Toward four he got to the heart of his chronicle: “Finally, when we were winning the war on all fronts—it was 1941—they came to me and said, We’re looking for a director of research. Military problems of the gravest significance. Involved is the final destruction of England.’ What could I say? I was flattered.
“They gave me a fine laboratory in Munich. I could live at home.” He seemed to savor, here in the Afghan desert, those bright visions of a happy German home life in Munich. “I could live at home,” he explained persuasively, as if eager to convince me. “I had to take the job, you can see that. At first it was routine experiments on colds … very sensible, very productive. I believe they’re selling in America now a cold remedy that came from my researches. I convinced myself that I was helping win the war.
“I enjoyed other successes and then one day in 1943 they asked me to explore a purely theoretical question: How much cold can a human being tolerate? Now that’s a nice question. A very important one, militarily speaking.” He paused a long time to stare at the pillar, then laughed in a high-pitched giggle. “Without my knowing it, we were about to conduct pragmatic experiments on the same subject … at Stalingrad.” He laughed openly. Undoubtedly he had used the joke before.
“A fascinating medical question, Herr Miller,” he said reflectively. “How much cold can a human being tolerate? Yesterday, for example. You were very hot … thought you couldn’t take any more. But Nazrullah said, ‘You can discipline yourself,’ and the thermometer rose fourteen degrees and you did discipline yourself. How much heat could you have stood? That’s a nice question. How much cold … I remember the exact phrasing because I wrote it down the day they posed it. You see, Herr Miller, I have a love for keeping records. Yesterday I could sympathize with John Pritchard when he said, ‘I must have the records.’ Because it is only from careful records that science can …” His voice broke and he dropped his head in his hands. His turban fell off and I could see the gray hairs on his stubbly head; I could see his shoulders moving up and down, silently. Finally he put his hand on my knee and said, “The English captured my records. I was meticulous. I was meticulous.”
For some minutes we said nothing, then he rose, overcome by a terrible emotion which I did not try to specify, and walked about the pillar several times, his mouth moving as if he were making a speech. The flickering light—the Coleman lamp gives a very white light and throws facial shadows in deep relief—made him look old. Suddenly he leaned against the pillar and issued a flood of words: “In the cage there was this Jew. About fifty years old, a fine human being. His name … you can check this in the records … was Sem Levin. I had tried all sorts of experiments and had proved what required to be proved, but I had not applied my findings to an average, healthy man like the older soldiers in our army. So I chose Sem Levin. I chose him right from a nondescript group in the cage. I told my aide, ‘That’s the man! Now we’ll see what’s what.’”
He hesitated. He could look from the pillar to where I sat and he must have seen the horror and revulsion rising in my face, but he could not silence himself. “Each morning we put Sem Levin completely naked into a room whose temperature could be exactly controlled. We dropped it lower and lower. After eight hours’ exposure we discharged him and he returned to the cage filled with nondescript Jews. At first he merely dressed and talked with them. Later, when he joined them blue with cold, two fat middle-aged Jewish women began caring for him. They took his frozen body and held it between them, as if he were a baby. Everyone in the cage who had clothes to spare piled them over the three Jews, the two fat women and shivering Sem Levin.
“I grew to hate this tough little Jew, because each time he entered that room he announced quietly, ‘I am still alive.’ And when he said this, the Jews cheered, no matter what we had done to them that day. ‘I am still alive.’ Now it became with them a matter of honor to keep him alive. They saved food for him. Massaged him. Stole medicine for him. And from their resolve he too became determined not to die.
“No man could have withstood what he withstood. He’d come back to the cage with his dirty little penis shriveled up and blue, and he’d say, ‘I am still alive.’ And the fat women, remembering their husbands dead somewhere in Germany, would take him in their arms.
“It was at this point, when pneumonia was about to begin, that he started greeting me each morning with the same statement. Very polite. ‘Good morning, Herr Professor. I am still alive.’”
Stiglitz leaned against the pillar, weak with horror. Then he said in a ghost-like voice well suited to the silent room, “And all the time my filthy wife was going to bed with anyone who had a little authority.” He looked at me with the beseeching face a man uses when he is beyond personal salvation and asks help of a priest or a rabbi. In a kind of wail he protested, “But I was honest about the experiment. I could have killed Sem Levin any time I wished, and silenced that speech: ‘I am still alive.’ No, I held rigorously to the schedule as planned. We lowered the degrees day by day. My records will show that … exactly as planned.
“Much later than anyone would have dared predict, this dirty little Jew”—ten minutes ago he had been a fine human being—“contracted pneumonia. He should have died. By all human precedent he should have died. But those fat women somehow infused life into him. All that I took away they gave back. On the last three days he could scarcely make his voice heard, but he rasped, ‘Good morning, Herr Professor. I am still alive.’
“Finally we broke him. Would you believe it, Miller, he spent three days stark naked in a room two degrees above zero, your system.”
Neither of us spoke. Then, in a wild rage, he shouted, “That’s why, you stupid American, I could not make the decision yesterday. John Pritchard would have refused to live if we had left him there. If Sem Levin could refuse to die, why couldn’t Pritchard refuse to live? Tell me that, Mr. Know-it-all.”
“What happened?” I asked in unconcealed horror.
“He died. Two full weeks after we had predicted … fourteen days … he died. The man in charge was so infuriated with the fat women that he sent the whole cage full of Jews away.”
“Away?” I shouted. “Say it. Where?”
“Away,” he repeated dully. Then quickly: “I don’t know where he sent them. He signed the order … the other man.”
“Stiglitz,” I said quietly, trying to keep control of myself, “you’re lying.”
“No, no, Heir Miller. It was he who signed the order.”
“You’re lying,” I repeated, not moving.
“No, before God, he signed the order. For Sem Levin I was responsible. That I admit The records will prove my guilt regarding him. But the others …”
“Stiglitz!” I screamed, driven to my feet by an impulse outside me. “I am a Jew!”
He stared at me in awful disbelief, then drew back against the pillar. He tried to laugh, as if I were joking. He moved his mouth to speak but could say nothing, and failing, ran behind the pillar for protection. “Herr Miller …” he gasped weakly.
“I’m going to kill you,” I threatened, making a lunge at him, but he used the pillar adroitly to protect himself, and I did not touch him.
In the large room there was no furniture, no weapon of any kind except the knife he had used for scraping away the plaster. It had been left lying on the earth near where I stood, but I didn’t see it. To my surprise, Stiglitz left the protection of the pillar and made a lunge at me. I felt I could handle him, although he was heavier than I, and I got set to tackle him head on, but my preparation was useless, because he had no interest in me. With a swoop, he fell on the knife and leaped to his feet, jubilant.
“I’m going to kill you,” I repeated slowly. “For Sem Levin and the others in the cage.” He grinned at me, holding the knife awkwardly with both hands before his chest, and I made a strong feint to the right, then a drive to the left, aiming a kick at his groin. I caught him well and sent him down in a screaming heap, with the useless knife still held
before his chest. Had there been a chair in the room, I would have killed him then, beating him to death, but since I had only my hands, I refrained from leaping on him. Instead, I started kicking at him savagely as he lay huddled on the floor. Then, with a second feint at his head, I drove in with a powerful kick at his stomach, straightening him out and sending the knife softly into the dust. I made a football lunge at him and caught his throat in my hands.
I was about to strangle him when the great door of the serai creaked open, admitting daylight and a tall Afghan. With a deep voice he asked in Pashto, “Who would fight in a serai?” I looked up and saw above me a dark-faced man with mustaches and a flowing turban. Across his chest were bandoleers and in his belt a silver-handled dagger.
“Who would fight in a serai?” he repeated.
There was no reason,” I replied in Pashto, scrambling to my feet.
“Good,” he cried, and with a deft kick of his booted foot spun our knife against the wall, where it fell quietly to earth. Recovering it, he jammed it into his belt beside his own and said, “The knife I will keep.”
As he spoke, other men began filing into the fort and finally a woman, tall and stalwart, with bangles in her nose and no chaderi. Then I recognized who the intruders were: the Povindahs I had seen at Ghazni, and this tall man with the two daggers was the one whom Nur and I had met that day on horseback.
He seemed to recognize me too, for he turned away and strode to the door, where he issued commands which I could not hear. When he returned, additional men appeared bearing bits of wood and utensils, which they carried to the center of the room, where a substantial fire was started.
When it was well ablaze, with smoke drifting out a hole in the ceiling, three Povindah women marched in with that wild, matchless gait I had admired in Ghazni. They were dressed in good gray blouses and black skirts, and since they passed close to me and wore no chaderies, I stared at them and found them handsome … not beautiful in any way but handsome.
After they had taken their places about the fire another Povindah entered, and she was not only handsome; she was bewitching, a saucy pigtailed girl of seventeen or eighteen, dressed in red skirt and pink blouse. We looked at each other, and I recognized her as the girl chasing the goat at Ghazni, and I saw that in her nose she wore no bangles and that her face was extremely clean and sensitive. She kept looking at me as she moved toward the fire and seemed to smile, as if she recognized me, and the grace of her movement reminded me of the gazelles, who could twist and turn at any moment, and so we stared at each other until the man with the bandoleers cried roughly, “Mira!” And the girl went to him for instructions which I did not hear.
She either did not understand what the leader directed or she thought his words unwise, for she stood perplexed, whereupon he gave her a shove and cried, “Mira, do as I say.” He propelled her from the serai and I had to assume that he was angry with her for having paraded before me, but I was wrong.
For soon she appeared at the door bringing with her a most beautiful young woman with blond hair, fair complexion and sparkling blue eyes. She was obviously not a Povindah, even though she was dressed as one in black skirt and bracelets. It had to be Ellen Jaspar—tanned from long hours of marching in the sun, slim, vibrant, more challenging even than her photographs.
I can’t recall now what I had expected Ellen to look like: vaguely, I had supposed she would be brittle, or obviously neurotic, or reticent with an overt fear of sex, or generally odd-ball like the typical college girl who reacts negatively to the world. She was none of these. Not a single cliché of the sterile revolutionary was visible in this unmarked, wonderful face, and I could hear Richardson of Intelligence saying in the embassy: I’d date that one. She’s stunning.
Then I understood why her husband, when I had asked him on the desert if she were in Afghanistan, had looked first to the eastern and western stars, judging from them that it was the season when his wife would return to this country with the march of the nomads. Any man who had ever known Ellen Jaspar would keep in his mind a schedule of her movements. It was to this band of Povindahs that she had run away, and I stepped forward to introduce myself and to tell her that I had come to rescue her. But before I could speak, she nodded slightly, as if she already knew who I was, and hurried past me to where Dr. Stiglitz remained in a dazed condition on the ground.
I remember clearly that her lips started to form a word, then stopped. On her second attempt she cried, “Dr. Stiglitz!” He looked up, saw who it was, and more or less collapsed, hiding his face from what he could scarcely believe.
She knelt beside him, took his hands and gently pulled him from the ground. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Madame Nazrullah, I can’t believe …”
Having restored him to his feet, she left him abruptly and came to me, her blond hair peeking from beneath an embroidered Asian cap. Standing before me she said graciouly, “I’m Ellen Jaspar, and you must be Mark Miller from the American embassy.”
“How did you know?” I asked in some confusion.
“Our people followed you at the execution in Ghazni,” she explained.
In some strange way her composure made me feel out of place, and I didn’t know what to say. “I’m glad to find you alive,” I fumbled.
She suppressed a smile and said, “The savages have treated me rather well.” Then she moved to the side of the tall leader and linked her arm with his in one of those automatic gestures which cannot be explained but which betray everything … only a woman who is living with a man ever makes that particular movement. Ellen Jaspar had run off with the leader of a nomad caravan, and it must have been this improbable rumor that had reached Shah Khan in Kabul. Little wonder that he had refused to repeat it or have it attributed to him in our embassy records.
“This is Zulfiqar,” Ellen announced.
“Is the feud ended?” the big nomad asked Stiglitz and me. When we nodded he cried, “Then let us eat!” And I had my first meal with the nomads.
We had not finished breakfast when two Povindah boys with darting eyes and quick gestures—the kind who steal you blind in a bazaar—came yelling that a jeep was hidden in one of the rooms. The Povindahs piled out to see the vehicle and Zulfiqar demanded, “Whose is it?”
“Mine,” I said.
“Why is it here?”
I pointed to the broken axle and explained, “I hit rocks on the dasht.”
“What were you doing on the dasht?”
The Povindahs gathered round, and since Dr. Stiglitz was still unnerved by the unforeseen consequences of the pillar, I had to explain Pritchard’s death in Pashto. Having done so, I began translating into English for Ellen, but she interrupted, in good Pashto, “I learned the language.”
When we returned to our breakfast, Zulfiqar surprised me by inquiring bluntly, “Now what do you want to ask us about Ellen?” He pronounced her name gently, in two careful syllables: Ellen.
I turned to Ellen and asked, “When you first saw me … how did you know who I was?”
Zulfiqar replied. “They told us in Ghazni.”
“No one in Ghazni knew what I was doing,” I protested.
At this Zulfiqar laughed and indicated with his thumb that Ellen was to speak. She brushed back her blond hair and chuckled. “Two minutes after you arrived in Ghazni, Mira saw you in the bazaar.”
“There were no women in the bazaar at Ghazni.”
“Mira is everywhere.”
“Is that true of all Povindahs?”
The indulgent smile on Zulfiqar’s face disappeared and he banged his extended fingertips onto the rug from which we were eating. “We’re not Povindahs!” he exploded. “That’s an ugly name given us by the British. It means that we’re permitted”—his voice assumed much scorn—“permitted, if you will, to cross into their lands. We are the Kochis, the Wanderers, and we ask no nation’s permission to cross boundaries. It was we who established the boundaries, centuries ago!” He subsided, but warned me quiet
ly, “We are the Kochis.”
Ellen resumed: “Mira saw you in the bazaar and sprinted back to camp to warn us that a ferangi was in town. She already knew that you were from the embassy, had a jeep, traveled with an Afghan driver who worked for the government, and that you were headed for Kandahar. Don’t ask me how she knew.”
I looked at Mira, whose dark eyes were flashing satisfaction. She smiled, but said nothing.
“When you attended the stoning of the woman, three of our men were spying on you. Later they talked with your armed guards. They found you were headed for Qala Bist, and when you hiked out to our camp at the edge of Ghazni, I watched you from the tents.”
Zulfiqar smiled again and said, “She wanted to speak then, but I argued, ‘No. Don’t spoil his fun. He’s a young man. Let him go to Qala Bist. Find out for himself. Let him follow us across the desert. He’ll talk about it the rest of his life.’”
I was struck by his shrewdness and recalled the things I would have missed: Kandahar, the arch at Qala Bist, The City, and this caravanserai. In some way I must have betrayed my thoughts, for with a twist of his hand he imitated a man fighting with a knife and observed, “A caravanserai at dawn … who would steal this from a young man?”
I looked at Zulfiqar with new respect and reminded him, “You offered to answer my questions. Why is Miss Jaspar here?”
With no resentment he explained. “Last September we camped for three days at Qala Bist. On our way to winter quarters at Jhelum. And this American woman came out from the fort to visit with our children … with our women. She spoke some Pashto and our people talked. She asked them where we were going, and they said, the Jhelum. She asked by what route, and they told her Spin Baldak, Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu, Nowshera, Rawalpindi. As we were leaving she came to me and said, ‘I’d like to travel with your caravan!’ I asked her why, and she replied …”
“I said,” Ellen interrupted in Pashto, “that I would like to march with the free people.”