The Garden
A Short Story
by
Charles Sheehan-Miles
"You believe in God, but your God is a heartless and cruel one...."
The words of his wife echoed in Sir Colin Scott Cross' mind as he stared out across the blasted terrain of the Arabian Desert. For what seemed to be the thousandth time that day, he brushed the flies away from his face and eyes, wondering how in God's name they managed to live, even flourish, in this desolate place.
In God's name, indeed.
Five weeks had passed since he had left his home in Manchester, hard as that seemed to believe. Good bye at the channel, the long train ride across Europe to Athens, then the boat ride to Jaffa; these seemed only a prelude to what he would soon experience. Though he had spent much of his adult life in North Africa and Egypt, nothing had prepared Cross for his first visions of the decaying Ottoman Empire. The fetid swamps of Palestine, the beggars in the streets of Jerusalem, the palpable death pall over Aqaba.
Ironic, Cross thought, that this is the "Holy Land." Ibrahim, his bedu guide, grunted and brought his camel, laden with goods for their long trek, to a halt. Sniffing the air and slowly gazing at the distant, flat horizon of sand, he dismounted and dropped to his hands and knees. Cross simply stared as the bedu peered at the ground, finally holding up a tiny shred of paper.
"Your friend has been on this trail," he said.
Cross nodded, bringing his own mount to a halt. The friend Ibrahim referred to was William Hastings, another anthropologist Cross had known since their college days together at Oxford. The two had not seen each other for years, until '83, when Cross was in French Algeria. They had worked together from time to time, but Cross "retired" in 1890 in favor of an appointment at Manchester University. It was better that way, he thought. There would be no more long absences from his Spanish wife Maria or their twelve year old daughter Aimee. They all had their own scars to live with.
Then the telegram came. Cross received it on 15 October 1893.
"I HAVE FOUND IT. STOP. REMEMBER BURLING. STOP. MEET IN AQABA 20 NOVEMBER. STOP. MOST IMPORTANT EVER. STOP. SIGNED, HASTINGS."
Studying the faint yellow paper gave Cross a jolt even now, weeks later. Burling has been a colleague who theorized that the Garden of Eden was a specific archaeological site that could possibly be located. Unfortunately, for him at least, he had never gained any support for the idea. Working alone, he was killed in a riot in Jerusalem. The body was never recovered rumor had it that he had been dismembered but Cross and Hastings both spoke at the memorial service in London.
Despite this, Cross would have laughed at the telegram had it not been for his respect for Hastings. He had always scoffed at Burling's theories, despite the fact that he had personally liked the man.
Burling had a quiet, submissive wife, Cross remembered. What was her name? He couldn't recall. He snorted to himself with quiet amusement, for more than once he had fantasized that his own wife was such a woman. Maria was anything but submissive.
What could the telegram mean? Surely Hastings did not truly believe that he had found the mythical Garden? If so, what was he doing in Arabia? Burling's theory had stated that such a site would be in the Tigris Euphrates Valley.