Caravans (36 page)

“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.

“I divorce thee,” he announced. Again he looked at her, beseeching her to rejoin him, but again he had to raise his arm and throw a second pebble to the ground.

“I divorce thee,” he announced as Ellen listened without emotion. For the third time he pleaded with her, and for the third time she rejected him. Looking at her with eyes that had filled with tears, he hesitated in hopes she might reconsider, but she remained impassive, and he dropped the last pebble.

“I divorce thee,” he said in a ghostly whisper. Unable to look further at the beautiful woman he had wooed in a strange land, he turned and walked with dignity to the car.

As he went, I watched Ellen Jaspar, now legally divorced, standing immobile by the tent. A smile of quiet satisfaction marked her lips, for now she was free, and from the right side of her body she lifted her hand ever so slightly so that she could form with her thumb and forefinger a circle, which she flashed at me, signifying: “All’s well.”

“Bring out Stiglitz,” Moheb ordered, and the German was led forth, blinking in the sunlight. He must have guessed that Ellen intended to desert him, for he ignored her and looked only at Moheb.

“Otto Stiglitz,” Moheb began, “we’ve informed the British government that you’re being surrendered to them at Peshawar, in India. You’re a criminal of war, and we have no place for you in Afghanistan.” He blew his whistle and other soldiers appeared. “Take him to Peshawar,” he announced, and an officer started clapping handcuffs about the German’s wrists.

But this was to be no easy arrest, for Stiglitz broke loose and threw himself at me. “Jew! Jew!” he screamed. “You’ve done this to me.” He scratched at my face until one of the soldiers tore him away.

Then he lunged at Moheb Khan, pleading, “Excellency, don’t believe him. He’s a filthy Jew and he told you lies. Why did he lie to you? Because he wants the girl himself. Yes! Yes!”

The commotion brought Nazrullah back in time to hear Stiglitz cry, “Yes, Excellency! Last night this Jew took the girl over there. They committed indecencies. And while they were doing it they plotted my death.”

He left Moheb and threw himself at Ellen, who drew back in disgust. “This one made love with the Jew behind that mound. And she told him, Hand the German over to the Russians, they’ll hang him. Excellency, the Jew has poisoned your mind.”

Moheb ordered the soldiers to pinion the doctor’s arms, and when this was done he stood before the German and said, “The Jew you condemn has just spent an hour with us, pleading for your life. At your trial, I’m sure he’ll testify for you.”

Snapping his fingers, Moheb ordered the soldiers to drag the prisoner off, but as he went he tried to
grab my arm. “You will tell the judges what I said at the pillar? There are many Jews in Munich alive today because … You will testify for me?”

“I will,” I said, and he was dragged away. The truck engine sputtered. The wheels spun in the sand, and the soldiers were gone.

“Take the girl to the car,” Moheb ordered Maftoon, and the unshaved cameleer led Ellen away. Since I had assumed that I was to remain in Balkh until Zulfiqar arrived, I supposed that this was the last time I would see Ellen Jaspar, and it was with real confusion that I saw her go. Her fair head was provocative as ever, her lithe body beneath the gray blouse and black skirt as exciting, and her long legs ending in the leather sandals were as alluring. The clever rationalizations. I had given at the interrogation seemed irrelevant when confronted by the girl herself.