I ask myself now how I could have loved; but then, how could I in one week have come so near to loving this corpse-country? Its eagle is dead—Ardis is the proper symbol of its rule.
One hope, one very small hope, remains. It is possible that what I saw tonight was only an illusion, induced by the egg. I know now that the thing I killed before Ardis’s father’s house was real, and between this paragraph and the last I have eaten the last egg. If hallucinations now begin, I will know that what I saw by the light of the blazing arrack was in truth a thing with which I have lain, and in one way or another will see to it that I never return to corrupt the clean wombs of the women of our enduring race. I might seek to claim the miniatures of our heritage after all, and allow the guards to kill me—but what if I were to succeed? I am not fit to touch them. Perhaps the best end for me would be to travel alone into this maggot-riddled continent; in that way I will die at fit hands.
Later, Kreton is walking in the hall outside my door, and the tread of his twisted black shoes jars the building like an earthquake. I heard the word police as though it were thunder. My dead Ardis, very small and bright, has stepped out of the candle flame, and there is a hairy face coming through the window.
The old woman closed the notebook. The younger woman, who had been reading over her shoulder, moved to the other side of the small table and seated herself on a cushion, her feet politely positioned so that the soles could not be seen. “He is alive then,” she said.
The older woman remained silent, her gray head bowed over the notebook, which she held in both hands.
“He is certainly imprisoned, or ill; otherwise he would have been in touch with us.” The younger woman paused, smoothing the fabric of her chador with her right hand, while the left toyed with the gem simulator she wore on a thin chain. “It is possible that he has already tried, but his letters have miscarried.”
“You think this is his writing?” the older woman asked, opening the notebook at random. When the younger did not answer she added, “Perhaps. Perhaps.”
Have you read The last camel died at noon? It’s a mystery by Elizabeth Peters, and stars a young and attractive Egyptologist named Amelia Peabody. (Do you think there are no attractive young Egyptologists? I know one.) I love those books, and I love the Victorians who probed Africa when almost nothing was known about it. Sir Samuel Baker, that hero of boys’ stories come to life, the wellborn Englishman who bought his wife at a slave auction, is a hero of mine and always will be.
What about us? Who will probe our ruins? Who will come to Washington as we come to Athens? There are myriad ways to answer these questions. The story you have just read is only one of them.
The Detective of Dreams
I was writing in my office in the rue Madeleine when Andrée, my secretary, announced the arrival of Herr D——. I rose, put away my correspondence, and offered him my hand. He was, I should say, just short of fifty, had the high, clear complexion characteristic of those who in youth (now unhappily past for both of us) have found more pleasure in the company of horses and dogs and the excitement of the chase than in the bottles and bordels of city life, and wore a beard and mustache of the style popularized by the late emperor. Accepting my invitation to a chair, he showed me his papers.
“You see,” he said, “I am accustomed to acting as the representative of my government. In this matter I hold no such position, and it is possible that I feel a trifle lost.”
“Many people who come here feel lost,” I said. “But it is my boast that I find most of them again. Your problem, I take it, is purely a private matter?”
“Not at all. It is a public matter in the truest sense of the words.”
“Yet none of the documents before me—admirably stamped, sealed, and beribboned though they are—indicates that you are other than a private gentleman traveling abroad. And you say you do not represent your government. What am I to think? What is this matter?”
“I act in the public interest,” Herr D——told me. “My fortune is not great, but I can assure you that in the event of your success you will be well recompensed; although you are to take it that I alone am your principal, yet there are substantial resources available to me.”
“Perhaps it would be best if you described the problem to me?”
“You are not averse to travel?”
“No.”
“Very well then,” he said, and so saying launched into one of the most astonishing relations—no, the most astonishing relation—I have ever been privileged to hear. Even I, who had at firsthand the account of the man who found Paulette Renan with the quince seed still lodged in her throat; who had received Captain Brotte’s testimony concerning his finds amid the Antarctic ice; who had heard the history of the woman called Joan O’Neil, who lived for two years behind a painting of herself in the Louvre, from her own lips—even I sat like a child while this man spoke.
When he fell silent, I said, “Herr D——, after all you have told me, I would accept this mission though there were not a sou to be made from it. Perhaps once in a lifetime one comes across a case that must be pursued for its own sake; I think I have found mine.”
He leaned forward and grasped my hand with a warmth of feeling that was, I believe, very foreign to his usual nature. “Find and destroy the Dream-Master,” he said, “and you shall sit upon a chair of gold, if that is your wish, and eat from a table of gold as well. When will you come to our country?”
“Tomorrow morning,” I said. “There are one or two arrangements I must make here before I go.”
“I am returning tonight. You may call upon me at any time, and I will apprise you of new developments.” He handed me a card. “I am always to be found at this address—if not I, then one who is to be trusted, acting in my behalf.”
“I understand.”
“This should be sufficient for your initial expenses. You may call on me should you require more.” The check he gave me as he turned to leave represented a comfortable fortune.
I waited until he was nearly out the door before saying, “I thank you, Herr Baron.” To his credit, he did not turn; but I had the satisfaction of seeing a red flush rising above the precise white line of his collar before the door closed.
Andrée entered as soon as he had left. “Who was that man? When you spoke to him—just as he was stepping out of your office—he looked as if you had struck him with a whip.”
“He will recover,” I told her. “He is the Baron H——, of the secret police of K——. D——was his mother’s name. He assumed that because his own desk is a few hundred kilometers from mine, and because he does not permit his likeness to appear in the daily papers, I would not know him; but it was necessary, both for the sake of his opinion of me and my own of myself, that he should discover that I am not so easily deceived. When he recovers from his initial irritation, he will retire tonight with greater confidence in the abilities I will devote to the mission he has entrusted to me.”
“It is typical of you, monsieur,” Andrée said kindly, “that you are concerned that your clients sleep well.”