Stalking the Sprouted Stag
Nancy Bourne
“Rhyton. Yes. Rhyton. Sprouted Stag. 600 BC, maybe 750.”
He stands there twisting his slender, delicate fingers in the air. Murmuring.
I stare at a small clay animal in a glass case. Its squat legs support a smooth, undulating body and a head full of antlers. The top of its head is cut open to form a spout at the mouth.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I ask the man who is muttering to himself.
“Sprouted stag.” He doesn’t look at me. “Rhyton. Yes. Maybe 600.”
I turn to him. “Excuse me?”
Nothing. I recognize him. He sits by himself at the back of the van on our tour of Persia. He’s small, no taller than I am, and very young looking with thick blond hair that covers his hunched shoulders. A boy, really.
I move on to a collection of urns and pitchers.
“That guy’s talking to himself,” I say to fellow traveler Lawton Arey, a tall man with a jutting chin and a large mole on his forehead.
“He’s a weirdo,” Mr. Arey says in the same nasal drawl he uses to complain about the food, the hotels, the heat, the van. Arey’s a real estate developer from Memphis who travels with his wife on tours all over the world with the sole purpose, as far as I can tell, of buying up the gift shops. I’ve certainly not detected any curiosity about this country on the part of either of them.
After an hour of traipsing around the museum, marveling at pre-Islamic bronze lions and blown glass ewers, I return to the ceramic stag. The young man hasn’t moved.
Soroya, our local guide, calls out, “Dominic, the van is here.”
He stands, staring at the clay animal, still murmuring.
“Let’s go,” she says.
He inches closer to the glass case. I follow his gaze. For the first time, I notice a hairline crack in one of the antlers. Is that what he’s looking at?
A man in uniform suddenly appears and says something in Farsi to Soroya, who shakes her head and answers quickly. The guard reaches for Dominic’s arm.
“Don’t touch me!” Dominic yells, and turns toward the man, his hands in front of him, palms out, thin lips quivering.
The guard backs away, yelling something. Soroya is talking fast, her dark eyes flashing under heavy make-up. She shows him her official guide’s badge, points to Dominic and then us, huddled together in a group. Dominic stares into the glass case one last time, then turns sharply toward the exit, leaving a wide space between him and the guard.
At dinner Dominic sits at a table by himself and speaks to no one. After he leaves, everyone talks at once.
“What’s the matter with that guy?” “He could get us in all trouble, him yelling out like that.”
Soroya tells us she’s been assured by Travel Adventures, our tour company, that Dominic is just eccentric. We shouldn’t worry about him.
“If it makes you feel more comfortable, I’ll try to contact the head office to get more information about him. But you know,” she reminds us, “we have no internet service in this country and so far the Wi-fi’s been down in all our hotels. So I haven’t been getting calls or emails through to the company.”
I marvel at her fluent English, which she told me she picked up during a semester at the University of Michigan.
***
I wake up and can’t get back to sleep. It’s not late, 11:15. But it’s stuffy in my little hotel room. No air conditioning. I pull a full-length kaftan over my nightgown, flip a scarf around my hair, and head down the stairs to the garden. It’s quiet out here; everyone’s asleep. A shallow pool, a dim purple under the garden lights, divides the lush vegetation into two sections. I cross the narrow foot bridge into a small stand of pomegranate trees. Their red flowers are even more brilliant under the night lights than in the bright sun. I follow the winding paths through green hedges and bushes thick with pistachio nuts. The air is cool out here and smells slightly sweet. My foot scrapes something soft.
“Don’t touch me!”
I jump. A dark lump in the path.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “I didn’t see you.”
As I stumble backwards toward the pool, I recognize Dominic, sitting cross-legged in the path, motionless except for his fingers which are tracing patterns in the air.
For the rest of the night, I lie sleepless, rumpled sheets tossed aside. What’s he doing out there?
***
At breakfast, I try to pull Soroya aside to tell her what happened, but she’s surrounded by my fellow travelers. When I climb on the van, I find that two couples from Dallas have co-opted the back seats where Dominic has been sitting. I watch him shuffle slowly down the aisle. Then he stops.
“Good morning, everyone,” Soroya announces. “We have a long travel day ahead of us. So please, everyone take a seat.”
She’s looking at Dominic, who twists around, peering up and down the van, his eyes darting everywhere. Then he slides into the empty seat across the aisle from me.
“No seat in the back. No seat in the back. No seat in the back.” His delicate fingers are twitching in his lap.
He turns to face me. “Sprouted stag,” he says, then resumes his mumbling.
Sprouted stag?
I want to move my seat. I’m not the friendly type. Thirty years a lab tech. Never married, never wanted children. I don’t like this. But the van is moving at a fast clip and there are no empty seats nearby.
***
We’re having lunch at a small restaurant somewhere in the desert. Kebobs, as usual, and some kind of dark brown stew made, we are told, from pomegranate seeds. Plus the vast platters of rice we have come to expect.
When Dominic heads off in the direction of the restroom, Mr. Arey’s wife, Lorraine, who is sitting near me, pipes up. “That young man is definitely not all right.”
“What do you mean?” Soroya asks. I notice her scarf has slipped off her silk-black hair onto her shoulders. She’s obviously not worried about the country’s prohibition against women showing their hair.
“My husband tried to introduce himself, you know, tried to shake his hand,” Lorraine says. “And he jumped back and screamed, ‘Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.’ And you saw the way he refused to leave the museum yesterday. Next thing you know he’ll get himself arrested for disrupting the peace or something and the rest of us will be in trouble.”
“I don’t think that’s likely,” Soroya says.
I tell her about finding him in the garden the night before.
Mrs. Arey watches me with frightened eyes. “See what I mean?”
Soroya sighs. “As I’ve said before, the company told me he’s kind of anti-social. But he’s nothing to worry about. They assured me of that. Why don’t you just let him be? I think he’ll be fine.”
As we are lining up to board the van, I see Mrs. Arey, with the Memphis crowd bunched around her, her small, heavily rouged face rigid with self-importance, whispering.
***
On the long drive to our next destination I entertain myself by swiping through the photos on my IPad. I’m gazing at the clay animals we saw in the Pre-Islamic Museum when I hear the familiar mumbling.
“Sprouted stag.”
I turn to look. He’s just across the aisle from me again, rocking back and forth, very slightly, and nodding. “Pre-Islamic. Rhyton. 750? 600? Before Cyrus. Ibex. Zebu.” He doesn’t look at me.
Zebu?
He keeps mumbling, but I can’t understand the words. And then, “Humped.”
Humped?
“Cattle. Humped cattle, zebu. Humped cattle.”
I try to ignore him. But there it is, a photo of a clay animal that resembles a cow and has a huge hump. Zebu?
I steal a quick glance in his direction. Whatever his problem, this Dominic seems to know stuff.
For the rest of the ride, he talks, or rather he mumbles. Medes and Cyrus and Darius. I recognize those words. Before I travel to a place, I do my homework.
I steal a glance in his direction. He’s staring out the window.
Later, while we wait in the Oasis Hotel lobby for our room assignments, I find myself sitting next to Mr. Ayers.
“I think Dominic might know something about Persian art,” I say. “
“He’s a nut,” Ayers says.
***
We’re in Persepolis, Darius the Great’s magnificent showcase palace. The ultimate goal of the trip. We enter Xerxes’ Gateway, dwarfed by gigantic mythical figures with wings and long beards; we wander idly among the tall, slender columns with large capitals balanced on the top. I’m so awed by all this pomp and artistry, I forget about Dominic.
On to the Apadana, a palace where Darius received officials from all parts of the Persian empire. On one side of the building, full sized figures, bearing gifts to Darius, are carved into the stone wall, along a stairway ascending to the palace. Some carry wine, some gold, some lambs for sacrifice. The officials’ heads are covered, with crowns, with helmets, with bent conical forms, like cornucopias. I’ve read about this place, looked on line at photographs. But the real palace takes my breath away.
As I walk slowly up the Apadana stairway, I find myself behind Dominic. He’s staring at the figures, his face close to the stylized hair, the stony beards. I hear him talking, in his usual monotone. I hear the word Darius. For the first time, it dawns on me that Dominic’s not just mumbling to himself, he may be talking to me. I back away. Meanwhile, his thin fingers are flying in the air. He’s leaning forward, close to the figures, almost touching them.
“Not so close,” I say. It just pops out, but guards are everywhere. Am I worried about him? Or is it me I’m worried about?
He ignores me, leaning into the figures, pulling a camera out of his backpack and aiming it at the struggling lambs, the elaborate urns, the chiseled faces.
“Watch out,” I beg, terrified. “The guards.”
Slowly he turns his head toward me, and, without making eye contact, backs away from the stone figures.
As we reach the top of the stairs, I find Soroya waiting for us.
“Thank you,” she says.
The Ayers are huddled behind her, watching us.
***
We’re in the National Crown Jewel Museum, surrounded by glass cases of the largest rubies and emeralds and diamonds maybe in the world. Jeweled crowns, tiaras, necklaces, sword handles and sheaths. It’s dark in here, lit only by the lights inside the cases. And you can hardly hear the guide’s spiel for the crowd of tourists, talking, gasping, calling to one another. It’s too dark, too close, too noisy. I’m ready to leave.
Then over the clamor, a loud scream. “Don’t touch me!”
The crowd parts and there is Dominic, thrashing about, bucking and twisting, with two men in blue uniforms yanking his arms behind him. They push him toward the exit, with Soroya close behind. I snake my way through the crowd, trying to keep up. By the time I reach the dimly-lit museum lobby, Dominic and the guards have disappeared and Soroya is speaking in rapid-fire Farsi to a woman in full hijab. The tour members cluster behind me, all talking at once.
I knew it. He’s going to get us all in trouble.
What’d he do?
He’s crazy.
He’s scary.
What was Travel Adventures thinking?
Soroya turns to us, “Please, go to the van and wait,” she says, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Once inside the van, Lawson Ayers takes a stand at the front of the bus. “We’re in a very serious situation,” he begins. “If this man is released, which is questionable, we must insist that he be immediately flown back home. Otherwise, he will endanger all of us. I think you all know what I mean.”
We nod. We do. This is the Middle East.
To distance myself from the other passengers and whatever may be happening in the Jewelry Museum, I pull out my IPad and get lost in on-line bridge.
When Soroya returns to the van after a two hour wait, her shoulders are slumped, her lipstick faded, her scarf dangling. And she is alone. The chatter in the van stops cold. I watch as she picks up the microphone.
“Don’t worry,” she begins. “It will be all right. They are holding Dominic for questioning, but I’m sure he’ll be released soon.” Her voice breaks. “I am so sorry this is happening in my country.”
“Where is he?” I ask.
Soroya shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
I have an image of that fragile boy being shoved, beaten. And suddenly nothing feels safe.
“What was he doing?” Mr. Ayers again.
“He was standing too close to one of the cases. The guard tapped him on the back . . . well, you know. He doesn’t like to be touched. It went bad after that. I tried to convince them he was just interested in looking, but . . ”
“I knew it! Something like that was bound to happen.” It’s Lorraine Ayers, her thin lips glistening red.
On the return trip to the hotel, the Ayers are up front, talking at once to Soroya. Yelling past each other. Why had Travel Adventures allowed that man to go on the trip? What will happen to the rest of us? Some of the passengers want to fly home as soon as possible. One old lady is clutching her phone.
“I’m holding for my Congressman,” she tells me.
I move to the back of the van to get away from the mounting hysteria. I take deep breaths, but that only makes me cough, and my face swelters from the heat of the unfamiliar scarf. A voice in my head keeps repeating If it can happen to Dominic . . . .
***
A knock on my hotel room door. It’s Soroya. She gives me a hug, which surprises me. I don’t hug. But I’ve been holding myself in so tight, refusing to even imagine what was happening to Dominic, that her strong arms around me feel okay.
She tugs off her scarf and sits on the queen bed. I pull up a desk chair opposite and watch her face. Her large black eyes dart around the small, anonymous room.
“I’ve decided to talk to all of you separately,” she says. “It’s less confusing.”
I nod.
“The president of our company is on his way here. He has Dominic’s mother with him, also somebody from the State Department. Maybe others. James Ridley, that’s the president, has spoken with several of the leaders here, and he tells me that Dominic will be released.”
I want to be convinced, but I’m not.
“Dominic has done nothing wrong,” she says. “There’s no gain, political or otherwise, for keeping him here.” She stops and stares into space. “But in my country, nothing is sure.”
“He comes across as crazy,” I say. “All that mumbling and calling out.”
“I know. That’s why the mother’s coming. She can explain his situation.”
“What is it, his situation?”
She pulls her IPad out of her bag. “This is the first day I’ve been able to use email, and look what’s been sitting here all this time.” She points.
To James Ridley. I am the mother of Dominic Whittaker, who is currently touring the Middle East with your company. In previous communications, I mentioned that Dominic is anti-social and often appears to be eccentric. At his insistence, I did not tell you that he suffers from a communication disorder on the autism spectrum. This is Dominic’s first ever trip on his own, and he very much wants people not to treat him as disabled. My son is highly intelligent and very knowledgeable about pre-Islamic Persian treasures, in which he has a Master’s degree from Brown. He is also able to care for himself. While I respect and sympathize with my son’s request, I am telling you the truth, out of my concern that those around treat him with tolerance and kindness.
I am feeling very anxious about my son and hope this message will be helpful to him and to you. Please email or call me immediately if there is a problem. Thank you. Adele Whittaker.
“That’s just the first one,” Soroya says. “There has been an email from Dominic’s mother every day since this one. But I didn’t get them until today.”
I feel so stupid. Autism. Of course. I’ve read so much about it in the news, but I’ve never known anybody with it.
“I keep asking myself what I could have done different,” Soroya says.
I sit across from her, frightened, angry. At this country. At the travel company.
“Everyone wants out.” She takes my hand. “You should go home. The official word is that Dominic will be released. But right now, all of you could be called in for questioning. You don’t want that.”
***
Back home, Dominic is front page news for a day or two; his hysterical mother appears on CNN, begging the president to send a team to the Middle East to rescue her son.
For several weeks, I am the center of attention, at the lab, at duplicate bridge meets, in my apartment building. I’m the lady who was forced to escape the Middle East, the one on that tour where a man was captured. No one wants to know about the winged bulls of Persepolis or the sprouted stags or the blue pools of water in the desert. So I entertain them with tales of Dominic’s capture, his being swept away in front of my eyes. I tell them that I’m scared for him, that he was brave to make that trip by himself.
And then it’s all forgotten. No more news coverage. My tales of adventure grown stale, I download my photos, label them, shove my guide books into the bookcase. It’s over. Except in the middle of the night, I sometimes wake up from a nightmare of blue uniformed guards huddled together over something dark, striking it. And I can’t stop it.
***
The papers are full of it. Dominic Whitaker released after six months in prison in the Middle East. I buy all the papers, read every word. I watch Dominic on CNN, his spare body even thinner, his hair unkempt, his fingers clutching the rail as he walks slowly down the stairs of the government plane. A stout gray-haired woman walks behind him. The mother?
The press is everywhere, pushing microphones at him, cameras flashing. A close-up reveals a face with no expression. The mouth hangs open, the eyes are half shut. There’s a big reception party on the tarmac, New York’s Mayor and lots of officials I don’t recognize. Dominic ignores them, his body stiff. No one hugs him. No one touches him. Clearly, they’ve been warned.
Two days later, Dominic’s mother gives an angry interview on PBS. She blames Travel Adventures for allowing the capture, she chastises the White House for not bringing him home sooner.
“How is he doing?” a reporter asks.
“How do you think he’s doing?” she spits out. “He’s been in prison for six months.” Her voice trembles.
She holds up a book on Persian art. The camera zooms in on the cover. It’s the sprouted stag.
“This,” she hisses, stabbing the stag with her finger, “this is the art he knows more about than most scholars. This is why he made the trip. On his own. He insisted on going alone. To see this ancient art. All by himself. I should have gone with him, but I was so proud of him.” She breaks down.
***
It’s been months, but I still see Dominic, his nose close to the glass case, staring at the crack in the stag’s antler, his fingers twisting. Hear his voice. His monotone. He picked me to talk to. Of all people. I didn’t listen. I was afraid. He tried to tell me -- about all those people living thirty centuries ago, all those people lost to time, building castles, shaping stags with their fingers. Tried to break through his lonely shell to me. I didn’t listen.
Nancy Bourne's stories have appeared in Upstreet, Carolina Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Blue Lake and numerous other publications. Several of her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. For a full list of her publications, please see nancybourne.us.