sampling fruit from these trees. And killing and eating one another, too. The fossil evidence was clear about that as well.
'You mentioned a frieze with grotesques.'
'Monstrous beings,' de l'Orme said. 'That is where I'm taking you now. To the base of Column C.'
'Could it be self-portraiture? Perhaps these were hominids. Perhaps they had talents far beyond what we've given them credit for.'
'Perhaps,' said de l'Orme. 'But then there is the face.'
It was the face that had brought Thomas so far. 'You said it's horrible.'
'Oh, the face is not horrible at all. That's the problem. It's a common face. A human face.'
'Human?'
'It could be your face.' Thomas looked sharply at the blind man. 'Or mine,' de l'Orme added. 'What's horrible is its context. This ordinary face looks upon scenes of savagery and degradation and monstrosity.'
'And?'
'That's all. He's looking. And you can tell he will never look away. I don't know, he seems content. I've felt the carving,' de l'Orme said. 'Even its touch is unsavory. It's most unusual, this juxtaposition of normalcy and chaos. And it's so banal, so prosaic. That's the most intriguing thing. It's completely out of sync with its age, whatever age that may be.'
Firecrackers and drums echoed from scattered villages. Ramadan, the month of Muslim fasting, had just ended yesterday. Thomas saw the crescent of the new moon threading between the mountains. Families would be feasting. Whole villages would stay up until dawn watching the shadow plays called wayang, with two-dimensional puppets making love and doing battle as shadows thrown upon a sheet. By dawn, good would triumph over evil, light over darkness: the usual fairy tale.
One of the mountains beneath the moon separated in the middle distance, and became the ruins of Bordubur. The enormous stupa was supposed to be a depiction of Mount Meru, a cosmic Everest. Buried for over a thousand years by an eruption of Gunung Merapi, Bordubur was the greatest of the ruins. In that sense, it was death's palace and cathedral all in one, a pyramid for Southeast Asia.
The ticket for admission was death, at least symbolically. You entered through the jaws of a ferocious devouring beast garlanded with human skulls – the goddess Kali. Immediately you were in a mazelike afterworld. Nearly ten thousand square meters – five square kilometers – of carved 'story wall' accompanied each traveler. It told a tale almost identical to Dante's Inferno and Paradiso. At the bottom the carved panels showed humanity trapped in sin, and depicted hideous punishment by hellish demons. By the time you 'climbed' onto a plateau of rounded stupas, Buddha had guided humanity out of his state of samsara and into enlightenment. No time for that tonight. It was going on two-thirty.
'Pram?' Santos called into the darkness ahead. 'Asalamu alaikum.' Thomas knew the greeting. Peace unto you. But there was no reply.
'Pram is an armed guard I hired to watch over the site,' de l'Orme explained. 'He was a famous guerrilla once. As you might imagine, he's rather old. And probably drunk.'
'Odd,' Santos whispered. 'Stay here.' He moved up the path and out of sight.
'Why all the drama?' commented Thomas.
'Santos? He means well. He wanted to make a good impression on you. But you make him nervous. He has nothing left tonight but his bravado, I'm sorry to say.'
De l'Orme set one hand upon Thomas's forearm. 'Shall we?' They continued their promenade. There was no getting lost. The path lay before them like a ghost serpent. The festooned 'mountain' of Bordubur towered to their north.
'Where do you go from here?' Thomas asked.
'Sumatra. I've found an island, Nias. They say it is the place Sinbad the Sailor met the Old Man of the Sea. I'm happy among the aborigines, and Santos stays occupied with some fourth-century ruins he located among the jungle.'
'And the cancer?'
De l'Orme didn't even make one of his jokes.
Santos came running down the trail with an old Japanese carbine in one hand. He was covered in mud and out of breath. 'Gone,' he announced. 'And he left our gun in a pile of dirt. But first he shot off all the bullets.'
'Off to celebrate with his grandchildren would be my guess,' de l'Orme said.
'I'm not so sure.'
'Don't tell me tigers got him?'
Santos lowered the barrel. 'Of course not.'
'If it will make you feel more secure, reload,' said de l'Orme.
'We have no more bullets.'
'Then we're that much safer. Now let's continue.'
Near the Kali mouth at the base of the monument, they veered right off the path, passing a small lean-to made of banana leaves, where old Pram must have taken his naps.
'You see?' Santos said. The mud was torn as if in a struggle.
Thomas spied the dig site. It looked more like a mud fight. There was a hole sunk
into the jungle floor, and a big pile of dirt and roots. To one side lay the stone plates, as large as manhole covers, that de l'Orme had referred to.
'What a mess,' said Thomas. 'You've been fighting the jungle itself here.'
'In fact I'll be glad to be done with it,' Santos said.
'Is the frieze down there?'
'Ten meters deep.'
'May I?'
'Certainly.'
Thomas gripped the bamboo ladder and carefully let himself down. The rungs were slick and his soles were made for streets, not climbing. 'Be careful,' de l'Orme called down to him.
'There, I'm down.'
Thomas looked up. It was like peering out of a deep grave. Mud was oozing between the bamboo flooring, and the back wall – saturated with rainwater – bulged against its bamboo shoring. The place looked ready to collapse upon itself.
De l'Orme was next. Years spent clambering around dig scaffolding made this second nature. His slight bulk scarcely jostled the handmade ladder.
'You still move like a monkey,' Thomas complained.
'Gravity.' De l'Orme grinned. 'Wait until you see me struggle to get back up.' He cocked his head back. 'All right, then,' he called to Santos. 'All clear on the ladder. You may join us.'
'In a moment. I want to look around.'
'So what do you think?' de l'Orme asked Thomas, unaware that Thomas was standing in darkness. Thomas had been waiting for the more powerful torch that Santos had. Now he took out his pocket light and turned it on.
The column was of thick igneous rock, and extraordinarily free of the usual jungle ravaging. 'Clean, very clean,' he said. 'The preservation reminds me of a desert environment.'
'Sans peur et sans reproche,' de l'Orme said. Without fear and without reproach.
'It's perfect.'
Thomas appraised it professionally, the material before the subject. He moved the light to the edge of a carving: the detailing was fresh and uncorroded. This original architecture must have been buried deep, and within a century of its creation.
De l'Orme reached out one hand and laid his fingertips upon the carving to orient himself. He had memorized the entire surface by touch, and now began searching for something. Thomas walked his light behind the thin fingers.
'Excuse me, Richard,' de l'Orme spoke to the stone, and now Thomas saw a monstrosity,
