Orpheus Lost (21 page)

Cerberus paused in chewing gobbets of Mishka’s flesh. His ears pricked up. He was particularly interested in Dr. Siddiqi
and Mr. Hajj. These were new names. They were not on previous lists and Cerberus sniffed them with excitement.

Tell me about them, he snarled, but Mishka’s tongue was dry and swollen and moved clumsily and he felt his wing tendons giving way. He would soon drop away from his wings.

Cerberus snarled and growled. He commanded: “Tell about Mr. Hajj.”

Mishka told how Mr. Hajj had Damascus contacts. Mishka told about the shipping of ouds. He confessed it was possible that Mr. Hajj and Dr. Siddiqi were involved in the same Middle Eastern network, that their business was ostensibly music. He admitted that the booby-trapping of ouds could be part of their plan. When pressed, he spoke freely of Damascus. He spoke of the craftsmanship, he discussed the finest oud-makers in the world. He explained that Mr. Hajj, for political reasons, had to order through contacts in Beirut. He could not name the contact in Beirut, though he acknowledged that a global network existed (Damascus, Brisbane, Beirut) and he would try to remember the contact’s name, and yes perhaps it was Marwan Abukir or Fadi Abukir but they knew nothing of Mr. Hajj so a connection seemed unlikely but perhaps it was so.

If he could play…If he could play, yes, he would show what Mr. Hajj had taught him and he would promise to tell everything he knew.

He could not see because of the hood, but his bare feet were touching the floor. He might have been sitting, but it was difficult to tell because too many messages were coming from his body. They were coming too fast to translate. His wings drooped at his sides. They felt strange to him. He could not lift them, and when his oud was given to him, at first he did not recognize it because his hands were so clumsy.
Nevertheless he embraced it, he stroked it, he recognized its voluptuous curved backside, he wept to touch it again. His fingers were like thick vegetables and they would not do as he wished. He could barely spell out the notes against the neck of the instrument. He had not been given a
rishi
so had to pluck at the strings with his thumb. Nevertheless a song of Rūmī began to flutter upwards like a flock of small white doves in the room and Mishka was overwhelmed with its beauty. He sang the Arabic that Mr. Hajj had taught him and then he sang the translation:

The reed and the oud charm us because they are echoes, They know the notes of the planets and stars, They delight the souls of angels, They remind us of the gardens of Paradise, Our souls fly there to rejoin their loves.

He could not remember where he was, but perhaps the Holiday Inn, yes, his room at the Holiday Inn because his father was still agitated by the song. His father was telling him to be quiet. A Sufi song, his father told him, and his father spat on the song. Heresy, decadence, contamination by the West, his father said. It was like a virus, a canker, spreading out from the fourteenth century and that heretic mystic, Rūmī. The infection had to be cauterized.

“But the poem and the music are beautiful,” Mishka protested.

“Beauty is dangerous,” his father said. “It is a trap.”

Mishka closed his eyes and played and sang until his father fell silent.

He opened his eyes, but kept playing. His father was sitting in the armchair by the window. On the small table beside the
chair was a vase of frangipani and his father had pulled one flower from its stalk. His father was shredding the petals with his thumbnail, he was killing the flower.

“My mother told me that you were a musician,” Mishka said. “You used to sing to her. You wooed her with music. That is why I learned to play the oud. I wanted to know you. I wanted to touch you this way.”

“All that is an abomination to me now,” his father said.

“Music is like the sexual power of a woman. It is evil because man has no resistance against it. It must be crushed before it destroys.”

The fragrance of the bruised frangipani was extraordinary and Rūmī rose from Mishka’s oud and from his lips in defense of beauty.
Everything loathly becomes lovely
, he sang,
when it leads you to God, and when it leads you to your Beloved.

“Be silent!” his father shouted and his father snatched the oud from Mishka’s hands but it was not his father who smashed it because they were walking on the beach and the oud was still in his hotel room and then they were walking along Boulevard Saeb Salaam and then the black limousine stopped and the driver said that Sleiman Abboud was waiting for them, but that was not true. From that moment onwards, Mishka was unsure of what happened because of the hood and because of the jagged colored shapes that moved like a turning prism in his head. He did not know what happened to his father. He thought he himself was on a plane again, but he was not sure. And now there was Cerberus and the smashed oud. He could feel the splinters, he could see the broken neck of the oud in spite of his hood, or perhaps it was his own neck, and he watched himself sobbing, curled up like an infant on the floor, naked, with a sack on his head.

Then the oud miraculously reassembled itself and rose up like a Being of Light and spoke to him, and its wings were like the wings of a great seabird and were as white and blinding as the sun. I am the messenger of the Lord of Music, proclaimed the Radiant Oud. Cerberus has lain meek at my feet and has licked my ankles. I have parted the Red Sea and led captivity captive and my power is so great that none can resist me and I cannot, I cannot be destroyed. Do not weep by the rivers of Babylon, but seize my power.

Then Mishka seized hold of the radiant being and wrestled with him and music arose from their struggle and Mishka said I will not let thee go except thou bless me and the oud touched the hollow of Mishka’s thigh and Mishka was in very great pain and then he was in the absolute radiant embrace of the sun and the music of the spheres was all around him and he felt no pain at all.

L
EELA READ THE
letter mailed to her from Logan airport. She played and replayed her answering machine.

She dialed her own office number. She left a message on her own machine.

“Cobb,” she said, “This is Leela. I hope you’re still listening in.” She was willing her voice to sound calm. She spoke in a rush. “I know you know Mishka’s in Beirut. I want you to see a letter he sent. It explains the mosque, it explains everything. It’s all personal, he’s not any kind of terrorist, I can prove it to you.

“It’s like what happened to your father, Cobb. It’s the same kind of thing, photographs read the wrong way. Please call me, Cobb, and let me explain.”

“But he called me,” Leela explained from a pay phone in Harvard Square. She spoke to the reception desk of the Beirut Dunes Holiday Inn. “He called me yesterday from one of your rooms. He must be there.”

“We have no record of a Michael Bartok.”

“Uh…Bartok is his—it’s possible he checked in under his Lebanese name, which is Abukir.”

“Let me see. Yes, we did have a Mikael Abukir, but he checked out yesterday.”

“He checked
in
yesterday.”

“He checked out yesterday afternoon.”

“Why would he check out yesterday afternoon when he’d only checked in that same day?”

“Yes, it is curious,” the girl at reception said in excellent English. “But sometimes it happens. Probably friends or relatives invited him to stay at their house.”

“Mishka himself checked out?”

“Mishka? I am sorry, I do not understand.”

“Sorry. I mean Mikael Abukir. Did he himself check out? I mean did the same person who had checked himself in check himself out again hours later?”

“That I cannot answer,” the girl said. “I was not on the desk yesterday. I do not know what Mr. Abukir looks like.”

“Do you have video cameras in reception? Would you have a record of Mr. Abukir checking in and checking out?”

“Yes. We have video cameras. We have a record.”

“Could you confirm for me if he himself checked out, or if someone else claimed to be checking out on his behalf?”

“I cannot give that sort of information over the phone. It can only be given to next of kin or to the police.”

“I’m next of kin.”

“You will need to file a report to the police with documentation—”

“This is urgent. I’m afraid something terrible has happened. He would not have checked out without letting me know. He had reason to fear that someone…that something very alarming…What do I have to do to get that report?”

“Where are you calling from, madam?”

“Why do you need to know that?”

“I mean, from what country?” the girl asked.

“From the USA.”

“Then you must contact the American Embassy who will contact our local police.”

Embassy, yes, that would be the quickest and most reliable route, but not the American one. Leela dialed information. Washington, DC, she said; Australian Embassy; yes, she would like to be put through.

When she heard the accent, she was unprepared for the sudden grief. Her voice wavered. “I wish to report that an Australian citizen has gone missing in Beirut,” she said. “I think something terrible may have happened.”

Five days later, Leela found an envelope with a Beirut postmark in her mail. She knew the handwriting. She had to sit down and breathe slowly. Her hands were shaking as she slid a knife under the flap. Inside was another sealed envelope and a postcard. She stared at the view of the harbor. She held the letter up to the light.

She called the Australian Embassy again.

She had called every day, but the message was always the same: inquiries were being made; no information was available at this time.

“The letter was mailed from the Holiday Inn in Beirut,” she explained. “They have their own metering machine. Their logo is stamped on the postage. Michael Bartok has sent the phone number of the person he was going to meet. He had reason to believe he was in danger. He promised to call me after that meeting but has not been heard from again. The Beirut police should be given this information. It’s urgent.” Leela was put on hold.

Someone new came on the line and Leela explained again.

She was put on hold.

At last someone from Passport and Visa Information introduced himself. The embassy had made due inquiries, the
passport official said. Michael Bartok, holder of an Australian passport, had departed from Boston, but no Michael Bartok had entered Lebanon or had registered at the Beirut Dunes Holiday Inn.

“That is true,” Leela said. “I have explained that. He used his Lebanese name.”

She explained and she re-explained.

Her explanation had been noted, the passport official said, but the Australian Embassy had no record whatsoever of a Mikael Abukir. There was no evidence that Mr. Abukir carried an Australian passport. Mr. Abukir was therefore beyond the scope of the embassy’s responsibilities. The Beirut Holiday Inn, the official said, had confirmed that Mikael Abukir had produced a Lebanese passport at check-in.

“But if I can prove to you,” Leela pleaded, “that Michael Bartok and Mikael Abukir are one and the same?”

An Australian traveling under a false name and possibly forged documents, the official said, had put himself beyond the reach of diplomatic aid.

I
T WOULD BE
morning in Australia, tomorrow morning. This seemed ominous. Leela was placing a call to the future. She imagined the house where the phone was ringing (where the phone would be ringing tomorrow?). She imagined parakeets pausing in flight, bright colors ashimmer. She imagined furry gatherings on the veranda beyond Mishka’s room—possums, tree kangaroos, scrub turkeys. She imagined their watchful eyes. She imagined Uncle Otto tuning up behind his closed door, the torrent of the Daintree below.

The bunting of Mishka’s descriptions hung thick as lianas in her mind.

A woman answered on the fifth ring. “Hello?” The voice was tentative, surprised, as though unused to a ringing phone.

“Can I speak to Devorah Bartok?”

“I am Devorah Bartok.”

“Ah…Ms. Bartok, you don’t know me. My name is Leela Moore and I’m calling from Boston.”

“Boston!” There was a register of alarm in the voice. “Something’s happened to Mishka! What’s happened?”

“Uh, actually, I don’t know what’s happened to Mishka, that’s why I’m calling.”

“Yes?”

“I’m Mishka’s girlfriend. We’ve been living together for some time.”

“I see.” The voice became subdued, barely more than a whisper, as though it had no right to alarm. “We didn’t know. He doesn’t…He hasn’t…”

“I know. But he’s talked about you. He has your photograph on the dresser in our room. I have a letter for you from Mishka.”

“A letter for me?”

“He mailed it from Beirut, but he’s been missing for several days. He said I should send—”

“Beirut!”

“He was going to meet his father.”

“I don’t understand. His father died before he was born.”

“He thought his father might still be living, but he wasn’t sure. He gave me instructions on what to do if things went wrong and I think they’ve gone wrong.”

“Things have gone wrong.” It was a statement of known fact. The voice was as faint as an echo.

“He’s asked me to send you this letter. He also wants me to send his violin.

“Ms. Bartok…?”

But the line had gone dead.

Dear Devorah Bartok:

I am so sorry to have upset you, but I thought you would want to know. Mishka flew to Beirut six days ago to meet a man he thinks might be his father. He called me from the Holiday Inn when he got there. He promised to call back after his meeting but he never has. Supposedly he checked out, but I don’t believe it. I believe it was someone claiming to be Mishka.

He mailed a letter just before his meeting and it reached me today. I enclose a photocopy of his postcard which gives the phone number of Marwan Rahal Abukir, who might be his father. There are steps we can take and they are urgent. I’m enclosing his letter to you, plus all the information I have, including an audio cassette which is a copy of the calls Mishka left on my answering machine. I’m sending by international courier. I’m hoping you can get a lawyer or your State Department to make inquires with the Australian Embassy in Beirut or with the Beirut police. Foreign nationals can’t just disappear in another country without a trace. Your government can demand an explanation.

My phone number is above. Please call me. However, since I think my phone is tapped, please simply leave the following message and I’ll return your call from a pay phone. Just say: I’m calling about the quandongs. (I have seen your beautiful miniature drawing on the diptych on Mishka’s desk.)

Sincerely,

Leela Moore.

Leela dialed the country code for Lebanon and the area code for Beirut. She dialed the number Mishka had written across the back of a blue harbor on a postcard. She felt as though she were dialing underwater.

A male voice answered and said something guttural in a language Leela did not know.

She said: “Is Marwan Rahal Abukir there?” There was a silence.

Several seconds passed. Leela thought she heard breathing. Then she heard a click and the line went dead.

It was because I failed to respond, Leela thought, because I doubted, because I spied on him. That is why Mishka vanished. It was because I didn’t answer when he begged to be reassured. I turned away from him. I froze him out.

That was clearly Eurydice’s error.

Are you still there?
Orpheus must have called over his shoulder.

And why didn’t Eurydice answer?

Was she irritated? (
He knows I’m here. What is this incessant need to control? Does he file reports on
his
absences?
)

Was she frightened? (
Where the hell is he taking me? Where are these pitch-black tunnels leading? Isn’t that Cerberus ahead?
)

For whatever reason, she never answered, and Orpheus, apprehensive, looked back.

Game over.