Samarkand (21 page)

Thus it was that the Assassins’ library burnt for seven days and seven nights, causing the loss of innumerable works, of which
there was no copy remaining and which are supposed to have contained the best-guarded secrets in the universe.

For a long time it was believed that the
Samarkand Manuscript
had also been consumed in the inferno of Alamut.

Arise, we have eternity for sleeping!’

OMAR KHAYYAM

Until now I have spoken little of myself. I have been trying to expose, as faithfully as possible, what
the Samarkand Manuscript
reveals of Khayyam and of those he knew and some of the events he witnessed. It remains to be told just how this work, spared
at the time of the Mongols, has come down to our time, and through what adventures I managed to gain possession of it, and
to start with – through what stroke of luck I learnt of its existence.

I have already mentioned my name, Benjamin O. Lesage. In spite of its French sound, the heritage of a Huguenot forebear who
emigrated in Louis XIV’s century, I am an American citizen and a native of Annapolis in Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay, a
modest inlet of the Atlantic. My connection with France is not limited, however, to that distant forefather and my father
applied himself to renewing the link. He had always had an obsession about his origins – even noting in his school book: ‘Was
my genealogical tree felled in order to construct a get-away boat!’, and he set about learning French. Then, with pomp and
circumstance, he crossed the Atlantic in the opposite direction to the hands of time.

His year of pilgrimage was either extremely badly or well chosen. He left New York on 9 July 1870, on board the
Scotia;
he reached Cherbourg on the 18th and was in Paris on the evening of the 19th with war having been declared at mid-day. There
followed retreat,
calamity, invasion, famine, the Commune and massacres. My father was never to live a more intense year. It would remain his
finest memory, why should it be denied? There is a perverse joy in finding oneself in a besieged city where barricades fall
as others arise and men and women rediscover the joys of primitive bonding. How many times in Annapolis, around the inevitable
holiday turkey, would father and mother recall with emotion the piece of elephant trunk they had shared on New Year’s eve
in Paris and which they had bought for forty francs a pound at Roos’, the English butcher on Boulevard Haussmann!

They had just become engaged, they were to be married a year later, and the war christened their happiness. ‘Upon my arrival
in Paris,’ my father would recall, ‘I took up the habit of going to Cafe Riche in the morning, on the Boulevard des Italiens.
With a pile of newspapers,
le Temps, le Gaulois, le Figaro, la Presse
, I would settle down at a table, reading every line and listing discreetly in a notebook the words I could not understand
– words such as “gaiter” or “moblot” – so that I would be able, upon my return to my hotel, to ask the erudite concierge.

‘The third day a man with a grey moustache came and sat at the next table. He had his own stack of newspapers, but he abandoned
them soon in order to observe me; he had a question on the tip of his tongue. Unable to restrain himself any longer, he spoke
out with his hoarse voice, keeping one hand on the handle of his cane while the other tapped nervously on the wet marble.
He wanted to be certain that this young man, apparently in sound health, had good reasons for not being at the front in order
to defend the fatherland. His tone was polite, although very suspicious, and accompanied by sidelong glances at the notebook
in which he had seen me hurriedly scribbling. I had no need to argue as my accent proved to be an eloquent defence. The man
gallantly apologized, invited me to his table, and mentioned La Fayette, Benjamin Franklin, Tocqueville and Pierre L’Enfant
before explaining in detail what I had just read in the press – how this war would be “just an excursion to Berlin for our
troops”.’

My father wanted to contradict him. Although he knew nothing of the comparable strengths of the French and the Prussians,
he
had just taken part in the Civil War and had been wounded in the siege of Atlanta. ‘I could testify that no war was a picnic,’
he told us. ‘But nations are so forgetful and gunpowder so intoxicating that I held back from being drawn into an argument.
It was not the time for discussions and the man did not ask my opinion. From time to time he would utter a “Don’t you think
so?” which hardly required an answer; I replied with a knowing nod.

‘He was friendly. Besides, we met every morning after that. I still spoke very little and he stated that he was happy that
an American could share his views so thoroughly. At the end of his fourth monologue, which was just as spirited, this august
gentleman invited me to dine with him at his home; he was so certain of obtaining my agreement yet again that he hailed a
coach before I could even formulate a reply. I must admit that I have never regretted it. He was called Charles-Hubert de
Luçay and lived in a mansion on Boulevard Poissonière. He was a widower. His two sons were in the army and his daughter was
going to become your mother.’

She was eighteen and my father was ten years older. They observed each other in silence throughout long patriotic harangues.
From 7 August, when it became clear, after three defeats in a row, that the war was lost and that the national territory was
under threat, my grandfather became less verbose. As his daughter and future son-in-law busied themselves trying to temper
his melancholy a complicity sprang up between them. From then on, a glance was enough to decide which of them was going to
intervene and with the medicine of which argument.

‘The first time we were alone, she and I in the huge salon, there was a deathly silence – followed by a burst of laughter.
We had just discovered that, after numerous meals taken together, we had never addressed a word to each other directly. It
was sweet, knowing and uncontrolled laughter, but it would have been unbecoming to prolong it. I was supposed to speak first.
Your mother was clutching a book to her blouse, and I asked her what she was reading.’

At that very moment, Omar Khayyam entered into my life. I
should almost say that it gave birth to me. My mother had just acquired
Les Quatrains de Khéyam
, translated from the Persian by J.B. Nicolas, formerly chief dragoman of the French Embassy to Persia, published in 1867
by the Imperial Press. My father had in his luggage the 1868 edition of Edward FitzGerald’s
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
.

‘Your mother’s rapture was no better hidden than mine. We were both sure that our life lines were going to join. At no moment
did we think that it could just be a simple coincidence that we were reading the same book. Omar appeared to us instantly
like fate’s password – to ignore it would have been almost sacrilegious. Naturally, we had said nothing of what was going
on inside us, the conversation centred on the poems. She informed me that Napoleon III in person had ordered the publication
of the work.’

At that time, Europe had just discovered Omar. Some specialists, in truth, had spoken of him earlier in the century, his algebra
had been published in Paris in 1851 and articles had appeared in specialized reviews. But the western public was still unaware
of him, and, in the east itself, what was left of Khayyam? A name, two or three legends, some quatrains of indefinite authorship
and a hazy reputation as an astrologer.

When an obscure British poet, FitzGerald, decided to publish a translation of seventy-five quatrains in 1859 there was indifference.
The book was published in an edition of two hundred and fifty copies; the author offered some to his friends and the rest
were selling very slowly at the book-shop of Bernard Quaritch. ‘Poor old Omar, he apparently was of interest to no one,’ so
FitzGerald wrote to his Persian teacher. After two years the publisher decided to sell off the stock: from an initial price
of five shillings, the
Rubaiyaat
went down to a penny, sixty times less. Even at this price, few were sold until the moment when two literary critics discovered
it. They read it and were amazed by it. They came back the next day and bought up six copies to give out. Feeling that some
interest was about to be aroused, the editor raised the price to two pence.

And to think that on my last trip to England I had to pay the same Quaritch, now finely established in Piccadilly, four hundred
pounds sterling for a copy which he had kept from that first edition!

However, success was not immediate in London. It had to come from Paris where M. Nicolas published his translation, where
Théophile Gautier had to write, in the pages of the
Moniteur Universel
a resounding ‘Have you read the Quatrains of Kéyam?’ And welcome ‘this absolute freedom of spirit which the boldest modern
thinkers can hardly equal’, and Ernest Renan had to add: ‘Khayyam is perhaps the most curious man to study in order to understand
what the unfettered genius of Persia managed to become within the bounds of Muslim dogmatism’ – in order for Fitzgerald and
his ‘poor old Omar’ to come out of their anonymity. The awakening was thunderous. Overnight all the images of the orient were
assembled around the sole name of Khayyam. Translation followed translation, editions of the work multiplied in England and
then in several American cities ‘Omar’ societies were formed.

To reiterate, in 1870 the Khayyam vogue was just starting. The circle of fans of Omar was growing every day, without yet having
transcended the circle of intellectuals. After this shared reading matter brought my father and mother together, they started
to recite the quatrains of Omar and to discuss their meaning: were wine and the tavern, in Omar’s pen, purely mystical symbols,
as Nicolas stated? Or were they, on the other hand, the expression of a life of pleasure, indeed of debauchery, as FitzGerald
and Renan claimed? These debates took on a new taste in their mouths. When my father evoked Omar, as he caressed the perfumed
hair of his beautiful girl, my mother blushed. It was between two amorous quatrain that they exchanged their first kiss. The
day they spoke of marriage, they made a vow to call their first son Omar.

During the 1890s, hundreds of little Americans were also given that name: when I was born on 1 March 1873 it was not yet common.
Not wishing to encumber me too much with this exotic first name, my parents relegated it to second place, in order that I
might, if I so desired, replace it with a discrete O; my school friends supposed that it stood for Oliver, Oswald, Osborne
or Orville and I did not disabuse anyone.

The inheritance which was thus handed down to me could not fail to arouse my curiosity about this remote godfather. At fifteen
I started to read everything about him. I had made a plan to study
the language and literature of Persia and to make a long visit there. However, after a bout of enthusiasm I cooled down. Indeed,
in the opinion of all the critics, FitzGerald’s verses constituted a masterpiece of English poetry, but they had only a remote
connection with what Khayyam could have composed. When it came to the quatrains themselves, some authors quoted almost a thousand,
Nicolas had translated more than four hundred, while some thorough specialists only recognized a hundred of them as being
‘probably authentic’. Eminent orientalists went as far as to deny that a single one could be attributed to Omar with certainty.

It was believed that there could have existed an original book which once and for all would have allowed the real to be distinguished
from the false, but there was nothing to lead one to believe that such a manuscript could be found.

Finally I turned away from the person, as I did from the work. I came to see my middle initial O as the permanent residue
of parental childishness – until a meeting took me back to my first love and directed my life resolutely in the footsteps
of Khayyam.

It was at the end of the summer of 1895 that I embarked for the old world. My grandfather had just celebrated his seventy-sixth
birthday and had written tearful letters to me and my mother. He was eager to see me, even if it were only once, before his
death. Having finished my studies I rushed off and on the ship I readied myself for the role I would have to play – to kneel
down at his bedside, to hold his frozen hand bravely while listening to him murmur his last orders.

That was all absolutely wasted. Grandfather was waiting for me at Cherbourg. I can still see him, on the quai de Caligny,
straighter than his cane with his perfumed moustache, his lively gait and his top hat tipping automatically when a lady passed
by. When we were seated in the Admiralty restaurant, he took me firmly by the arm. ‘My friend,’ he said, deliberately theatrical,
‘a young man has just been reborn in me, and he needs a companion.’

I was wrong to take his words lightly. Our time there was a whirl. We would hardly have finished eating at the Brébant, at
Foyot or at Chez le Père Lathuile before we would have to run to the Cigale where Eugénie Buffet was appearing, to the Mirliton
where Aristide Bruant reigned or to the Scala where Yvette Guilbert would sing
les Vierges, le Foetus
and
le Fiacre
. We were two brothers, one with a white moustache, the other with a brown one. We had the same
gait, the same hat and he was the one the women looked at first. With every champagne cork that popped I studied his gestures
and his behaviour, and I could not even once find fault with them. He arose with a bound, walked as quickly as I did, his
cane being hardly more than an ornament. He wanted to gather every rose of this late spring. I am happy to say that he would
live to be ninety-three – another seventeen years, a whole new youth.

One evening he took me to dine at Durand in the place de la Madeleine. In an aisle of the restaurant, around several tables
which had been placed together, there was a group of actors, actresses, journalists and politicians whose names grandfather
audibly reeled off for me one by one. In the middle of these celebrities there was an empty chair, but soon a man arrived
and I realised that the place had been saved for him. He was immediately surrounded and adulated. Every last word of his gave
rise to exclamations and laughs. My grandfather stood up and made a sign to me to follow him.