Come, Tell Me How You Live: An Archaeological Memoir. Agatha Christie
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Название: Come, Tell Me How You Live: An Archaeological Memoir
Автор: Agatha Christie
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9780007487202
isbn:
‘But there is no hurry,’ he says, beaming. ‘Come again tomorrow. I shall be delighted to entertain you.’
‘Tomorrow,’ Max says, ‘we have work to do. We should like our letters tonight.’
Ah, but here is the coffee! We sit and sip. At long last, after polite exhortations, the Postmaster unlocks his private office and starts to search. In the generosity of his heart he urges on us additional letters addressed to other Europeans. ‘You had better have these,’ he says. ‘They have been here six months. No one has come for them. Yes, yes, surely they will be for you.’
Politely but firmly we refuse the correspondence of Mr Johnson, M. Mavrogordata, and Mr Pye. The Postmaster is disappointed.
‘So few?’ he says. ‘But come, will you not have this large one here?’
But we insist on sticking strictly to those letters and papers that bear our own names. A money order has come, as arranged, and Max now goes into the question of cashing it. This, it seems, is incredibly complicated. The Postmaster has never seen a money order before, we gather, and is very properly suspicious of it. He calls in two assistants, and the question is debated thoroughly, though with great good humour. Here is something entirely novel and delightful on which everyone can have a different opinion.
The matter is finally settled and various forms signed when the discovery is made that there is no actual cash in the Post Office! This, the Postmaster says, can be remedied on the morrow! He will send out and collect it from the Bazaar.
We leave the Post Office somewhat exhausted, and walk back to the spot by the river which we have chosen—a little way from the dust and dirt of Hasetshe. A sad spectacle greets us. ’Isa, the cook, is sitting by the cooking-tent, his head in his hands, weeping bitterly.
What has happened?
Alas, he replies, he is disgraced. Little boys have collected round to jeer at him. His honour has gone! In a moment of inattention dogs have devoured the dinner he had prepared. There is nothing left, nothing at all but some rice.
Gloomily we eat plain rice, whilst Hamoudi, Aristide and Abdullah reiterate to the wretched ’Isa that the principal duty of a cook is never to let his attention wander from the dinner he is cooking until the moment when that dinner is safely set before those for whom it is destined.
’Isa says that he feels he is unequal to the strain of being a cook. He has never been one before (‘That explains a good deal!’ says Max), and would prefer to go into a garage. Will Max give him a recommendation as a first-class driver?
Max says certainly not, as he has never seen him drive.
‘But,’ says ’Isa, ‘I have wound the handle of Big Mary on a cold morning. You have seen that?’
Max admits that he has seen that.
‘Then,’ says ’Isa, ‘you can recommend me!’
These autumn days are some of the most perfect I have ever known. We get up early, soon after sunrise, drink hot tea, and eat eggs and start off. It is cold then, and I wear two jerseys and a big woolly coat. The light is lovely—a very faint soft rose softens the browns and greys. From the top of a mound one looks out over an apparently deserted world. Mounds rise everywhere—one can see perhaps sixty if one counts. Sixty ancient settlements, that is to say. Here, where nowadays only the tribesmen move with their brown tents, was once a busy part of the world. Here, some five thousand years ago, was the busy part of the world. Here were the beginnings of civilization, and here, picked up by me, this broken fragment of a clay pot, hand-made, with a design of dots and cross-hatching in black paint, is the forerunner of the Woolworth cup out of which this very morning I have drunk my tea…
I sort through the collection of sherds which are bulging the pockets of my coat (I have already had to mend the lining twice), throwing away duplicate types, and see what I can offer in competition with Mac and Hamoudi to the Master for judgement.
Now then, what have I got?
A thickish grey ware, part of the rim of a pot (valuable as showing shape), some coarse red stuff, two fragments of painted pots, hand-made and one with the dot design (the oldest Tell Halaf!), a flint knife, part of the base of a thin grey pot, several other nondescript bits of painted pottery, a little bit of obsidian.
Max makes his selection, flinging most pieces ruthlessly away, uttering appreciative grunts at others. Hamoudi has the clay wheel of a chariot, and Mac has a fragment of incised ware and a portion of a figurine.
Gathering the united collection together, Max sweeps it into a little linen bag, ties it carefully up, and labels it as usual with the name of the Tell on which it was found. This particular Tell is not marked on the map. It is christened Tell Mak in honour of Macartney, who has had the first find.
So far as Mac’s countenance can express anything at all, it seems to express faint gratification.
We run down the side of the Tell and climb into the car. I peel off a jersey. The sun is getting hot.
We visit two more small Tells, and at the third, which overlooks the Habur, we have lunch—hard-boiled eggs, a tin of bully beef, oranges, and extremely stale bread. Aristide makes tea on the primus. It is very hot now, and the shadows and colours have gone. All is a uniform soft pale buff.
Max says it is lucky we are doing the survey now and not in spring. I ask why? And he says, because it would be far more difficult to find sherds when there is vegetation everywhere. All this, he says, will be green in the spring. It is, he says, the fertile Steppe. I say admiringly that that is a very grand way of putting it. Max says, well, it is the fertile Steppe!
Today we take Mary up the right bank of the Habur to Tell Halaf, visiting Tell Ruman (sinister name, but actually not noticeably Roman) and Tell Juma on the way.
All the Tells in this region have possibilities, unlike the ones farther south. Sherds of pottery of the second and third millennium are frequent and Roman remains are scanty. There is early prehistoric painted hand-made pottery as well. The difficulty will be to choose between so many Tells. Max repeats again and again with jubilation and a complete lack of originality that this is undoubtedly the place!
Our visit to Tell Halaf has something of the reverence of a pilgrimage to a shrine! Tell Halaf is a name that has been so constantly dinned into my ears for the last few years that I can hardly believe I am actually going to see the actual spot. A very lovely spot it is, with the Habur winding round the base of it.
I recall a visit we paid to Baron von Oppenheim in Berlin when he took us to the Museum of his finds. Max and he talked excitedly for (I think) five solid hours. There was nowhere to sit down. My interest, at first acute, flagged, and finally died down completely. With lack-lustre eyes I examined the various extremely ugly statues which had come from Tell Halaf, and which in the Baron’s view were contemporary with the extremely interesting pottery. Max was endeavouring to differ politely on this point without contradicting him flatly. To my dazed glance all the statues seemed strangely alike. It was only after a СКАЧАТЬ