A River in the Sky

“It was more or less along the lines you had suggested,” Emerson admitted. He took a seat next to me on the sofa and put his arm round my shoulders. “The bloody idiot said that since we had already agreed we would follow Morley to Jerusalem, he couldn’t see that it made any difference when we went, so long as we were there in good time. So I told him-”

“That he was a bloody idiot?”

“More or less. He took it quite well,” Emerson said in mild surprise.

“He was trying to get you out of his office, I expect. Did you ask about the firman?”

“It hasn’t arrived yet, but he promised we would have it by the time we reach Jaffa. Ah, there you are, Nefret. And-er-Papadalopous. He follows her about like a puppy,” he added, in what he probably believed to be a whisper.

“He has been telling me about the fall of Jericho,” Nefret said, giving Emerson a reproachful look.

“Ah,” said Emerson, perking up. “He was Joshua?”

“He explained that it didn’t happen quite as the Bible describes it,” Nefret said.

“It didn’t happen at all,” said Emerson, his mood improving even more at the prospect of argumentation, and the sound of the tea cart rattling along the hall. “The excavators of 1907 concluded that the latest remains dated from 1800 B.C., a thousand years, give or take a century, before your apocryphal Joshua.”

The reverend paid no attention to any of this. His attention was fixed on the tea cakes which Gargery placed on the table.

“I wouldn’t mind taking a crack at Jericho myself,” Emerson went on. “But the Germans still hold the concession, and we must be nearer Jerusalem.”

Panagopolous looked up. “When shall we depart?”

BY DINT OF HERCULEAN efforts on my part we were ready to depart in less than a week. I was busy from morning till night telegraphing Selim, sending final orders to Ramses, purchasing supplies, packing, and of course making lists. Emerson offered to make our travel arrangements, which I accepted because I didn’t suppose he could locate a disreputable old friend in London who happened to own a steamer. He had perpetrated that indignity several times before, but that was in Egypt and the Sudan, where Emerson had only too many disreputable old friends. I took comfort in the fact that he could not have many old friends in Palestine.

The reverend had come to us with only the contents of a single valise, so another of my chores was to outfit him for a prolonged stay in the Middle East. My inquiries as to where he had left the rest of his luggage were met with a blank stare and a murmured reference to the House of David. Sometimes I got quite impatient with him, but Nefret always leaped to his defense. Amnesia was unpredictable. An individual’s memory might return, or it might not. Certain parts of it might be lost forever.

Emerson’s continual mispronunciation of his surname didn’t seem to bother Panagopolous, but Nefret began to find it unacceptable. “It suggests you don’t care enough about him to remember his name,” she complained to Emerson.

“I don’t,” said Emerson, surprised that she should have thought otherwise.

“Call him ‘Reverend,’” I suggested.

“If he is a reverend of any recognized church, I am Attila the Hun,” said Emerson. “I refuse to give him a title to which he is not-er-entitled.”

“Use his first name, then,” said Nefret, losing patience. “He wouldn’t mind.”

Emerson shook his head. “How can I contemplate that vacant countenance and address it by the name of one of the greatest of the Greeks? Impossible.”

“It strikes me as an excellent solution,” I said.

Emerson, of course, dismissed this solution with a few ill-chosen words and from then on tried to avoid addressing Mr. Plato directly. However, he accepted Plato’s accompanying us with more grace than I had expected. He had managed to have a talk with him, and found him “uncharacteristically coherent,” to quote Emerson himself. “He claims to have memorized the information on the notorious scroll,” Emerson explained. “Not that I believe for a moment that it has any value, but the fellow does seem to be familiar with the former excavations near the Temple Mount, including those of Warren and Bliss.”

“Doesn’t that indicate that there is some basis for his claims?”

“Are you determined to provoke me, Peabody?” Emerson inquired with perfect good humor. “It indicates that he took the trouble to read up on the subject, as any clever charlatan would do. However, I don’t see that we have any choice in the matter. We can’t expect Gargery and Rose to be responsible for him, and if we abandoned him on a street corner in London, he would only find his way back here.”