It was Nazrullah who took over. “Please, Ellen. We have the car waiting.”
Stiglitz gave the answer: “She’s to stay with me. I’m sorry, Nazrullah.”
The engineer was determined not to surrender his wife and appealed to Moheb for support, but the diplomat ignored him and asked me, “Is this what happened? Stiglitz?” My nod triggered a dramatic barrage of decisions announced by Moheb.
First he blew a whistle, which was answered by a group of soldiers who had followed him in a truck. “I want that horse taken back to Kabul,” he ordered. “This man,” he snapped, indicating Stiglitz, “Is to be kept here under arrest. The American woman is not to leave this tent. You, Miller, get in the car. I want to interrogate you at headquarters in Mazar-i-Sharif. Nazrullah, come along.” And while the soldiers moved quickly in response to his commands, he led Nazrullah and me to the car.
We sped toward Mazar-i-Sharif, which lay some twenty miles east of Balkh, but as we reached the city our car was impeded by an extensive camel caravan which was setting forth to central Russia, and we had to wait while some eighty lumbering beasts went by, poking their ungainly heads toward our car and grunting at us as they adjusted to the heavy burdens which they were to carry north. The camel drivers, an unusually dirty and unkempt gang, stared at us like their camels and Moheb remarked with some irritation, “Of all the people you meet in our country, ninety-four percent are illiterate. Are we crazy, trying to build a modern state from such rabble?”
I looked at the camel drivers, barely out of the bronze age, and said to the two impatient men beside me, “If I were an Afghan, I’d certainly make the effort.”
“I wish we had a million Afghans like you,” Moheb replied, as the last camel went by, leering at us. And then I saw, riding a sturdy black horse, the master of this nondescript caravan and I understood why his cameleers had looked so filthy. Their owner had wanted them to look that way lest his camels give the impression of carrying some unusual wealth which might attract brigands.
For this was the caravan of Shakkur, the Kirghiz gunrunner from Russia. He had loaded his camels at Mazar-i-Sharif, and was now on his way to cross the Oxus and the great Pamirs and the steppes of Central Asia. Since his was the most dangerous route followed by any of the major caravans attending Qabir—perhaps this was the last time a caravan of such magnitude would make the trip—he sought to avoid attention.
As he rode by I called to him and he remembered me from the encampment. Stopping his horse near our car, he poked his huge bald head our way and, after studying Moheb with suspicion, asked, “Government man?” When I nodded, he said, “So you were a government spy? I warned Zulfiqar.”
“No,” Moheb laughed. “We’ve just arrested him.”
The big Kirghiz put his left hand over his forehead and cried, “My sympathy to all prisoners,” and he spurred his horse so that he might overtake his eighty camels.
At the government offices Moheb ordered tea and biscuits with honey, reminding me of how primitively we had been eating for the past seventeen weeks; but I was dragged back to present problems when he summoned a secretary—a man, of course—and started arranging papers as he asked, “Now what shall the official report state regarding that horse?”
“Is this for the record?”
“That’s why I’m here. The horse and the American woman … both stolen.”
“Mira told me she bought the horse.”
“Where would a Kochi girl get the money?”
“She said she got it from the jeep they stole.”
“Jeep?” Moheb repeated.
“Could I strike that from the record?”
“You’d better,” Moheb nodded to the secretary.
Nazrullah interrupted. “What did happen to that jeep?”
“Can I speak confidentially?”
“Of course,” Moheb agreed, nodding again to the secretary.
“While I stood not twenty feet away, those damned Kochis stole every movable part.”
Abruptly Moheb asked, “Who exactly is Mira?”
“Daughter of Zulfiqar,” I explained.
“The same Zulfiqar?” he asked, indicating Nazrullah.
“Yes.”
“Now as to the new developments regarding Ellen Jaspar.”
“It’s difficult to explain,” I fumbled.
“We have plenty of time,” Moheb assured me, pouring some more tea.
“Well, as you know, she ran away from Qala Bist last September. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t sex. Nazrullah wasn’t at fault. Neither was Zulfiqar. When she joined the caravan she didn’t even know who Zulfiqar was.”
“Is that what you’re going to say in your report to the American government?”
“I’ve already said it.”
“Where did she spend the winter?”
“Jhelum.”
“All the way to Jhelum? On foot?” Apparently Moheb knew less about some of his country’s customs than I did.
“Was she ever in love with the big Kochi?” Nazrullah asked.
“Never.”
“Miller,” Moheb asked carefully, “if this secretary has to record one simple reason for Ellen’s behavior, what shall he write?”
I pondered this question for some minutes, reviewing Ellen Jaspar’s motivation as I understood it. It wasn’t sex, because her behavior with Nazrullah, Zulfiqar and Stiglitz had an almost sexless quality; she was neither driven by desire nor faithful to anyone who fulfilled it. I wondered if she might be suffering from some kind of schizophrenia, but I could find no evidence that she was; no one was persecuting her; she persecuted herself. At one point I had thought she might be a victim of nostalgia for a past age, but she would have been the same in Renaissance Florence or Victorian England; history was replete with people like her, and although she despised this age, no other would have satisfied her better. It was true that like many sentimentalists she indulged in an infantile primitivism; if bread was baked over camel dung it was automatically better than bread baked in a General Electric range, but many people were afflicted with this heresy and they didn’t wind up in a caravan at Balkh. There remained the possibility that she suffered from pure jaundice of the spirit, a vision which perverted reality and made it unpalatable; but with Ellen this was not the case. She saw reality rather clearly, I thought. It was her reaction to it that was faulty. And then I heard the dry, emotionless voice of Nexler reading from the music professor’s report: I saw her as a girl of good intention who was determined to disaffiliate herself from our society. This didn’t explain why she acted as she did, but it certainly described what her actions were. I looked at Moheb and suggested, “Put it down as rejection.”
“Name one man she ever rejected,” he demanded.
I preferred to ignore his condemnation and replied, “She rejected the forms and structures of our society … yours as well as mine.”
“It’s about time somebody rejected her,” Moheb snapped. “And I’m the man to do it.”
“Don’t abuse her,” Nazrullah pleaded.
“Would you still take her back?” Moheb asked incredulously.
“Yes,” Nazrullah replied. “She’s my wife.”
“He’s right,” I told Moheb. “You’d both better get used to Ellen Jaspar,” I warned. “Because once you let your women out of chaderi, Afghanistan’s going to have a lot of girls like her.”
Moheb groaned. “Do you believe that?”
“It’s inevitable,” I assured him. Then to protect Ellen, who in so many ways merited help, I added, “Give her the benefit of one dung, Moheb. She loves your country. In fact, she plans to live here the rest of her life.”
“With stiglitz?”
I started to say yes, but hesitated, and from the way Moheb Khan looked at me I knew he suspected something between Ellen and me. I was another of the men she had not rejected, but Nazrullah, still fighting to get her back, missed the interplay, so I finished my sentence. “Yes, she’s staying with Stiglitz.”
“Tell me about him,??
? Moheb said.
“She knew him in Kandahar, but I’m sure nothing romantic happened.” Then I was forced again to pause, for I saw before me the caravanserai and my first meeting with Ellen Jaspar, and she was sweeping past me on her way to greet Stiglitz. I heard her clear voice crying, Dr. Stiglitz! Are you all right? Now what had really happened became clear to me. When she unexpectedly saw Stiglitz against the wall that morning her lips had begun to form a word, which she suppressed instantly. The discarded word was Otto, and I could now see it on her lips. Had they known each other that well in Kandahar? Had her blond, Germanic beauty so deeply affected him there at the edge of the desert?
“Something romantic did happen?” Moheb pressed.
“No,” I said firmly. “Now about Stiglitz. On our trip north …”
“Who suggested that he come north?”
I had not previously considered this matter, but now I tried to reconstruct additional events from that first day with the nomads, and after a long pause I had to say, “I think it was her idea. I think she planned it all … that evening.”
“I thought so, too,” Moheb replied.
“At any rate, on the trip north they fell in love. At Qabir there was the dagger fight. Stiglitz handled himself capably and even wounded Zulfiqar. After which we were all thrown out.”
“Is she determined to live with him?” Nazrullah asked quietly.
“Absolutely,” I lied, as Moheb smiled.
“Could I possibly win her back?” Nazrullah pleaded.
“Never,” I said with some assurance.
“Suppose we deported Stiglitz?” Moheb suggested.
I thought I was listening to Ellen’s insidious suggestion: Sooner or later the Russians are bound to get him. I hesitated, and Moheb continued, “When Stiglitz left Kandahar for this … this stupid caravan, he broke our law. We’ve the right to throw him out. Shall we?” The two Afghans leaned forward to catch my reply.
I hesitated. Here, in a strange room in a drowsy provincial capital, my whole mission in Afghanistan was coming to focus. To calm myself I took a drink of tea and thought: These men want me to recommend his deportation. If I really wanted revenge on Stiglitz, I could get it now. The possibilities were gruesomely fascinating, particularly if I recalled the cage full of Jews he had destroyed; but I could feel against my shoulder, as if it were a real force in that room, the pressure of the German’s body against mine as we prayed at evening, and I heard myself diverting Moheb with the question, “Does your intelligence report on me cover the fact that I’m a Jew?”
It does not,” Moheb replied, masking any surprise he might have felt.
“I am. That night at the caravanserai, Stiglitz betrayed the horrible things he had done in Munich. More than a thousand Jews sent to death.”
“We know,” Moheb observed, indicating his papers.
“I tried to kill him. Would have done it, but Zulfiqar arrived with his caravan. I despise Stiglitz. He’s a criminal and he ought to hang. But on this trip I’ve come to know him. He’ll serve your country well, Moheb. You just said you needed men like me. He’s much stronger than I would ever be. Don’t deport him.”
“Why not?” Moheb asked cynically. “His going would solve Nazrullah’s problem.” “Don’t do it!” I warned. “Why not?” he repeated.
“Because it would be wrong … morally wrong.”
Nazrullah broke in: “Is there nothing I can do to bring her back?”
“Nothing,” I said with great finality. “Even if you were to hang Stiglitz, you’ll never get her back.”
The force of my words struck the bearded engineer, and to my surprise he dropped into a chair and buried his head in his arms. For some moments his shoulders twitched while we watched in embarrassment. Then Moheb coughed and said, “Dear friend, Miller’s right. You’ve lost her and there’s nothing to do about it.”
I remember thinking: It’s really ridiculous, carrying on like this over a second wife, but then I recalled Ellen as she had been among the ruins, as she was in bed with Stiglitz in the black tent, and I admitted to myself: He’s no fool. No wonder he wants to keep her.
Moheb took my arm and said, “Leave him alone,” and he led me to another room, where he dismissed the two government clerks and checked doors to be sure no one was listening. When all was secure he moved close and stared into my eyes. “What did you discover at Qabir?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I replied with as much simplicity as I could muster.
“Don’t lie to me,” he snapped. “Don’t you suppose I know why you were sent north?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I bluffed.
“Miller, for heaven’s sake! Richardson drove out to the Kochi camp in Kabul and personally handed you orders: Go to Qabir and see what the Russians are up to.”
“He did not!”
“Damn it all, we know he did. How else do you suppose he got Shah Khan’s permission?”
The reasoning was logical and I was almost ready to come clean when I thought: What if he’s bluffing? I replied with some impatience, “If that’s what he was supposed to tell me, he certainly forgot. All he did was raise hell about that stolen jeep.”
He had been bluffing. “What’d he say about the jeep?” he asked lamely.
“That they were docking my pay six hundred dollars.”
Seeking to catch me off guard, Moheb whipped his long forefinger into my face and shouted, “Miller! You know damned well the American embassy would never let you wander off to Qabir without orders. What were they?”
“Richardson didn’t give me orders. I asked to go.”
“Why?”
“Because I’d fallen in love with Mira.”
“You mean that you told the American ambassador you wanted leave for ten weeks because,” and here his voice dripped with contempt, “you’d fallen in love with a little nomad girl?”
“I didn’t tell Richardson about her.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I reminded him that Washington wanted me to stay on the Ellen Jaspar case until it was settled.”
Moheb dropped his truculence and asked casually, “So what did happen at Qabir?”
“Like I said. Zulfiqar damned near killed Stiglitz.”
He slammed his fist on the table. “The Russians?”
“I don’t anything about the Russians,” I protested. Then I changed my voice. “I did discover one thing. That big Kirghiz we just saw was the leading sharif at the camp.”
“How does he get into Afghanistan?”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
“What the hell do you know about?”
“That the other sharif was this old Hazara who trades in karakul.”
“We know about him.”
“But this year he retired.”
“He did?”
“And to take his place they elected Zulfiqar.”
“Indeed?”
“And since Zulfiqar is eager to settle down on some of that new irrigated land near Qala Bist, you might do a good thing for Afghanistan if you settled his clan on five or six thousand acres.”
Moheb tried to mask his irritation over the fact that I knew of this confidential matter and asked quietly, “Miller, if we offered Zulfiqar the land, would he take it … and stay put?”
“Positively.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“We discussed it.”
“Why would he confide in a ferangi? On such a matter?”
I wanted to say something that would help Zulfiqar, so I lied, “One day I mentioned that I knew you, and he said, ‘Moheb has power of life and death over those lands.’ He didn’t ask me to intercede, but I know he hoped that I would.”
“Well, at least you found out something.”
“Then you’ll give him the land?”
“We have many applications,” he evaded.
“But none like Zulfiqar. He’s a man like you and Nazrullah. He needs the land and you need
him.”
Moheb looked at me with compassion and said, “Why are you Americans so hopelessly stupid? I’ll bet there were a dozen Russian agents in that camp, but you saw nothing except a nomad girl.”
“I wasn’t worrying about Russians,” I laughed. He shook his head in amiable disgust and we returned to where Nazrullah was staring at the wall.
“What must I do?” The engineer asked us, no further in his solutions than when we left.
“I know what I must do,” Moheb replied briskly. He summoned the secretary and asked, “Did you check my portfolio to be sure the alternative papers are in order? Good … Nazrullah, Miller, come along.”
“To do what?” Nazrullah asked.
“To find three white pebbles.”
“No!” Nazrullah cried. “I won’t.”
“Then I will,” Moheb replied matter-of-factly. Then he stopped, reflected and said, “There is another way out for you.”
“What?” Nazrullah asked eagerly.
“Well turn your wife over to a bunch of mountain mullahs. A woman taken in adultery.” He laughed at his grisly joke, then added gently, “Old friend, take my advice. Find the white pebbles.”
As we left the office the secretary stopped us. “Don’t forget your call to the English embassy.”
“Of course!” Moheb agreed, sending us ahead, and before we left the building we could hear him shouting into the fragile Afghan telephone, “Hello, hello, hello! Is that you, Your Excellency? Here is Moheb Khan. Your Excellency, I want the British government to be alerted …” We did not hear the rest.
On our trip back to the barren fields of Balkh, Moheb consoled Nazrullah by reciting verses from the Persian poets, but when the car stopped at our capsule caravan it was Moheb who started hunting for the three white pebbles. When they had satisfied themselves, Nazrullah walked boldly to the black tent and called, “Ellen.”
The soldiers brought her forth dressed in black skirt with gray blouse and three gold bracelets on her left wrist. Her tanned face was radiant in the sunlight, her marvelous blond hair framing it in windblown lines. As her legal husband approached, she looked solemnly at him and waited for his question: “Wife, will you come back with me to Qala Bist?”
“No,” she replied in an icy voice, whereupon he raised his right hand and threw one of the pebbles to the ground.