Adam & Eve (8 page)

“And your father?” I asked her.

“Objective. An anthropologist.”

“And you want …?” I asked Pierre Saad.

Time seemed to be suspended in the cool silence of the white room under its high, vaulted ceiling while I waited to learn what he wanted of me. I felt defined by the walls, chalk white but bright. Blank. A fly lit on the sponge shoulder cushion of the crutch. Even our flies are here, I thought. Suddenly I felt very American—practical, normal.

“We hope that you will allow me to fly you back to Cairo,” Arielle said. “We have a little plane for you there—my father’s plane. Quite old but in good condition.”

“And then, from Cairo, we would like for you to smuggle this new manuscript,
this precious, irreplaceable codex, out of Egypt,” Pierre Saad continued. “To fly safely, which means circuitously, ultimately to the south of France. To the area of the ancient cave paintings, between Lascaux and Chauvet. I am the resident cultural anthropologist there at the complex, and I will be waiting for you.”

“Egypt herself has been hospitable to ancient scrolls. Don’t they belong here?”

“The Nag Hammadi scrolls,” he explained, “impinge only on the question of the divinity of Jesus. They are old news—discovered in 1945; everyone who wishes to learn about them has had the opportunity to do so. Christianity continues virtually untouched by the implications of the Gnostic Gospels. On the other hand, the Genesis story is sacred to not just one but three major monotheistic religions. There is a small secret group, members of three religions, who want to destroy the codex. Perpetuity, they name themselves.”

“How do they know of the existence of this codex?”

“The Muslim wing watches me because I once wrote a book they found to be anathema. I thought I was careful when the codex fell into my hands, but somehow they know. I’m spied upon. My daughter and I were very thoroughly searched when we exited the country a year ago.”

“And Perpetuity?” I asked. “How do you know this name?”

I seemed to hear other people in the turquoise room, with the crocodiles. Pierre and Arielle were growing restless with my questions. But Pierre continued to speak in the same quiet way.

“I have an old friend. Someone I studied English with when I was a child. He is the friend of a friend who tried to recruit him for Perpetuity, but his friendship with me has the deeper root.” Pierre sighed. “As I said, the codex I have is about the genesis of Genesis. Only in the matter of annihilating this manuscript do the members of this small secret group cooperate with one another in any way. Usually they struggle for political power, but the perpetual war in the Middle East is only the beginning. The more reasonable, more imaginative leaders of each religion, but also their followers, even the uneducated, must be made to understand the common origins of the three religions. Their similarities.”

He paused, staring at me with his flat, tawny eyes, as though he would force his ideas into my mind. He thrust his body toward me as he continued, “If the Jews, the Christians, the Muslims, learn nothing new about their own origins—the mutual origin of their religions—we will have another world war. There will not be enough humanists or people of simple reason to stop them. Each faith will call it a Holy War, and the carnage, the bloodshed, of the medieval Crusades and the more recent European Holocaust will pale in comparison.”

What memory gave me was the image of Thom’s spreading blood, the curled tips of his lifeless fingers extending from beneath the wreckage of the grand piano. Killed absurdly not by a terrorist bomb but by a musical instrument, a vehicle of beauty. I tasted dust in my mouth.

“And there are other factions.” Pierre Saad paused again. His eyes were like the eyes of a lazy African lion tracking a small female gazelle but waiting for the lioness to do the work. The lion’s mane fluttered in a slight breeze. Again, I felt mesmerized—and afraid. Strangely alive.

“Perhaps even within your country,” Pierre Saad continued in a calm, even voice, “those who believe in the literal truth of the Bible will rise up against the community of scientists.
Scientist
will become a more inflammatory term than
communiste.”

“We know what you wear around your neck,” Arielle said.

I bunched my fingertips nervously against Thom’s memory stick.

Pierre continued. “There are as many who would like to block his work—the discovery of extraterrestrial life, sure to come in the near future—as those who would block my work, which is to illumine the origins of our beliefs. The enemies of this codex are those who would shroud the past, our origins, our art, our sacred
poetry,
with their ignorance. Perpetuity is the enemy of both science and history.”

Perhaps I had made the wrong decision not to give Thom’s flash drive to ELF or to Gabriel.

“Where is this manuscript?” I asked.

Pierre Saad threw back his head; his nose cut the air like a scimitar; he seemed to gaze into the distance, but he said with pure trust and friendliness,
“Of course the manuscript is here.” He pointed to a dark, heavy case—a compact, misshapen squarish case of a musical instrument—near the wall.”
‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe,’”
he said, shrugging his shoulders in the Gallic manner.

“It’s not a pipe?” I asked, incredulous.

“Of course not. I was merely quoting Magritte about his painting of his tobacco pipe. I mean it is not a French horn, or even the case of a French horn. It only
looks
like a French horn case. It is a specially prepared case containing very ancient writing.”

“What is your hope for this manuscript?” I asked.

“That, once translated and made public, these words, the implications of these ancient words, will defuse the fanaticism, the literalism, of three religions.”

The man who had begun to seem impressively cosmopolitan and sophisticated now seemed astonishingly naive. But I liked him better.

“Can you trust me, Lucy?” he asked.

Too soon, I thought. You ask too soon.

“Will you help us?” Arielle asked.

“You have the eyes of a predator,” I said to him.

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “It is not true.” Then he turned and looked directly into my eyes. “Look again,” he said. And he held my gaze. “Here in the East, often you must look twice—or more—to see the truth.”

There was candor in his expression. I saw the same kindness I had heard in his voice, outside the symposium room, when I could not bring myself to meet his eyes. And now, in his golden gaze, I saw hope—his faith in me—ardent hope.

“Yes,” I said simply. “I will help you.”

Why did I agree? Because they needed me? Because I liked them—father and daughter? Because like my parents I wanted to define myself with a mission? I did regard religious rigidity as a growing global danger.

As one, the three of us took a breath, then gently laughed away our tension. If the codex concealed in the retrofitted French horn case would cause people—Christians, Jews, and Muslims—to find unity in reading Genesis less literally, then I was all for it.

When I asked about the crutches, one leaning against the table, the other against the white wall, Pierre drew up his robe a bit and stuck out his foot, coffined in a heavy plaster cast. “A simple accident,” he said. He wiggled his brown toes sticking out from the cutaway end of the cast. I actually recognized the square cut of the nail on his big toe, now rather more dusty than in Cairo. “After we spoke in Cairo, you left, but I could not let you go, after all. I hurried to the stairwell—you had taken the elevator—and in my haste I tripped on my sandal and broke my leg.”

I expressed my regret at his mishap, but I wondered if the explanation was true. I asked suspiciously, “Why do you choose to ask me for help?”

“From your husband, I knew something of your temperament.”

“And you are a pilot,” Arielle said. “Perpetuity would like to have the flash drive as well as the codex.”

“And you are”—Pierre paused as though searching his mind for the whole truth—“available. You are
at hand,
as the English say.”

“As though sent to us by Allah,” Arielle added happily.

“Even your name,” her father hurried on, “is strangely appropriate for your role.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lucy is the name the paleontologists gave to the female fossil found at the Olduvai Gorge, south of us, in the heart of Africa. Actually, the gorge should be called the Oldupi—the scientists misheard the native pronunciation. In any case, for a long time Lucy was the oldest of all the fossils that had been found, the mother of us all. Lucy—your name—Lucy is the evolutionist’s Eve.”

“How old was she?” I felt suddenly diminished, shrunken.

“Lucy lived about two and a half million years ago.”

I smiled. “I believe she was named for a Beatles song, ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.’”

Arielle moved closer and asked, “Beatles?”

“You know,” I said gently. “Four pop musicians, from Liverpool. John Lennon?”

Instantly distressed, Arielle blurted, “John Lennon?” Then she covered
her mouth with her hand and softly said something that sounded like
“Igtiyal.”
For just a moment, she looked frightened, but I asked for no explanation.

“We’ll meet again in France, God willing,” Pierre Saad said softly. He handed me a card that affirmed his affiliation with Lascaux.

“May we not open the instrument case?” I asked. “I’d like to see the codex.” Suppose he was asking me unwittingly to smuggle drugs—germs, a bomb?

“I alone have the key. I have already mailed it to myself in France.”

“You would not have us break the lock,” Arielle said. “It would be very difficult to do.”

During the pause that followed, I shifted my gaze back and forth between the father and daughter.

Finally Pierre said, “Either you trust, or you do not.”

Carrying the heavy French horn case, I walked with Arielle back into the turquoise anteroom, now filled with people examining wares displayed on the benchlike beds. How silently they had assembled! Their skin color, dress, and hair bespoke the far-flung fullness of the world. Tourists, like myself, whom chance had thrown together for a brief moment. It’s just a tour bus, I thought. Their presence just means a tour bus has arrived. Utterly silent, isolate, the unreal people examined small figures carved from bone. None of them gave the slightest attention to the truncated chimney full of crocodiles.

As we two women passed through the streets of the village, Arielle explained, “I will fly you to Cairo to an abandoned airfield and show you the old plane that belongs to my father. You will like the little plane. Of course you will fly east at low altitude to avoid the war and the radar. The plane has a medical symbol on its belly. No one will shoot at you from below.”

“I’m game,” I repeated, almost panting. Having shorter legs than Arielle, I had to hustle to keep up with her.

“Good,” Arielle replied. “Do you want me to carry the horn case?”

“No. I’ve got it.” I rather enjoyed feeling the weight of responsibility.

Like a bird suddenly spreading one wing, the young woman opened out an arm to enclose my shoulders. I had seen such a gesture on a temple wall at Abu Simbel: a guardian figure—Isis, her lifted wing carved into stone. As Arielle squeezed the cap of my shoulder, I felt a frightening strength in her grip.

I had seen such a gesture when the black piano lifted its wing.

Our flight from Luxor to Cairo provided little opportunity for extended conversation. Once seated in the Cessna, Arielle put on her headphones and said simply, “I must concentrate on the flying. I am not so experienced a pilot as you, and this is a rental.”

Despite my pilot’s disclaimer, I never felt the least doubt about the young woman’s competence. Her hands were quick and sure, and she was entirely focused on her work. Or was she simply a splendid actor, pretending to be focused on piloting to avoid conversation? Doubts and questions flooded my mind. It was comforting to follow the blue thread of the Nile, off to the left. As we began our descent, the river was lost in the smog-smudged sprawl of Cairo.

Arielle set the plane down with perfect grace. Removing her headphones, she said, “We need to hurry.”

While we walked rapidly over the tarmac of the small, almost deserted airport east of Cairo, I inquired of Arielle about her mother.

“Igtiyal!”
Arielle replied. Her voice seemed tightly controlled.

“That word again!” I exclaimed. It roused me like a long-ignored alarm bell. “What does it mean?”

“Igtiyal
is the Arabic word for murder. My mother was murdered by extremists who hated my father’s anthropological approach to Islam. I was a little girl then.”

“I’m sorry,” I answered. So Arielle, like myself, had known sudden loss. I put my arm around her and touched her shoulder.

“We have no time now,” she said. “Papa and I will tell you about her death when you bring the codex to Lascaux.”

My mind swung again to the image of Thom’s blood, red as horror. From beneath the shattered piano, the pool had enlarged steadily, its advancing edge
a smooth curve. Before I had fainted, someone with a foreign accent—Egyptian, I now recognized—had said the word
igtiyal.
And now I knew: it meant murder. Someone had labeled Thom’s terrible accident, his death, as murder. My heart pumped fear and denial.