Marshlands (17 page)

“Yes, sir.”

“Whether or not you approve of my methods. Are we clear?”

“Crystal clear.”

Curtis grabbed the pollen cake from his plate and tossed it to Gus. “Go ahead, go nuts,” he said. “Nobody around here likes this stuff. They told you it was some big honor? My guess is they just wanted to watch you break your teeth.”

*   *   *

By evening, Curtis had had enough of waiting for the fisherman to wake up. He strode into the clinic, fitted his prisoner with a hood, and declared him ready for travel. Gus helped him down to the lagoon, where Curtis's motorized launch bobbed in the shallows. The fisherman collapsed when they reached water's edge, so Curtis scooped him up and carried him like a bride to the boat, then bound his wrists and ankles to the cleats.

Gus was in the middle of explaining how to change the fisherman's dressings when Curtis tossed the bag of supplies back to him, saying, “Save this for someone who needs it.” Then he produced a two-way radio from a duffel and pitched it to Gus. “I'm assuming you know how to use one of these,” he said. As an afterthought, he unstrapped his sidearm and pitched it across, too. “And here's your signing bonus.”

Gus's hands were full. He bobbled the gun, dropping it in the sand.

Curtis scowled. “Keep that weapon clean,” he said. “You're going to need it.” He yanked the starter cord, and the old engine burst to life in a cloud of blue smoke, startling a kingfisher that had swooped down for a feeding run. As he lowered the propeller into the water, Curtis shouted a final instruction: “You hear anything even remotely suspicious, use that radio!”

“I will!” Gus said.

The launch churned northward, leaving a trail of silver filigree on the lake. Gus stood at attention for a long time, enduring bites from invisible gnats. When the boat's silhouette finally melted into the horizon, he tucked the pistol into his waistband and covered the grip with the tail of his shirt. The radio was too big to fit in his pocket, so he palmed it and did his best to hide the rest with his forearm, the way his shipmates had taught him to move an illicit bottle of whiskey from deck to deck.

“You will, what?” Thali asked. She was standing just a few feet away in her willowy black robe, as if the lengthening shadows of the reeds had risen from the sand to greet him.

“Do my best,” he said vaguely. “To help.”

“Rest tonight,” she said. “The clinic will be crowded tomorrow.”

“Do you know where I could find your father?” Gus asked. “I wanted to thank him for letting me stay.”

“He left a few hours ago to settle a dispute in one of his holdings.”

“Did he say when he'll be back?”

Thali shrugged. “Don't worry,” she said. “There'll be plenty of time to thank him later.”

*   *   *

Gus's days soon fell into a rhythm. The clinic overflowed from early morning to midafternoon, when the crush of patients would cause the domed ceiling of the surgery to drip with condensation. In the worst heat of the day, there was the guesthouse, where he spent hours sitting very still, coffee cup in hand, listening to the quiet chatter of marshmen. He never tired of it, despite the seeming monotony of the topics: hunting; the depth of waterways; who had leased what tiny plot, and for how much.

The evenings were for writing letters, photography, or fishing. Every night, precisely at eight, Thali served him supper at the long marble table in her father's dining room, gossiping about the day's patients as he sipped the exceedingly weak gin and tonic that she insisted was good for his nerves.

Thali made the drink herself, like the true mistress of the house. She was older than Gus figured when he first saw her, perhaps fourteen or even fifteen, although she refused to say exactly how old. It didn't really matter. After a long day with patients, many of whom barely spoke to him out of deference, he was glad for the attention of a lively young girl. She was good company. Gus felt more at ease at that table than anywhere else in the village.

After two busy weeks without word from Curtis, Gus was beginning to think that his services as a translator wouldn't be needed after all. The only official communication he'd received was the letter notifying him of his transfer to the marshes.

Gus had plans for that letter. It would have pride of place on the wall of his office when he got back home. He already knew how he'd frame it: double-matted, with a cutout at the bottom for a photograph of cheerful marsh children gathered in a scrum; or perhaps a more personal one of him with the Magheed—if such a picture didn't violate any cultural sensitivities.

He put the letter in a manila folder and stored it in the strongbox by his bed, next to the sidearm and radio. He hadn't touched the radio since the night Curtis gave it to him, although he'd thought about using it once or twice. He kept it available, but not really at the ready, a reflection of his ambivalence about informing on patients. Trust was at the root of healing. A doctor was obliged to keep confidences, even here in a war zone.

On the other hand, as much as Gus admired the marshmen's fighting spirit, he didn't feel he could turn a blind eye to theft, especially the theft of weapons. One morning, he overheard something troubling while standing at the window of the surgery. Two young men he'd just circumcised were sitting nearby on the stone bench in the yard. Gus always made circumcisions wait at least an hour, to make sure there weren't any complications. The wait wasn't really a burden; in fact, a turn on the bench was quickly becoming a rite of passage.

Normally, there'd be high-spirited chatter from the boys on the bench, but these two, a pair of brothers from a village on the far shore of the lake, were being secretive. There'd been something not quite right about them from the start. They were shy to the point of rudeness, refusing to answer even basic questions about their health. Gus had had a hard time getting more out of them than their names—Kareem and Adnan—and the fact that they were apprentice boatbuilders. They'd insisted on paying, even after Gus explained there'd be no fee.

There was always the possibility that one of them was in pain and reluctant to ask for help, so Gus lingered by the window after loading the autoclave. A breeze rattled the acacia, obscuring some of the words, but even so, he was quite sure he heard Adnan, the elder brother, say,
At last, there will be a fountain of fire
, to which Kareem replied,
God willing!

Then Adnan started sketching in the dirt with the stem of a cattail.
This
, he said,
is where you light the fuse
.

That was all Gus heard before he was called to his next patient, a little girl who'd lost an arm to a cluster bomblet after mistaking it for a rattle.

Later, after the brothers were gone, Gus took pencil and paper out to the yard, hoping to copy down what Adnan had drawn, but the dirt had been carefully smoothed.

That night, he sat on the edge of his bed with the radio, considering whether there was really anything to report. He'd overheard a few cryptic phrases, observed some scratching in the dirt. It might be something; then again, it might not.

He started to put the radio away, but the impulse to prove himself to Curtis was surprisingly strong. He extended the antenna, thumbed the “talk” button, and proceeded to describe the boys, down to the size and shape of their incisions.

*   *   *

Three days later, the Magheed finally returned to the village, rousting Gus from the clinic by pounding the door and shouting, “Time for your first paycheck!”

He looked like a different man. His cheeks were sunken and his beard unkempt. Gus suggested that they go shooting another day, but the Magheed insisted. “No,” he said, “a marshman pays his debts.”

His tone was unsettling. Gus wondered, as he climbed into the chief's canoe, along with Fennuk and two new bodyguards, whether someone had overheard him using the radio and betrayed him.

“Now,” the Magheed said, when they were under way, “let's see what you can do with that cape gun.”

Gus was pleased to discover that he wasn't such a bad shot after all, despite the Magheed's comments, which were always a variation on,
The pigs will sleep soundly tonight
.

They went through a pouch of slugs, then took a break from shooting, passing a canteen back and forth across the yokes as the paddlers dug in, carrying them farther and farther from shore.

The Magheed asked after some of Gus's patients, but his mind seemed to be elsewhere. “Tell me something—totally different. How is it for women in your country these days? I'm thinking of sending Thali away for a while.”

“She'd do well there. She'd do well anywhere.”

“You know, she hates being away from the marshes. She has me to blame for that.”

“I'd be happy to write some letters, maybe help her land on her feet.”

“‘Land on her feet,'” the Magheed said, “like a cat. I always liked that expression. Thali's mother taught it to me.” He handed Gus another pouch. “Here, try the heron's nest on that old piling.”

Gus loaded a slug, but hesitated before sighting the target.

“Don't worry. Once a heron abandons a nest, she doesn't come back.”

It took four rounds to hit the nest, which finally exploded in a puff of white straw.

“Three warning shots?” the Magheed said. “The pigs will build you a statue! Now, onwards.”

Once again, the paddlers dug in. Soon the canoe was beyond sight of shore. They'd entered the zone of near-perpetual fog in the center of the lake that was the source of a charming legend: the marshmen liked to imagine that it concealed a mystical floating island, a kind of Eden. The fog played tricks with sound, muffling the churning water, amplifying the paddlers' labored breathing.

The long silence made Gus uncomfortable, so he asked about the Magheed's trip.

“A bad business,” he said. “I suppose you've heard that our weapons are being confiscated?”

“Major Curtis mentioned something to that effect.”

“Ah, Curtis,” the Magheed said. He spat into the water, then watched as bright fingerlings rose to his spittle. “His men are taking everything,” he said, “not just the new rifles. Our boys don't even have enough powder to make fireworks.”

“Fireworks?”

“A wedding tradition. They call it the
fountain of fire.
Basically a steel drum full of homemade rockets. The groom's family sets it off for good luck.”

“I see,” Gus said. He hoped his face didn't look as hot as it suddenly felt.

“But enough of that. Thali tells me you've been circumcising everything in sight.”

“I can practically do it in my sleep,” Gus said. “Look, I hate to do this, but I have some Gram stains I have to attend to. I'm sorry, but I need to get back.”

“Of course,” the Magheed said. “There's just one stop I want to make along the way.”

*   *   *

All Gus could think about was getting to the radio and correcting his mistake about the boys, but instead of turning back, the paddlers maneuvered the canoe down an unfamiliar waterway. While Fennuk lectured Gus on the proper cleaning and maintenance of his cape gun, the Magheed brooded, trailing his fingers in the water while humming the same melancholy figure over and over again, like a musician rehearsing a difficult part. Normally, Gus would have asked about it, on the off chance the tune was significant, another bit of marsh lore he might absorb; but this time he let it go. He didn't want to say or do anything to delay their return.

Gus's spirits lifted when the canoe grounded on a sandbar. Everyone climbed out; the paddlers hoisted the boat and started to turn it. It seemed they were finally heading home, but the Magheed had other plans.

Flanked by the bodyguards, they hiked a series of weed-choked hills. At the top of the last rise, the grass thinned and then abruptly ended, revealing a village that had been burned out. Everything was gone. The ground had been baked into something like brick, dotted here and there with scorched postholes. The emptiness was shocking.

Gus raised his camera, but the Magheed stayed his arm and said, “Not here.”

Fennuk and the others held back at the edge of the clearing, while the Magheed led Gus to the site of the guesthouse, now just a rectangular hearth open to the sky.

The Magheed knelt at the hearth and probed the ashes with the remains of a fire tool. “Our ‘neighbor to the north,' as you called him, had used chemicals on us before,” he said. “Defoliant. It made breast milk sour, ruined fodder. Very bad if you breathed the mist. But this was something new. The planes dropped canisters and…” He made a throat-cutting gesture with his thumb. “We found people curled up, their bones crushed by convulsions, all their fluids spilled out.”

“Nerve gas?” Gus said.

The Magheed nodded. “This village,” he said, “was like death in life. Right here, on top of the guesthouse, we found two roofers, a father and son, lying among bundles of thatching for a repair, holding hands. They must have known it was the end. We had to break the fingers to get them apart.”

Then he stood and pointed in the direction of the bodyguards, who tossed away the cigarette they'd been passing and jumped to attention. “And over there, a hut with a little girl in the doorway, reaching out with a scrap of fish. Just lying there like she was asleep, her head on her arm. The family cat was there, too. You know, ready to take a bite. The jaws were torn open. The spine was like a corkscrew.” He paused, then tossed away the fire tool before adding, “It was like that everywhere.”

They walked to the communal oven, where Gus examined a puddle of slag that had once been a shovel or a peel, some tool for baking. The oven itself was still standing, but the bricks lining its floor had exploded from the heat.