Right of Thirst (14 page)

She could feel her leg sometimes. It came and went, and kept its own schedule. Much is made of such things—the ghostly presence. But I've had patients who've felt their absent legs for years, sometimes for decades, and it's something that no longer has imaginative power over me, though I understand its allure for others. Mostly it is simply a tingling, a pressure, the belief that one can move one's toes. Pain is uncommon, though that is what gets the attention of the larger world. Pain, the idea that something that is gone forever can nonetheless remain so cruelly alive.

It was Rai who told us. He was the only one who could speak to all of us. Her brother, who no doubt had responsibilities in the village, came to visit her each day, but he no longer slept beside her. Her mother, to my astonishment, never came at all. So the nights must have been long ones for the girl, lying in the tent full of shadows, getting better, even if she had been born in that valley, among the darkness and the oil lamps and the goats brought into the front room on the coldest nights. Elise moved into the medical tent as soon as she realized what had happened. The girl's brother never told us he was leaving her alone.

The stump was healing beautifully. I could hardly believe how good it looked. She was terrified of me. She would close her eyes,
and shake down her whole length, in silence, as each day I removed the sterile gauze and put on the antibiotic cream and then wrapped her leg again. It took me only a few moments, and it can't have hurt her very much, but I know that she dreaded my morning visits. I could see it in her face whenever I entered the tent. She believed that she was at my mercy.

Her fear should have troubled me, I know that. It should have moved me to overcome it. But it did not—in fact, it had the opposite effect. It proved to me that I had done something profound, just as her phantom limb allowed me to claim her that much further. It is common in amputations, I might say. Yes, that is what we expect in such cases. It's all right, I'd say, softly, and she'd hold her stump up in the air as instructed. In truth I was no longer the man who had removed her leg at all. I examined the stump as if it was the work of someone else. The girl knew differently, however. She knew who I was. I debated showing Elise how to change the dressings, but in the end thought better of it. Elise could comfort her, and I could cause her the necessary pain, and there was no reason to confuse the two.

As a result, I spent little time in the medical tent during the day. I left that to Rai and Elise. But each morning I'd clean the girl's stump with peroxide, and white gauze, and bandage it again. She shivered, Elise would stroke her hair, and I took such pleasure there, in that quarter of blood soaking through at the tip, becoming a nickel as the days passed, and then a penny, and finally nothing at all.

When she was sleeping, though, I often visited her. I'd enter the tent, and sit on the folding chair next to her bed, and watch her for a while. She was a deep sleeper, and lay on the cot with the blankets pulled up to her chin, her breath steady and slow. Sometimes she would dream, and murmur, before settling again.

After a while Elise came to expect my nighttime visits. We would whisper a little, but mostly we were quiet so as not to wake her. Elise would read, or write in her journal by candlelight, and I would sit there for a few minutes beside the sleeping child, taking what sustenance I could, before getting up to go.

Soon she was hopping out to relieve herself, holding on to Elise's arm. Elise would deposit her behind some boulders, and retreat, and the girl would hold up her hand in the air when she was done.

Children are not entirely human. There is a lot of the animal left in them. Sometimes I think we're fully human only during the middle of our lives, when we are conscious, when we both feel what is coming and remain strong enough to fend it off. Sooner or later the old revert to helplessness, and the young are so effortlessly alive they are unaware of the debate altogether. It is only the middle-aged who can see both ends for what they are. Possibilities, of course, remain, but they are less glorious, and more true to the world as it is, and the past, for its part, shines for them also.

I've never had children under my care. I'm used to how the old heal—a slow crawl, even as the decline continues. The better and the worse together. And so she astonished me. She came back like fire.

“Is it common to feel a leg when it is gone?” Rai asked, curious and apparently concerned. I assured him that it was, and also that it was likely to improve as the years passed, though perhaps never vanish entirely.

“It wakes her at night,” he said.

“Do you miss your daughters?” I asked him. He acknowledged the remark immediately.

“I miss them very much,” he said. “I have not seen them in some time.”

“How long has it been?”

“Two months,” he replied.

“Well,” I said, “it's kind of you to spend time with her.”

He looked away.

“What did General Said say to you yesterday?” I asked, finally. “What took you so long?”

“They will bring us more supplies,” he replied. “When we need them. Do not worry.”

“Is that what you were talking about for an hour? Supplies?”

He smiled and looked away and for a moment I could see him wondering what to say. By then he trusted me, I think, as much as he could trust anyone from another world, which for all I knew was more than those from his own.

“He was talking about hunting,” he said, finally.

“Hunting?” I asked, incredulously.

“Yes,” he said. “He is telling me about mountain sheep. He is telling me also about ibex.”

I wasn't sure what to say.

“He is telling me many details. The wind. The position of the buck. The range. That he is a very good shot also, that he made a very difficult shot.”

Rai hesitated. No doubt he was weighing the propriety of the conversation. But then he came to a decision.

“He knows I am regiment pistol champion,” he continued. “So when I see him he tells me about shooting and hunting. He is a very big hunter, he has traveled many places. That is why he comes so often on inspections.”

“Do you mean he's hunting?”

“Yes. Sometimes he shoots them from the air. He shoots them right off the cliffs from the helicopter.”

Rai shook his head, and made a shooting motion with thumb and forefinger.

“Yes,” he said. “Right off the side of the cliff, and then they fall a thousand meters.”

“You mean he doesn't even pick them up?”

Rai shook his head.

“No, no. He flies down and gets them. Unless of course it is impossible.”

I remembered the general's face, lit up as he shouted to his adjutant for the binoculars, as the ibex flowed so effortlessly across the granite wall, and his comment about the buck, and how his adjutant had written it all down.

“So he's not really inspecting anything?” I said.

“He is inspecting. But he is also hunting.”

“Aren't there rules against that sort of thing?”

Rai laughed.

“He does not do it too much,” he said. “Just sometimes. And also only when he has another reason to go.”

“Do you like to hunt?” I asked. He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “It is too easy. It is nothing. He took several of us last year. But we were unlucky.” He paused, looking out at the doorway of the tent.

“It is a big sign,” he said, finally. “When you are an officer of my rank, if he invites you it is a very big thing. It means they have their eye on you. It means they know who you are.”

Elise stomped in with her red jacket, taking off her hat and running her fingers through her short hair and smiling at me.

“It is cold, yes?” she said. “And time for the omelet.” This was, more or less, what she said every morning—it had become a ritual with us.

“Yes,” I replied, taking another sip of tea.

“What are we to do today?” she asked then.

“What we do every day,” I replied. “Nothing.”

She nodded seriously, and rubbed her stomach.

“How is Homa?”

“She is very good. She is eating her omelet now.”

“Her stump is almost healed,” I said. “We can send her back any day.”

“What about her leg?”

“What do you mean?”

“A new leg for her? She must have one.”

“The stump needs to mature,” I said. “It must be ready to bear her weight. And she will need many legs, because she is growing.”

“What do you mean, mature?”

“It must heal completely. Usually patients aren't fitted with artificial legs for several months after an amputation.”

“Then where will she get her leg?”

“I don't know. She'll probably have to go down to the city.”

“We will not be here in several months,” she said.

I looked at her.

“We can't do everything for her,” I said, more coldly than I intended. “She'll need a new leg every year. At least. Her family has to help her. If they won't there is nothing we can do.”

“We can pay them, perhaps. To get her a new leg every year.”

“We could. But they'd probably use the money for something else.”

“Of course you are right,” she said, after a moment. She paused. “We must do something about this. We must make them get her a new leg.”

“You see,” Rai said. “This is what I was telling you about them.”

I didn't reply.

I thought it was thunder. A distant rumble, very far away, from the high country to the north. The ridges hid the distance, and it was impossible to tell whether another front was coming.

Rai, however, instantly came to attention, like a pointer—his head snapped up, he cocked his head, and then he rose rapidly and stepped outside and listened again.

“What is it?” I asked, as the rumble came again, barely audible, like wind through corrugated sheets of steel.

He motioned for silence, and listened again, and then he turned to me. He looked happy, excited and alive.

“Artillery,” he said.

“Artillery?” I repeated, dumbly. “It sounds like thunder.”

“Yes,” he said. “But it is not.”

“How do you know?”

He smiled a short smile.

“Because I have heard it before,” he said. “And I know what it is.”

It came again, in the direction of the wind. Not loud, but there, unmistakably.

“How far away do you think it is?”

“Thirty kilometers,” he said. “A bit more.”

“How do you know that?”

He looked at me as if I were a child.

“We have a base,” he said. “A forward post thirty kilometers north. But everything has been quiet there for some time.”

He turned, and went back into the dining tent, and picked up the satellite phone. He glanced at me, then spoke quickly into it. A few seconds passed.

“Yes, sir,” he said, switching to English as he turned off the phone. Then he ran his hand through his hair and looked thoughtful.

“What was that about?”

He shot me a glance, but answered politely enough.

“There is a barrage under way,” he said. “But I am to stay off the channel unless I am contacted.”

“Who is doing it?”

“I don't know,” he said. “We may be firing. But usually they are firing first. And then both.”

I expected it to stop after a few minutes. I knew such flurries broke out from time to time along the frontier. No doubt they had a function—to remind everyone why they were there, why they stood in the deep snow of the ridges, and looked through their telescopes, why they huddled in their bunkers and spoke into their radios as they did. No doubt it was deliberate, to convince them that matters of vast importance were at hand, as they kept their heads down and their eyes up, thrilled and terrified and larger than themselves.

But it was something I could understand. The roar, the grandeur of it, ebbing and flowing across the northern ridges, carried through all the wind and snow and blinding sunlight of the high country—it was a human sound, but it seemed otherwise, like geology, or surf, and I understood the look on Rai's face as he listened and wondered, nearly overcome by his
desire to call down again on his satellite phone and find out for certain what was going on. He spent the day hunched by the short-wave radio, listening to scraps—radios only carried a short distance, and we were in a deep valley surrounded by thousands of feet of rock walls. The pick-me-up was a satellite broadcast, and so it came through clearly, but the rest was line of sight and full of static.

“Wasn't the base damaged by the earthquake also?” I asked.

“A little,” he said. “We lost some soldiers in the snow. But the bunkers are very strong. We dug them out and fixed them quickly.”

It didn't stop. It continued all day, though there were lulls at times, and into the dark. My curiosity changed, over the hours, to unease, to a shifting of the ground beneath us. But it was exciting to feel that way; it infused everything with significance, like a rare spice, or the smell of smoke in a forest.

“It may be an offensive,” Rai said, finally, by the light of the kerosene lamp. Forces were at work, and there he was, trapped and dumb as the rest of us, when all his adult life had been spent preparing for such an event. Now it was passing him by. Part of me pitied him.

“Has it ever gone on so long?” Elise asked anxiously.

Rai shook his head.

“It is rare,” he said. “Usually it is only a few shells. But this is many hundreds of shells. Many hundreds.”

“What kind?” I asked.

“What do you mean, what kind?” Elise asked, angrily. “All this talk of guns. And you are an old man. It is a terrible thing.”

She stung me, of course, but in part I think I'd said it on purpose, to provoke her, and so I only smiled calmly and did not reply. She flushed, and bowed her head.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I did not mean what I said.”

“Well?” I persisted, ignoring her, looking back at Captain Rai.

“Usually 105-millimeter howitzers,” he said. “They are light enough to lift by helicopter. Some 155 millimeter, but those are more difficult to transport. They are carried up in pieces.”

“What is their range?”

“Twelve thousand meters for 105. For 155, maybe twenty thousand meters. A bit farther at this altitude.”

“So tell me,” I said, deliberately, “how close does the shell have to fall to kill you?”

Rai looked uneasily at Elise.

“Fifty meters if you are unprotected,” he said, finally. “That is for 155. For 105, high-explosive antipersonnel round, perhaps twenty-five meters.”

“You mean if you're standing out in the open?”

He nodded. He couldn't help himself.

“Of course, it is different with entrenched positions. With a deep bunker, you can take a direct hit.”

“So I assume they are in entrenched positions.”

“Yes,” he said. “But not all. It is difficult to dig in deeply in these mountains. Some of the time it is snow caves only. You must hope they do not see you.”

I laughed.

“Yes,” I said. “That wouldn't be good, would it? It must be cold up there with no lights and no fires, hoping they don't see you. It must make for a long night.”

Rai looked at me then. I think he realized something wasn't right with my questions, but he wasn't quite sure what it was. We'd had similar conversations in the past, after all.

“How much does each shell cost?” I continued, pointedly.

“I am not sure,” he said. “We manufacture them, of course. Perhaps one hundred pounds. Not so expensive.”

“But that is very expensive,” Elise said. “One hundred pounds. And now there are thousands falling. For what?”

He sighed, and looked at me.

“And Homa has no leg,” she added.

“You are coming here on holiday only,” Rai burst out angrily. “You are here for a few months, and then you are flying back home where there is everything. But we are here because this is our country and we must fight for it and there is no holiday for us.”

There was a long silence, and then Elise flushed, excused herself, and left the tent.

Rai shook his head and lit another cigarette and took a deep drag and said something about women. I didn't respond, and we sat there in silence for a while. I thought about going after her for a moment because I knew I was in part to blame, but she'd stung me with her remark, and so instead I reached for Rai's packet of cigarettes. He tossed me his lighter, and we both smoked and didn't speak. The rumble continued in the distance. I thought about those men, high on the dark ridges, crouching beneath that sound, and I could not imagine them clearly. It was a new world for me, and I had nothing to draw on, no memories of my own. It was all thirdhand, it was all Gettysburg and the Somme and Tobruk for me, all names and abstractions. Nonetheless the roar continued, like trains in the distance, and it was real, and it felt like history.

“What is it like up there?” I asked, breaking the silence.

He took in his breath, sharply, and shook his head.

“It is very bad for them,” he said. “They cannot hear one another. They cannot speak on the radios for too long. They cannot light fires or turn on any lights. They are pinned down in the snow. There are avalanches, also.”

He took another drag, then continued.

“This is indirect fire,” he said. “The batteries are many kilometers behind. The gunners cannot see the target.”

“What is the target then? And who is aiming the guns?”

“There are forward observers on the ridges. They are calling in the fire. Probably they are shelling the ridgelines. But it is difficult to be accurate in these conditions and especially at night. So most of the fire is ineffective. The shells are bursting in the snow and on the rock. But you must keep your head down, you cannot cook, you are getting cold and you are getting thirsty soon because all the water freezes. You cannot fly in provisions, you must hope it stops.”

“So what do you do?”

“The enemy batteries are dug in well. In this terrain they are very hard to find and destroy, and they are firing from behind their own lines. So you try to find their forward observers. With night vision and infrared and telescopes. If they are exposed, sometimes you can see them. And then you call counter battery fire on their position. Or you use rifles if they are close enough. And if you cannot see them you guess where they might be and hope you are lucky. It is a game of cat and mouse.”

“And they're doing the same.”

“Yes, of course. They are trying to see who is looking for them also.”

As he spoke, it struck me that what sounded like the work of thousands was really just a few men, perched high on mountainsides with all those stars in the dark, aiming volcanoes at one another. For an instant I did nearly picture them, in their dirty white suits, huddled among the sun-warmed rocks, moving with reptilian slowness lest they be seen, offering rare terse sentences into their radios. And the barrage itself—from a distance it was very likely to be beautiful, with all the hundreds of bright points opening and closing like a veil on the ridges,
and snow falling in great cascades down the flanks into the echoing valleys below.

“Dangerous work,” I said, and he nodded, slow-lidded and calm.

I was not calm. On the contrary, the sound was deeply unsettling, like the swell of a ship beneath us, or the moment before rain begins to fall. On and on it went, sometimes with a short lull, before starting up again. The radio hissed with static, and only rarely did scraps of voices come through, excited and high-pitched and quick.

“Are we in any danger?” I asked, later.

“No,” he said. “We are many kilometers out of range.”

“Maybe so,” I persisted. “But there are dozens of army tents out there. It looks like a base, doesn't it?”

He thought about this for a while.

“An air strike, perhaps,” he said, finally. “But that is a big change. That is a big escalation. From artillery we are safe.”

I thought about it also. I was not afraid; instead, I was excited. It made me feel reckless, and it made me feel alive.