Somerville, who grew more and more secretive as his discoveries promised to be important, would grant him an interview. A certain atmosphere of constraint hung over the table, with the major seeming more stiff and bristling even than usual, Elliott silent and preoccupied, Somerville prey to a temptation still unadmitted, Edith absorbed in thoughts of how appearances could deceive: Who could have ever suspected that Major Manning, such a perfect type of British army officer, as she had thought, could be in the pay of a foreign power and working against the interests of his own country, was little better than a spy, in fact. And the Russians, of all people, so backward and savage.

It was the major who, whether advertently or not, brought an increased vivacity into the conversation. “I don’t really see where all this research business comes in,” he said, addressing the Swedish couple, who had asked if the seating plan could be changed so as to allow them to sit side by side—something, they explained, they always liked to do no matter what the company. “I mean, either you are a believer or not. It’s a question of faith, not proof.” He had spoken in his characteristically clipped manner, though rather more irascibly than usual; he was feeling the strain of keeping up a constant watch for false moves on Elliott’s part, and he had, in any case, a rooted aversion to missionaries of any persuasion, regarding them basically as troublemakers who unsettled the subject peoples and made the colonies more difficult to govern. “Look at India,” he was fond of saying. “Look at the Siege of Lucknow and the Black Hole of Calcutta. That’s what comes of busybodies meddling with people’s beliefs.”

“Excuse me, if I may ask, since you have raised the subject, are you yourself a believer?” This came from the husband, whose name was Johansson.

“Certainly I am,” Manning said. “God and the King.”

It was a remark of such baseness, made worse by the fact that for some reason the major had glanced toward Alex as he spoke, that Edith could not forbear a look of contempt in his direction, though she did not think he noticed this and after the first moment hoped he hadn’t; she had been sworn to secrecy, which meant of course behaving normally toward this wretched man.

“Well, I am glad,” Johansson said. “But it is our view, as members of the society, that faith in the message of salvation contained in the Scriptures is strengthened by showing beyond question that the facts are as related there.”

“Not the truth, that is absolute,” Mrs. Johansson said, “but our belief, our readiness to accept that truth.”

“Exactly, my dear,” Johansson said. “You do well to make the distinction.” The two exchanged a loving smile. They were dissimilar in appearance, though clearly identical in their views and in the excellent quality of their English. Johansson had a slow and weighty manner and a heavy, crumpled-looking face, rather appealing, with some fugitive likeness to a teddy bear in it, one that had been knocked about a bit but not in any spirit of malice. His wife was sharper of face and quicker of movement. Her hair was very fair and rather neglected-looking; strands from it escaped the containing band and fell forward over her brows; from time to time she made a sudden birdlike, preening movement, raising both hands as if to clear her vision.

“We too are archaeologists,” Johansson said, smiling at Somerville. “We are biblical archaeologists. Let me give you an example. On the eastern side of the island of Malta, on the Munxar Reef, members of our society have found the anchor stocks of the grain ship from Alexandria in which St. Paul and the Apostle Luke were voyaging when they were shipwrecked off this island, thus demonstrating the truth of the account as related in Acts Twenty-seven.”

Mrs. Johansson raised her head and parted her hair on her brow and spoke toward the ceiling: “ ‘Then fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern…” Her expression, solemnly exalted while she uttered the words, grew severe as she came to the end of them. “There are those,” she said, “and unfortunately there are members of the society among them, who try to belittle the importance of this discovery by insisting that the shipwreck took place off the coast of Dalmatia. They have no case, they have found no anchor stocks.”

“Then take Sodom and Gomorrah and the Cities of the Plain,” Johansson said. “Members of our society have located these cities, all five of them. They have found balls of brimstone embedded in a wide area of ash near the Dead Sea. Now, if you consult a dictionary, you will find that ‘brimstone’ is another word for sulfur. Golf-sized sulfur balls with burn marks all around them! You could not have a clearer truth of the words in Genesis Nineteen. No doubt you are familiar with them? ‘Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah…’ Chemical analysis of these balls has revealed that the brimstone is composed of ninety-six to ninety-eight percent sulfur, with traces of magnesium, a substance that creates an extremely high temperature burn. This is the only place on the earth where you can find this percentage of pure sulfur in a round ball.” He looked around the table, and his likeness to a battered teddy bear deepened as he broke into an upward-curving smile. “ Quod erat demonstrandum ,” he said.