Lie Down with Lions (1985)

just felt sad.

Her musings were interrupted. There was a flurry of activity over at the mosque entrance, and Jane turned around to see Ellis walk in carrying something in his arms. As he came nearer she could see that his face was a mask of rage, and it flashed through her mind that she had seen him like that once before: when a careless taxi driver had made a sudden U-turn and knocked down a young man on a motorcycle, injuring him quite badly. Ellis and Jane had witnessed the whole thing and called the ambulance—in those days she had known nothing of medicine—and Ellis had said over and over again: “So unnecessary, it was so unnecessary.”

She made out the shape of the bundle in his arms: it was a child, and she realized that his expression meant that the child was dead. Her first, shameful reaction was to think, Thank God it’s not my baby; then, when she looked closely, she saw that it was the one child in the village who sometimes seemed like her own—one-handed Mousa, the boy whose life she had saved. She felt the dreadful sense of disappointment and loss that came when a patient died after she and Jean-Pierre had fought long and hard for his life. But this was especially painful, for Mousa had been brave and determined in coping with his disability; and his father was so proud of him. Why him? thought Jane as the tears came to her eyes. Why him?

The villagers clustered around Ellis, but he looked at Jane.

“They are all dead,” he said, speaking Dari so that the others could understand. Some of the women began to weep.

“How?” Jane said.

“Shot by the Russians, each one.”

“Oh, my God.” Only last night she had said None of them will die—of their wounds, she had meant, but nonetheless she had foreseen each of them getting better, quickly or slowly, and returning to full health and strength under her care. Now—all dead. “But why did they kill the child?” she cried.

“I think he annoyed them.”

Jane frowned, puzzled.

Ellis shifted his burden slightly so that Mousa’s hand came into view. The small fingers were rigidly grasping the handle of the knife his father had given him. There was blood on the blade.

Suddenly a great wail was heard, and Halima pushed through the crowd. She took the body of her son from Ellis and sank to the ground with the dead child in her arms, screaming his name. The women gathered around her. Jane turned away.

Beckoning Fara to follow her with Chantal, Jane left the mosque and walked slowly home. Just a few minutes ago she had been thinking that the village had had a lucky escape. Now seven men and a boy were dead. Jane had no tears left, for she had cried too much: she just felt weak with grief.

She went into the house and sat down to feed Chantal. “How patient you have been, little one,” she said as she put the baby to her breast.

A minute or two later Ellis came in. He leaned over her and kissed her. He looked at her for a moment, then said: “You seem angry with me.”

Jane realized that she was. “Men are so bloody,” she said bitterly. “That child obviously tried to attack armed Russian troops with his hunting knife—who taught him to be foolhardy? Who told him it was his role in life to kill Russians? When he threw himself at the man with the Kalashnikov, who was his role model? Not his mother. It’s his father; it’s Mohammed’s fault that he died; Mohammed’s fault and yours.”

Ellis looked astonished. “Why mine?”

She knew she was being harsh, but she could not stop. “They beat Abdullah, Alishan and Shahazai in an attempt to make them tell where you were,” she said. “They were looking for you. That was the object of the exercise.”

“I know. Does that make it my fault that they shot the little boy?”

“It happened because you’re here, where you don’t belong.”

“Perhaps. Anyway, I have the solution to that problem. I’m leaving. My presence brings violence and bloodshed, as you are so quick to point out. If I stay, not only am I liable to get caught—for we were very lucky last night—but my fragile little scheme to start these tribes working together against their common enemy will fall apart. It’s worse than that, in fact. The Russians would put me on public trial for the maximum propaganda. ‘See how the CIA attempts to exploit the internal problems of a Third World country.’ That sort of thing.”

“You really are a big cheese, aren’t you?” It seemed odd that what happened here in the Valley, among this small group of people, should have such great global consequences. “But you can’t go. The route to the Khyber Pass is blocked.”

“There’s another way: the Butter Trail.”

“Oh, Ellis . . . it’s very hard—and dangerous.” She thought of him climbing those high passes in the bitter winds. He might lose his way and freeze to death in the snow, or be robbed and murdered by the bandits. “Please don’t do that.”

“If I had another choice I’d take it.”

So she would lose him again, and she would be alone. The thought made her miserable. That was surprising. She had only spent one night with him. What had she expected? She was not sure. More, anyway, than this abrupt parting. “I didn’t think I’d lose you again so soon,” she said. She moved Chantal to the other breast.

He knelt in front of her and took her hand. “You haven’t thought this situation through,” he said. “Think about Jean-Pierre. Don’t you know he wants you back?”

Jane considered that. Ellis was right, she realized. Jean-Pierre would now be feeling humiliated and emasculated: the only thing that would heal his wounds would be to have her back, in his bed and in his power. “But what would he do with me?” she said.

“He will want you and Chantal to live out the rest of your lives in some mining town in Siberia, while he spies in Europe and visits you every two or three years for a holiday between assignments.”

“What could he do if I were to refuse?”

“He could make you. Or he could kill you.”

Jane remembered Jean-Pierre punching her. She felt nauseous. “Will the Russians help him to find me?” she said.

“Yes.”

“But why? Why should they care about me?”

“First because they owe him. Second because they figure you will keep him happy. Third because you know too much. You know Jean-Pierre intimately and you’ve seen Anatoly: you could provide good descriptions of both of them for the CIA’s computer, if you were able to get back to Europe.”

So there would be more bloodshed, Jane thought; the Russians would raid villages, interrogate people, and beat and torture them to find out where she was. “That Russian officer . . . Anatoly, his name is. He saw Chantal.” Jane hugged her baby tighter for a moment as she remembered those dreadful seconds. “I thought he was going to pick her up. Didn’t he realize that, if he had taken her, I would have given myself up just to be with her?”

Ellis nodded. “That puzzled me at the time. But I’m more important to them than you are; and I think he decided that, while he wants eventually to capture you, in the meantime he has another use for you.”

“What use? What could they want me to do?”

“Slow me down.”

“By making you stay here?”

“No, by coming with me.”

As soon as he said it she realized he was right, and a sense of doom settled over her like a shroud. She had to go with him, she and her baby; there was no alternative. If we die, we die, she thought fatalistically. So be it. “I suppose I have a better chance of escaping from here with you than of escaping from Siberia alone,” she said.

Ellis nodded. “That’s about it.”

“I’ll start packing,” said Jane. There was no time to lose. “We’d better leave first thing tomorrow morning.”

Ellis shook his head. “I want to be out of here in an hour.”