Could this be Balkh, this empty field of arid mounds where herd boys tended goats and wandering Kochis came to camp? This expanse of buried rubble with no plaques, no banners, not even a line of brick indicating where the great libraries had once stood … could this be the end of the city?
I felt inconsolably lonely, as if I were lost in the paralyzing sweep of history, a shard left by time. I felt like crying out in protest, and when I saw our faltering caravan approaching—one camel, one donkey, for Balkh—I could not find solace even in the thought that Mira would soon be with me.
At Rome the imperial ruins had also depressed me, but only for a moment, because it required no great imagination to believe that something of that grandeur persisted. But in Afghanistan my depression not only affected me; it also permeated the land and the culture and the people. It was difficult to believe that civilization had ever graced this arid waste or that it could return. At miserable Ghazni, at silent Qala Bist, at The City, at faceless Barman and here at Balkh nothing remained. Were the generations indifferent to history, allowing their finest monuments to disappear while Rome retained hers? Or was it simply that Asia was different, its conquerors so terrible that western man could not visualize their cargoes of horror?
Many times I had crossed the path of Genghis Khan, merely one of the scourges and not necessarily the worst, and each time I had stood where he had erased a population. Perhaps a society cannot absorb such repeated punishments. Perhaps the scourging does something to the minds of men, converting citizens into frightened nomads who feel safe only when carrying their goods with them under their own surveillance. Perhaps it was Genghis Khan who explained why the Kochis and the Kizilbash and the Tajiks remained wanderers with no fixed civilization to sustain them.
Brooding in the moonlight at Balkh, I found increased respect for men like Moheb Khan, Nazrullah, and my preceptor Zulfiqar, who were determined to build a new Afghanistan that would conserve the memories of Ghazni and Balkh yet build upon the newer ideas of Russia and America. Had I been an Afghan, I would have allied myself to these impatient men.
As I reached this conclusion Maftoon brought his little caravan to the ruins, where for the past centuries the Kochis had camped, and while he and Stiglitz unrolled the tent Ellen came to me in the moonlight and said generously, “I’m sorry, Miller, that we quarreled so much on this trip. I’ve been struggling to find understanding.”
“Found any?”
“Some. When it looked as if Otto might die in the duel, I did learn one important fact. That life of itself is good. I found myself praying that he would live.”
“It’s lucky he did,” I replied. “You and he are bound to accomplish some great thing in Afghanistan.”
“The non-people don’t accomplish,” she corrected gently. “They exist, and from them the world takes hope.”
“One thing makes me feel better, Ellen. At last I have a glimmer of what you’re talking about. But I’m like Nazrullah … committed to working for the civilization I’m caught in.”
She smiled warmly and grasped my hands, and the effect was as electrifying as before. “How adorable of you, Miller, how predictable! To say a thing like that at Balkh.”
“Why Balkh?” I asked.
“Don’t you know that at the apex of their history the people here talked just like you? The mullahs proclaimed, ‘Allah has this city in His special care. No harm can befall it.’ And the generals boasted, ‘Our forts are impregnable. No enemy can reach us.’ And the bankers were especially reassuring: ‘Last year our gross city product rose four percent We can all afford two slaves in every kitchen.’ And here is Balkh. And here is New York.”
“Do you honestly believe that the same thing will happen to New York?” I asked, and immediately I was irritated with myself, for I had to recall my own thoughts when traveling down the ruins of The City: This is Route One between New York and Richmond.
“I believe that this is the future,” Ellen replied. “But you mustn’t. Because you’re young. You’re destined to go back to Boston and work there the way Nazrullah will work in Kandahar. I shall pray for you both, but I will never believe in what you’re doing. It’s really of no consequence … none whatever.”
I told her, “I’ll try to explain to your parents,” and she was on the verge of speaking about them contemptuously when she changed her mind and kissed me, not politely on the cheeks but full on the lips with that abundance of love which had marked her life, and for a moment I comprehended the passion which had carried her so chaotically to Balkh. The impact of her kiss was like the touch of her hand at the dancing: it conveyed the sense of a woman with tremendous vital power and against my better judgment I was driven to wonder: What might have happened had I met her in the States? In reply I heard the Haverford College boy telling the F.B.I. agent: I always felt that somebody else might have kept Ellen on the track. But 1 will admit this. I wasn’t the man to do it.
I was about to break away when, to my surprise, she gripped my shoulders and kissed me again, desperately. “I wish I’d met you in America. After you’d learned what you have in Afghanistan.” She brushed the hair from her forehead and looked at the ruins of Balkh. “No, I’d have been horrid for you. These ruins were in my bones.” Laughing nervously she added, “Besides, you’re so young and hopeful. And I’ve always been so very old.”
As she said this the moonlight played upon her lovely face. Her body swayed backward in the gray blouse that Racha had embroidered, and her bare legs showed beneath the black skirt of the Kochis. Her ankles were caught by thongs from her sandals and she was beyond comparison the most vital and attractive woman I had ever seen. This time it was I who kissed her, and with a violence of consent she pressed her beauty into my arms and against my face and through my being. I was astonished by the overwhelming power of her response and betrayed my fear that the others might see us, but with a practiced eye she calculated that the men would be occupied for some time with the tent while little Mira would remain engaged in unloading the camel.
“They won’t miss us,” she assured me as she sought a hiding place among the mounds. She found one and beckoned.
“What are you doing?” I asked in astonishment.
She had kicked off her sandals and was untying the cord that held her skirt. “Didn’t we just agree that life of itself was good? Let’s enjoy it.” When I hesitated she argued, “What difference would it make if they did find us?”
The idea stunned me and I remained where I was. “Mira would make the difference,” I stammered.
“Don’t you want to?” she asked provocatively, as the skirt fell about her ankles.
“You know I do.”
“Then come on,” and with ravishing grace she stepped from the fallen garment
I knew that any man who hesitated at such a moment was bound to look pathetic, both to the girl and to himself, and I longed to join those slim, inviting legs. Instead I heard myself making the most improbable reply: “You shouldn’t do this to Stiglitz.”
With a kind of disgust—whether at me or Stiglitz or Mira I did not know—she recovered her skirt and refastened the cord. “I’ve done everything for Stiglitz I could,” she said. Barefooted she came to me and whispered, “Besides, sooner or later the Russians are bound to get him.”
Her callousness seemed as bleak as the desert and now I was glad that I had not followed her deeper into the dunes. “What happened to your idealism about Stiglitz?” I asked. “A few minutes ago you said you had prayed for him to live.”
“He lived.”
I thought: I’ll bet she used the same kind of argument with Stiglitz when she was inviting him to move in on Zulfiqar. But Otto, Zulfiqar’s busy with other things. He won’t care. And she had been right. “Your flowery ideas about the non-people?” I asked. “You give them up? For a couple of days back there you had me convinced.”
“Ideas come and go,” she replied. Recovering her sandals, she said, “You know very well what we ought to d
o. Get us a sleeping bag and leave that tent right now.”
“With Mira there?”
“I warned you on the trail that you were taking Mira too seriously. Besides, in a couple of days shell be back with her father.”
I drew away, appalled. “At Bamian you made fun of men who play what you called the point game. Right now I appreciate how important that game is. I honestly believe that if I treat Mira decently I get a point in my favor. And whether you like it or not, if you kick Stiglitz around, you lose points.”
“With whom?” she asked contemptuously. “The Divine Scorekeeper?”
“No, damn it all. With me.” She started to laugh and I got angry. “You reject religion. I don’t. Millions of Jews are dead because they took religion seriously. So do I.”
“Miller!” she cried, almost loud enough for the others to hear. “You don’t take being a Jew seriously, do you?”
“Skip it,” I said impatiently, sorry that I had raised the subject. “But the way you reject religion —what were you, Presbyterian?” She laughed and I added, “You know, Ellen, if you took Islam seriously…”
“I might be saved?” she asked mockingly.
“It wouldn’t take much to save you. The more I hear you bleat about Dorset, Pennsylvania, the more convinced I become that it must be a pretty fair place. You ought to try it some time.”
She laughed again and I became embarrassed with my prosaic philosophy and inept performance as a lover. I started back to camp but had moved only a few steps when she overtook me and grasped my arm. Again I could feel the lovely urgency of her body as she made an honest effort to conciliate our quarrel. Without rancor she asked, “Seriously, Miller, doesn’t it make you self-conscious? Sentimental speeches like this … at Balkh, of all places?”
Her words were forceful and they made me stop. I looked at the undulating graveyard of the great city and saw, in my imagination, the rise and fall of Balkh—Balkh of the Flying Pennants it had been called, as if the city were proud to advertise its accomplishments, temporary though they proved to be—and I sensed some of the meaning behind my mission. I said, “I don’t accept your view of Balkh. Cities crumble and civilizations vanish, but people go on. And damn it all, they eat and make love and go to war and die according to certain hopeful rules. I accept those rules.”
“The rules?” she asked quietly. “They don’t permit you to make love?” She moved close to me and I saw her in the moonlight, as beautiful a girl as I would ever know, more provocative a dozen times than Mira. “The rules won’t permit you?” she repeated.
“Not with Mira over there,” I fumbled.
“In the morning? Won’t you feel like an idiot?”
“How do you suppose I feel now.” I grasped her hands and said, “You’re marvelously beautiful, Ellen.”
She was pleased that I had done this, and returned to her former imaginings. “Why didn’t we meet two years ago?” she asked softly. Then, more desperately, she cried, “Miller! Why didn’t you come to Bryn Mawr that spring! In your clean white uniform? With your courage and your hopes?” She dropped my hands and asked quietly, “Why weren’t you there?”
I left her and dodged among the mounds until I could present myself casually among the others. Improbably, they had not missed us and soon Ellen slipped inconspicuously back into the group she had been prepared to abuse. Once I caught sight of her unpacking the donkey, and as the night wind tugged at her hair she looked as if she had always been a part of these harsh, impersonal steppes.
It was now about three in the morning, and we made a little tea and pilau before going to bed, and as we sat about the fire Ellen said, through either accident or perversity, “Only a few miles up there is Russia.”
A visible chill came over Stiglitz, but no one remarked upon his fear, so Ellen added, “Wouldn’t you love to see what Samarkand looks like? They say its public square is the most exciting in the world.” No one responded to this, so after a while she said languidly, “I think I’ll go to bed,” and Stiglitz dutifully followed her.
To share the tent with her that night would have been impossible, so I dragged out my sleeping gear and Mira lugged along a pillow, but before we had left the camp Maftoon took me aside and like a conspirator slipped me his dagger: “You must keep this, Miller.”
“Why?”
“Because the German…”
“What about him?”
‘When you and Ellen were in the dunes, he crept over to listen.’ The little cameleer sucked his teeth, then added, ‘And remember, he has Zulfiqar’s dagger.’
I felt dizzy. “Does Mira know?” I asked.
“It was she who asked me to give you my dagger,” he explained. “She watched Stiglitz following you.” And he was oft.
When I rejoined Mira she said nothing, but ran her hands across my clothes till she felt Maftoon’s dagger. “It’s safer,” she said.
There was nothing I could reply, so we looked for a sleeping place and after a while she observed quietly, “You and Ellen are the best friends I have. All I know about being pretty she taught me. She’s a wonderful girl … like a sister. I told you, Miller, that she was hungry to sleep with you, but you laughed. After I go back with my father, why don’t you and Ellen …”
I took her brown hands and kissed them. “I’m here because it’s you I love,” and I told her of the discovery I made while being expelled from the Hindu Kush without her: “You will be part of my life forever.”
“Go to sleep,” she said. “We have not many more nights.”
The sun was well up when scraggly-bearded Maftoon hurried to where we slept and warned me. “Important government car from Kabul. Man to see you, Miller!”
I assumed this must be Richardson of Intelligence, so I dressed hastily in order that he should not see me with Mira, but when I reached the tent area I found that it was Moheb Khan looking very official in a tan sharkskin suit and silver karakul cap. He was patting his stolen white horse, behind which, to my surprise, I saw Nazrullah, come north to reclaim his lawful wife. Instinctively I felt sorry for him, and because I had not seen him since his forced trip across the Dasht-i-Margo I hurried first to him, embraced him warmly and asked, “How was the desert?”
“As always, hateful.”
“We kept our fingers crossed.”
Now Moheb Khan interrupted, speaking with severity: “How’d you get my horse?”
I couldn’t tell whether he was truly angry or merely joking, so I temporized: “Mira bought him in Kabul.”
Moheb brushed dust from his suit and asked, “You certainly knew it was mine. Didn’t you guess it was stolen?”
“Was it?” I bluffed.
Moheb was unable to continue the pose and began laughing. “You know how it is. You find a pretty girl. You roll over thinking, ‘This is going to be a night of passion.’ And you find that your white horse has been stolen.”
“Don’t punish her.”
“Did she steal it for you?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’s you I curse. For eight weeks you ride and I walk.”
I replied, “You know how love is. Roll over again. There’s your white horse, well fed and cared for.”
Now Mira appeared on one of the mounds lugging our sleeping gear, which told its own story, and when she saw Moheb Khan, from whom she had stolen the horse, she dropped the bedclothes and started running for the tent, but I caught her by the wrist.
“Little thief!” Moheb snarled.
Mira was like me. She didn’t know whether Moheb was joking or not, but her irrepressible nature asserted itself—or perhaps she remembered Moheb in some earlier pose—for she broke out laughing and pointed with derision at the handsome Afghan. Making involved gestures, which could only be interpreted as the pantomime of her escape through a bedroom window to steal the white horse, she soon had Moheb laughing with her.
But then Mira saw Nazrullah and recognized him by his beard. “You’re Ellen’s husband!” she cried in disma
y, and the involuntary manner in which she moved protectively before the tent proved that Nazrullah’s wife must be inside. Slowly, step by step, Mira retreated, bowed ceremoniously and ducked into the tent.
“Is Ellen there?” the engineer asked me.
“Yes.”
He started for the tent but I stopped him. “Is the big Kochi with her?” he asked suspiciously.
And suddenly I realized that whole new cycles of adventure had engulfed his wife, none of which I fully understood but some of which I was myself involved in. At any rate, I couldn’t explain these new developments to Nazrullah, so I stammered, “Look, this is going to be difficult to get into focus. But that big Kochi…”
I was spared by the appearance of Ellen and Stiglitz. What kind of hateful truce they had patched up during the night I couldn’t guess, but in the morning sunlight Ellen Jaspar was dazzling, and if her husband was still determined to win her back, I could sympathize, for when I saw her in daylight I had to say, against my own conscience: It’s you she wants to leave with, you idiot. Move in. Move in fast.
Nazrullah was bewildered by the facts before him and refused to accept their implications. As if nothing had happened, he stepped forward to greet his wife. “I’ve come to fetch you,” he said. “You remember Moheb Khan. Moheb, this is Dr. Otto Stiglitz.”
The tall diplomat bowed gracefully and shook hands. “We’ll drive you back to Qala Bist,” he said to Ellen with a studied air which seemed to say: We’re going to give you one chance. Don’t mess it up.
“I’m not going,” she said firmly, whereupon Moheb Khan shrugged his shoulders and withdrew from the conversation. He had made a conciliatory offer and it had been rejected.