When we were well away from the people onshore, Ardis asked me, rather suddenly, if I intended to spend all my time in America here in Washington.
I told her that my original plan had been to stay here no more than a week, then make my way up the coast to Philadelphia and the other ancient cities before I returned home, but that now that I had met her I would stay here forever if she wished it.
“Haven’t you ever wanted to see the interior? This strip of beach we live on is kept half-alive by the ocean and the trade that crosses it, but a hundred miles inland lies the wreck of our entire civilization, waiting to be plundered.”
“Then why doesn’t someone plunder it?” I asked.
“They do. A year never passes without someone bringing some great prize out—but it is so large . . .” I could see her looking beyond the lake and the fragrant trees. “So large that whole cities are lost in it. There was an arch of gold at the entrance to St. Louis—no one knows what became of it. Denver, the Mile High City, was nested in silver mines; no one can find them now.”
“Many of the old maps must still be in existence.”
Ardis nodded slowly, and I sensed that she wanted to say more than she had. For a few seconds there was no sound but the water lapping against the side of the boat.
“I remember having seen some in the museum in Tehran—not only our maps, but some of your own from a hundred years ago.”
“The courses of the rivers have changed,” she said. “And when they have not, no one can be sure of it.”
“Many buildings must still be standing, as they are here, in the Silent City.”
“That was built of stone—more solidly than anything else in the country. But yes, some, many, are still there.”
“Then it would be possible to fly in, land somewhere, and pillage them.”
“There are many dangers, and so much rubble to look through that anyone might search for a lifetime and only scratch the surface.”
I saw that talking of all this only made her unhappy, and tried to change the subject. “Didn’t you say that I could escort you to a party tonight? What will that be like?”
“Nadan, I have to trust someone. You’ve never met my father, but he lives close to the hotel where you are staying, and has a shop where he sells old books and maps.” (So I had visited the right house—almost—after all!) “When he was younger, he wanted to go into the interior. He made three or four trips, but never got farther than the Appalachian foothills. Eventually he married my mother and didn’t feel any longer that he could take the risks. . . .”
“I understand.”
“The things he had sought to guide him to the wealth of the past became his stock-in-trade. Even today, people who live farther inland bring him old papers; he buys them and resells them. Some of those people are only a step better than the ones who dig up the cemeteries for the wedding rings of the dead women.”
I recalled the rings I had bought in the shadow of the broken obelisk, and shuddered, though I do not believe Ardis observed it.
“I said that some of them were hardly better than the grave robbers. The truth is that some are worse—there are people in the interior who are no longer people. Our bodies are poisoned—you know that, don’t you? All of us Americans. They have adapted—that’s what Father says—but they are no longer human. He made his peace with them long ago, and he trades with them still.”
“You don’t have to tell me this.”
“Yes, I do—I must. Would you go into the interior, if I went with you? The government will try to stop us if they learn of it, and to confiscate anything we find.”
I assured her with every oath I could remember that with her beside me I would cross the continent on foot if need be.
“I told you about my father. I said that he sells the maps and records they bring him. What I did not tell you is that he reads them first. He has never given up, you see, in his heart.”
“He has made a discovery?” I asked.
“He’s made many—hundreds. Bobby and I have used them. You remember those men in the restaurant? Bobby went to each of them with a map and some of the old letters. He’s persuaded them to help finance an expedition into the interior, and made each of them believe that we’ll help him cheat the other—that keeps them from combining to cheat us, you see.”
“And you want me to go with you?” I was beside myself with joy.
“We weren’t going to go at all—Bobby was going to take the money, and go to Baghdad or Marrakesh, and take me with him. But, Nadan”—here she leaned forward, I remember, and took my hands in hers—“there really is a secret. There are many, but one better—more likely to be true, more likely to yield truly immense wealth than all the others. I know you would share fairly with me. We’ll divide everything, and I’ll go back to Tehran with you.”
I know that I have never been more happy in my life than I was then, in that silly boat. We sat together in the stern, nearly sinking it, under the combined shade of the tiny sail and Ardis’s big straw hat, and kissed and stroked one another until we would have been pilloried a dozen times in Iran.
At last, when I could bear no more unconsummated love, we ate the sandwiches Ardis had brought, and drank some warmish, fruit-flavored beverage, and returned to shore.
When I took her home a few minutes ago, I very strongly urged her to let me come upstairs with her; I was on fire for her, sick to impale her upon my own flesh and pour myself into her as some mad god before the coming of the Prophet might have poured his golden blood into the sea. She would not permit it—I think because she feared that her apartment could not be darkened enough to suit her modesty. I am determined that I will yet see
