A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters Page 16

  ‘Parrot,’ replied Miss Fergusson without a smile. ‘Not a Russo, I think. Dr Friedrich Parrot. Professor in the University of Dorpat.’

  The Ambassador gave a diagonal nod of the head, as if it were slightly impertinent to know more than he did about local matters.

  ‘It seems to me appropriate and just,’ went on Miss Fergusson, ‘that the first traveller to ascend the mountain upon which the Ark rested should bear the name of an animal. No doubt part of the Lord’s great design for us all.’

  ‘No doubt,’ replied the Ambassador, looking away to Miss Logan for some clue as to the personality of her employer. ‘No doubt.’

  They remained a week in the Ottoman capital, by no means long enough for Miss Logan to become accustomed to the coarse stares she received at the tables d’hôte. Then the two ladies gave themselves up to the Favaid-i-Osmaniyeh, a Turkish company running steamers to Trebizond. The accommodation was crowded and to Miss Logan’s mind far filthier than anything she had previously encountered. She ventured upon deck the first morning, and was approached by not one but three potential beaux, each with his hair curled and exuding a powerful odour of bergamot. Thereafter Miss Logan, despite having been engaged for her experience, confined herself to the cabin. Miss Fergusson professed not to notice such inconveniences and to be positively intrigued by the scrum of third-class passengers on board; she would occasionally return with an observation or a question designed to stir Miss Logan from her dismal state of mind. Why, her employer wished to know, were the Turkish women all accommodated on the left-hand side of the quarterdeck? Was there some purpose, be it of society or of religion, behind such positioning? Miss Logan was unable to furnish a reply. Now that they had left Naples way behind them she felt increasingly less secure. At the faintest whiff of bergamot she shuddered.

  When Miss Logan had permitted herself to become engaged for the voyage to Asiatic Turkey, she had under-estimated Miss Fergusson’s pertinacity. The absconding muleteer, the swindling innkeeper and the devious customs-house officer were all treated to the same display of unthwartable will. Miss Logan lost count of the times their luggage was detained, or they were told that a buyurulda or special permit would be necessary in addition to the tezkare they had already procured; but Miss Fergusson, with assistance from a dragoman whose own brief display of independent thought had been snuffed out early on, harried, demanded and succeeded. She was tirelessly willing to discuss things in the manner of the country; to sit down with a landlord, for example, and answer such questions as whether England was smaller than London, and which of the two belonged to France, and how much larger the Turkish navy was than those of England, France and Russia put together.

  Miss Logan had further imagined that their journey, while devotional in its final purpose, might afford pleasant opportunities for sketching, the activity which had first established a bond between employer and companion. But antiquities held no charm for Amanda Fergusson; she had no desire to examine heathen temples to Augustus, or half-surviving columns supposedly erected in honour of the apostate Emperor Julian. At least she evinced an interest in the natural landscape. As they rode inland from Trebizond, hunting-whips at the ready against the expected dog-packs, they viewed mohair goats on hillsides of dwarf oak, dull yellow vines, lush apple orchards; they heard grasshoppers whose ringing note seemed sharper and more insistent than that of their British cousins; and they witnessed sunsets of the rarest purple and rose. There were fields of corn, opium and cotton; bursts of rhododendron and yellow azalea; red-legged partridge, hoopoes and blue crows. In the Zirgana mountains large red deer softly returned their gaze from an apprehensive distance.

  At Erzerum Miss Logan prevailed upon her employer to visit the Christian church. The impulse proved at first a happy one, for in the graveyard Miss Fergusson discovered tombstones and crosses whose Celtic air recalled those of her native Ireland; a smile of approval crossed her dutiful features. But this unexpected lenity was short-lived. Leaving the church, the two ladies noticed a young peasant woman placing a votive offering in a crevice by the main door. It proved to be a human tooth, no doubt her own. The crevice, upon further examination, was found to be stuffed full of yellowing incisors and weathered molars. Miss Fergusson expressed herself forcibly on the subject of popular superstition and the responsibility of the clergy. Those who preached the word of God, she maintained, should be judged according to the word of God, and punished the more severely if found wanting.

  They crossed into Russia, engaging at the frontier post a new guide, a large and bearded Kurd who claimed familiarity with the requirements of foreigners. Miss Fergusson addressed him in what seemed to Miss Logan a mixture of Russo and Turk. The days when Miss Logan’s fluent Italian had been of use to them were long past; having begun the journey as guide and interpreter, she felt she had dwindled into a mere hanger-on, with little greater status than the discarded dragoman or the newly appointed Kurd.

  As the three of them proceeded into Caucasia, they disturbed flocks of pelican, whose earthbound ungainliness was miraculously transfigured by flight. Miss Fergusson’s irritation over the incident in Erzerum began to calm. Passing the eastern spur of Mount Alageuz, they gazed intently as the broad bulk of Great Ararat slowly revealed itself. The summit was hidden, enfolded in a circle of white cloud which glittered brilliantly in the sun.

  ‘It has a halo,’ exclaimed Miss Logan. ‘Like an angel.’

  ‘You are correct,’ Miss Fergusson replied, with a little nod. ‘People like my father would not agree, of course. They would tell us that such comparisons are all hot air. Literally.’ She gave a pursed smile and Miss Logan, with an enquiring glance, invited her to continue. ‘They would explain that the halo of cloud is a perfectly natural phenomenon. During the night and for several hours after dawn the summit remains clearly visible, but as the plain warms up in the morning sun, the hot air rises and becomes vapour at a given height. At the day’s end, when everything cools down again, the halo disappears. It comes as no surprise to … science,’ she said with a disapproving emphasis upon the final word.

  ‘It is a magic mountain,’ commented Miss Logan.

  Her employer corrected her. ‘It is a holy mountain.’ She gave an impatient sigh. ‘There always appear to be two explanations of everything. That is why we have been given free will, in order that we may choose the correct one. My father failed to comprehend that his explanations were based as much upon faith as mine. Faith in nothing. It would be all vapour and clouds and rising air to him. But who created the vapour, who created the clouds? Who ensured that Noah’s mountain of all mountains would be blessed each day with a halo of cloud?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Miss Logan, not entirely in agreement.

  That day they encountered an Armenian priest who informed them that the mountain towards which they were heading had never been ascended and, moreover, never would be. When Miss Fergusson politely suggested the name of Dr Parrot, the priest assured her that she was mistaken. Perhaps she was confusing Massis – as he referred to Great Ararat – with the volcano far to the south which the Turks called Sippan Dagh. The Ark of Noah, before it found its final resting-place, had struck the summit of Sippan Dagh and removed its cap, thereby exposing the inner fires of the earth. That mountain, he understood, was accessible to man, but not Massis. On this subject, if on nothing else, Christian and Mussulman agreed. And furthermore, went on the priest, was it not so proven by Holy Scripture? The mountain before them was the birthplace of mankind; and he referred the ladies, while excusing himself with an ingratiating laugh for mentioning an indelicate subject, to the authority of Our Saviour’s words to Nicodemus, where it is stated that a man cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born once more.

  As they were parting, the priest drew from his pocket a small black amulet, worn smooth over many centuries. It was, he claimed, a piece of bitumen which assuredly had once formed part of the hull of Noah’s Ark, and had great value in the averting of mischief. Since
the ladies had expressed such interest in the mountain of Massis, then perhaps …

  Miss Fergusson courteously responded to the suggested transaction by pointing out that if indeed it was impossible to ascend the mountain, then the likelihood of their believing that the amulet could be a piece of bitumen from the Patriarch’s vessel was not very great. The Armenian, however, saw no incompatibility between his two propositions. Perhaps a bird had carried it down, as the dove had borne the olive branch. Or it might have been brought by an angel. Did not tradition relate how Saint James had three times attempted to ascend Massis, and on the third occasion been told by an angel that it was forbidden, but that the angel had given him a plank of wood from the Ark, and there where he had received it was founded the monastery of Saint James?

  They parted without a bargain being struck. Miss Logan, embarrassed by Our Lord’s words to Nicodemus, was instead thinking about bitumen: was that not the material used by artists to blacken the shadows in their paintings? Miss Fergusson, on the other hand, had merely been put into a temper: first by the attempt to thrust some foolish meaning on to the scriptural verse; and secondly by the priest’s brazen commercial behaviour. She had yet to be impressed by the Eastern clergy, who not only countenanced belief in the miraculous powers of human teeth, but actually traded in bogus religious relics. It was monstrous. They should be punished for it. No doubt they would be. Miss Logan examined her employer apprehensively.

  The next day they crossed a relentless plain of reeds and coarse grass, relieved only by colonies of bustard and the black tents of Kurdish tribesmen. They stopped for the night in a small village a day’s ride from the foot of the mountain. After a meal of cream cheese and salted salmon trout from the Gokchai, the two women stood in the dark air scented with apricot and looked towards the mountain of Noah. The range before them contained two separate crescendi: Great Ararat, a bulky, broad-shouldered mass like a buttressed dome, and Little Ararat, some four thousand feet lower, an elegant cone with smooth and regular sides. Miss Fergusson did not think it fanciful to perceive in the comparative design and height of the two Ararats a bodying-forth of that primal divide in the human race between the two sexes. She did not communicate this reflection to Miss Logan, who had so far proved dismally unreceptive to the transcendental.

  As if to confirm her pedestrian turn of mind, Miss Logan at this point revealed that it had been a matter of curiosity to her since childhood how the Ark had succeeded in resting upon the top of a mountain. Had the peak risen up from the waters and punctured the keel, thereby skewering the vessel in place? For if not, how otherwise had the Ark avoided a precipitous descent as the waters had retreated?

  Others before you have had similar reflections,’ replied Miss Fergusson with distinct lack of indulgence. ‘Marco Polo insisted that the mountain was made in the shape of a cube, which would certainly have explained the matter. My father would probably have agreed with him, had he given the subject his attention. But we can see that this is not the case. Those who have ascended to the peak of Great Ararat inform us that close below the summit there is a gently sloping valley. It is’, she specified, as if Miss Logan could not otherwise understand the matter, ‘approximately half the size of Green Park in London. As a place of disembarkation it would be both natural and safe.’

  ‘So the Ark did not land on the very summit?’

  ‘Scripture makes no such claim.’

  As they approached Arghuri, which lay at a height of more than six thousand feet above sea level, the temperature of the air became more genial. Three miles below the village they came upon the first of the hallowed plantations of Father Noah. The vines had just finished flowering, and tiny dark green grapes hung intermittently among the foliage. A peasant put down his rough hoe and conducted the unexpected party to the village elder, who received their offering of gunpowder with formal thanks yet little surprise. Miss Logan was sometimes irked by such civility. The elder was behaving as if parties of white women were constantly presenting him with gunpowder.

  Miss Fergusson, however, remained her dutiful and efficient self. It was arranged that later in the afternoon they would be conducted to the Monastery of Saint James; they would be lodged that night in the village, and would return again to the church the following day for their devotions.

  The monastery lay beside the Arghuri rivulet in the lower part of a great chasm which extended almost to the very summit of the mountain. It consisted of a cruciform church whose stone was hewn from hardened lava. Various small dwellings pressed against its sides like the farrow of a sow. As the party entered the courtyard a middle-aged priest stood waiting for them, the cupola of Saint James rising behind him. He was dressed in a plain gown of blue serge, with a pointed Capuchin cowl; his beard was long, its blackness intertwined with grey; on his feet he wore woollen Persian socks and common slippers. One hand bore the rosary; the other was folded across his chest in a gesture of welcome. Something urged Miss Logan to kneel before the pastor of Noah’s church; but the presence and certain disapproval of Miss Fergusson, who dismissed as ‘Romish’ a large category of religious behaviour, prevented her.

  The courtyard spoke less of a monastery than a farm. Sacks of corn were piled loosely against a wall; three sheep had wandered in from the nearby pasture and had not been expelled; there was a rank smell from underfoot. Smiling, the Archimandrite invited them to his cell, which proved to be one of the tiny dwellings built hard against the outer wall of the church. As he was conducting them across the dozen or so yards, the Archimandrite appeared to touch Miss Fergusson’s elbow by way of courteous but strictly unnecessary guidance.

  The monk’s cell had stout clay walls and a plaster roof supported by a sturdy central prop. There was a rough icon of some unidentifiable saint hanging above a straw pallet; the courtyard odours continued here. To Miss Logan it seemed admirably simple, to Miss Fergusson squalid. The behaviour of the Archimandrite also provoked differing interpretations: Miss Logan discerned an amiable candour where Miss Fergusson saw only sly obsequiousness. It seemed to Miss Logan that her employer had perhaps exhausted her stock of civility on the long journey to Mount Ararat, and had now retreated into a stony carelessness. When the Archimandrite suggested that the two ladies might like to lodge at the monastery that night, she was briefly dismissive; when he pressed his offer of hospitality further, she was brusque.

  The Archimandrite continued to smile, and his mood still appeared to Miss Logan a gracious one. At this point a servant appeared bearing a rough tray on which were set three horn beakers. Water from the Arghuri brook, thought Miss Logan; or perhaps that sourish milk which they had already received many times on their travels from obliging shepherds. But the servant returned with a wineskin, and at a signal poured a liquor from it into the horn vessels. The Archimandrite raised his beaker towards the women, and drank fully; whereupon his servant poured for him again.

  Miss Fergusson sipped. Then she put questions to the Archimandrite which provoked a severe apprehension in Miss Logan. This feeling was exacerbated by waiting for the guide to translate.

  This is wine?’

  ‘Indeed.’ The priest smiled, as if encouraging the women to indulge in this local taste which was still clearly unknown in their distant land.

  ‘It is made from grapes?’

  ‘You are correct, lady.’

  ‘Tell me, the grapes from which this wine has been made, where are they grown?’

  The Archimandrite spread both hands and circled to indicate the neighbouring countryside.

  ‘And the vines from which the grapes were plucked, who first planted them?’

  ‘Our great ancestor and forefather, parent of us all, Noah.’

  Miss Fergusson summed up the exchange so far, needless as this seemed to her companion. ‘You are serving us the fermented grapes from Noah’s vines?’

  ‘It is my honour, Madam.’ He smiled again. He seemed to expect if not especial thanks, at least some expression of wonder. Instead, Miss Fergusso
n stood up, took the untasted wine from Miss Logan, and returned both beakers to the servant. Without a word she left the Archimandrite’s cell, swept from the courtyard in a manner which made three sheep instinctively follow her and started down the mountainside. Miss Logan made indeterminate gestures to the priest, then set off in pursuit of her employer. They traversed lush apricot orchards without comment; they ignored a shepherd holding out a bowl of milk; wordlessly they returned to the village, where Miss Fergusson, her calculated civility now restored to her, asked the elder if lodgings could be supplied to them without delay. The old man proposed his own house, the largest in Arghuri. Miss Fergusson thanked him, and offered in return a small parcel of sugar, which was gravely accepted.

  That evening in their room a low table no bigger than a music stool was set with food. They were given losb, the thin local bread, cold mutton cut in pieces, hard-boiled eggs taken from their shells and halved, and the fruit of the arbutus. They were served no wine, either because such was the custom of the house, or because intelligence of their visit to the monastery had reached the elder. Instead, they drank sheep’s milk once more.

  ‘It is a blasphemy,’ said Miss Fergusson eventually. ‘A blasphemy. On Noah’s mountain. He lives like a farmer. He invites women to stay with him. He ferments the grape of the Patriarch. It is a blasphemy.’

  Miss Logan knew better than to reply, let alone plead the cause of the amiable Archimandrite. She recalled to herself that the circumstances of their visit had deprived them of an opportunity to examine the ancient willow tree sprung from a plank of Noah’s Ark.

  ‘We shall ascend the mountain,’ said Miss Fergusson.

  ‘But we do not know how to do such a thing.’

  ‘We shall ascend the mountain. Sin must be purged with water. The sin of the world was purged by the waters of the flood. It is a double blasphemy that the monk commits. We shall fill our bottles with snow from the holy mountain. The pure juice of Noah’s vine we came in search of has been rendered impure. We shall bring back purging water instead. That is the only way to salvage the journey.’