The Gendarme (11 page)

“Same stuff.” His gaze flits about.

“Are you supposed to be here?”

“Of course not.” He sneers, and his face is less pleasing. “I’m never supposed to be here.”

“Should you be in school?” He should have a job, but Violet insists on school only.

He opens his eyes but says nothing. I do not mean to frighten him, or condemn him. Just then Ted walks up.

“Hello.”

“Who is this?” Wilfred asks.

“This is . . .” I cannot bring forth his name.

“Ted.”

“Ted.”

Wilfred coughs, grimaces.

I touch his arm. “Wilfred.”

He jerks back. “Please don’t touch me, okay?”

I leave my hand out. “Okay.” I am remembering these swings now, how he switches from sunny to dark, back to sunny in flashes. I had taught him as a young boy to play chess—how it angered him to lose then! Tossed pieces and boards. I let him win some. Chess was something from the hospital in London, something known from before, for I could play even before I could speak again. Matches, even a tournament. I took a third place. There were rages, too, then, not so unlike Wilfred’s. I remember shouting, in Turkish. These lessened with time.

“You look well,” I say. “You are taller.” He will be tall like me.

Wilfred nods toward Ted. “Why is he with you?”

“He is watching. I have been sick.”

“I heard that.”

There is a pause. I glance at Ted but he does not leave. “School is okay?”

“No.”

“You must work hard.”

“I got in a fight.”

“A fight?”

I remember a fight once, in New York. A fellow plumber. A Pole. He had loosed a fitting so that sewage rained over me, on my face, in my hair. He had done this deliberately, with malice. Why? I had done nothing to him. I went at him, the shit still in my hair, pounding my fists at his big, gloating face. Another man pulled me off. He continued to laugh, that Pole, the birthmark on his face stretched to form a pink flower. As if the gods had demanded this. As if he had launched a great joke.

“You must . . .” I begin, but Wilfred’s voice cuts me off.

“I must do nothing,” he says. “Nothing.” His eyes are bright like twin stars. “You’re just like her, like the rest—don’t you see?” He looks from Ted to me. “Everyone telling Wilfred just what he must do.”

I want to say no, that I am unlike anyone, except him. That one must fight back, that there is life in the fighting.

He turns and dashes—that is the only word for it, dashes—back to the front of the store. He looks back once, such that I fear he will crash into the electric glass door, but the door opens and he falls through it, as if through a hole. Then it closes, swallowing him. The look on his face stays with me after. It is a look of revulsion, and fear.

Ted and I do not speak on the way home. I am angry, though I try not to show it. There is no need to make things worse. Still, I had wished to be alone with Wilfred. I waited almost a year . . . and then this. I have such little time.

When I get home I call Violet. It is a fight, a brief one. I preach calm to myself. Still, I must press. “I saw Wilfred,” I say.

“Where?”

“The store.”

“The
store
?”

“He comes there sometimes.” I realize, too late, that my call has betrayed him.

“When? Just now?”

“Yes.”

“He’s supposed to be in school. Why do you encourage this?”

“I do not encourage . . .” My breath shortens.

“Papa, we’ve been through this. He has enough problems without sneaking off and skipping school. Whenever he sees you he gets all hyped up—you know this. The doctors have him on a regimen. I ask that you honor it.”

Honor? How does seeing him show dishonor? He is my grandchild, grandson. The only male left to follow.

“I would like to speak to him.”

“Well, he’s not here—he’s been off with you, when he should be in school.” Her breath rattles the phone and there are clicks, the sound of things dropped. “Look,” she says, and smoothness enters her voice, “I’ll bring him over to visit soon. Okay? With me. The three of us can visit, together.”

I chew my lip. “He says he was in a fight.”

“Yes. It’s a problem, Papa. I’m dealing with it.”

“He must fight back!”

“I’m
handling
it, okay?” Her voice is harsh. “If I need . . .” She halts herself.

I ask, “Do you need money, for this treatment?”

“
No
. I don’t want your money. Can you understand that?”

“Yes,” I say. “I—”

“Papa, I’ll talk to you later, okay? I’ve got to go.”

I make popcorn, and Ted and I watch
The Untouchables
. Lissette calls again, this time talking longer. I hear the guilt in her voice and am glad. I drink some tea, the scene playing back. “Please don’t touch me,” says the voice, his voice again. Hers. I rise and make my way back to my room, to my bed.

The lead Arab is tall,
with a single sharpened tooth that peeks between his chapped lips. He speaks no Turkish, relying instead on a smaller, darker man to provide a rough translation. The third man, really just a boy, tends the camels.

They make their intent known immediately. They seek young women, for which they will pay. The smaller man extends a brown palm, shows me six coins. The leader eyes the deportees. I draw back to think.

Mustafa rides up, eyes alight, lips twitching beneath his beard. “How much is he offering?”

I shake my head. The smaller Arab approaches again, assuming my hesitation to be negotiation. His palm now holds eight coins.

I shake my head again. “None are for sale.”

The smaller man frowns, not understanding.

Mustafa glances from me to the Arab. He grabs my shirt, a child pleading with a parent. A twist of his wrist brings me closer.

“What are you doing? This man offers money, and you say no?” A spray of his spittle wets my shirt and neck. He whirls to face the Arab, whose palm remains outstretched. “I will take your offer.”

I raise my rifle, pointing it at Mustafa’s back. The Arab withdraws. The lead Arab, who has been watching from one side, flashes his solitary tooth and moves to join his comrades. Mustafa turns slowly around.

“Why?” His face is red beneath his beard, his eyes glassy and large. “They will die, anyway. What do you care?” He advances toward me, tendons working his neck. “It is her. I know it.”

“No.” I back away, arcing the gun to cover both him and the Arabs. The lead Arab has turned to his camel, reaching for what might be a weapon. I have no doubt they will be willing to take what they want if it is not offered for sale. Mustafa turns, sensing this, too. Even Karim pokes his head from his wagon. But the lead Arab merely clambers upon his camel, reaches for the reins, and coaxes the animal into a stiff-legged walk. The smaller man and the boy follow suit.

The taller man says something to the smaller, who shouts to us in his broken Turkish, “We have other opportunities. It is your loss!” The camels pick up speed, stretching their pitching strides. The tall man’s dirty kaffiyeh disappears below an outcrop.

Mustafa turns to face me, his skin still inflamed. Karim climbs down from the wagon, holding his weapon, unsteady on his feet. He totters over to stand at our side.

“They will be back,” says Mustafa, his voice soft and dead. “They will take what they want, tonight. And I will give it to them.”

Karim looks from him to me.

I pull my gun to my side, my finger still on the trigger, ready to raise it if either shows movement. I clear my throat.

“I have given my order, Mustafa. We will not be selling anyone. As I told you before, if you disobey me, you will pay with your life.”

Mustafa’s head remains down. Karim sways on his feet, his stomach gurgling, distress audible even at a distance. He skips sideways, pulls at his pants, takes a few steps with his buttocks outstretched before showering the ground in yellow feces. Mustafa, mouth tight, walks away.

I relax my grip on my weapon. I scan the camp, in search of Araxie. I worry anew of Mustafa’s revenge. To my right, an old woman’s wrinkled bottom lies exposed, her fouled clothing stripped away. Others lie moaning beside meager belongings, too exhausted even to put up ragged tents. A number of the children and some of the adults are naked, their clothes stolen or worn away, their bodies smeared with mud and excrement. Everywhere people hunch, clutching their abdomens—the dysentery has spread so that many even in our group now defecate almost constantly. The flies that plagued Katma have found us, swarming our eyes, nesting in our hair. Lice spread like raindrops. Everything stinks, of defecation and human despair, like the last excretions of a dying body. I consider for a moment whether I have made the right decision, whether life as a slave or concubine might be better than this. Mustafa was right about one thing—many of these people will die.

I stride back through the rubble, searching, eyeing the group. By my calculation at least half are ill, a quarter barely able to walk. We will be forced to slow our pace even further, to leave more behind. I prod prone forms with my rifle, looking for telltale clothing, a wisp of familiar hair, a glimpse of an exotic eye. Occasionally I turn over a dead body, its tongue thrust forward, the skin patchy and gray. It is near one such corpse that I find her, huddled against an older, squat woman, her hands gripping her sides. She stares up through lidded eyes, her face marked with pain.

“I have it,” she murmurs, as the older woman smoothes her brow. “The illness.”

 

 

 

I stand
again in my garage. It is hot. I am thinking. It is strange how life works, all one’s life looking forward, until at some point a clock shifts and there is more past than future. A long life means death—of companions, compatriots. And the swiftness! Ninety years in an eye-blink, and still things surprise me. These dreams that come late and play out like a movie—
The Big Sleep
, perhaps,
The Best Years of Our Lives
. So
real
, then. I wake and don’t know myself. I must think, remember, sort out, catalog. Regain my mental order, after ninety-two years.

I stare about me at boxes. I pull things, unearthing paint cans, old financial matters, things I had been through when Carol passed away. A bicycle rests against one wall, its tire flat; I had ridden it a month ago on a bet then with Carl. Photo albums, furniture. Toys. My old tools. Nothing from the start of my life, nothing hoarded and then forgotten. I examine the gray box again, but find nothing more. I find much that reminds me of Carol.

I had given away most of her things when she died: her jewelry, her pictures and dresses. I offered these up to her sisters, but a few things I kept: a painting she had given me, a stuffed animal I won at a fair. I rearranged the furniture as well. I bought nothing new, only changed things to change them. I did not wish to think of her after her death. The music she liked, the perfume she wore, even things with her handwriting—I scrapped all of these. Her memory comes back now in pieces, like splinters. The day Violet was born. A trip to a park in New York.

And London. The headaches now, the hospital stay bring me back there. Awakening, in a drafty ward where everyone spoke an odd language. The terror in not
remembering
, a void so large as to be wounding itself. Was I sane? I feared I would be killed, by both doctors and patients. At first they thought I was faking, that I was pretending to forget to protect vital secrets. They brought in a Turkish speaker to translate, an old man who reeked of tobacco and regarded me with a certain disdain, as if I had betrayed something or shown weakness. He repeated questions or instructions and reformulated my responses, all without looking at either me or the doctors, as if he had been forced to do this, as perhaps he had been. Was he a prisoner?
I
was a prisoner, an enemy soldier, a fact that made my recovery all the stranger and more difficult. Had I, only weeks before, fired a gun at these men, causing their injury or them mine? I had no recollection of it. Some of the other patients knew of my status, or came to know of it. Some showed friendliness, others hostility, but all in a language I could not comprehend. A guard was posted nearby, for my protection or that of the others, and after one memorable incident when a man screamed and pounded my ribs with his crutch, I was moved to a separate room off one side of the ward. There I met Carol.

I had never before seen such a woman. Her blond hair, yes, but also her skin, her eyes. Her voice was soft. She taught me some English. The room was quiet, away from the bustle and moaning and smells of the ward, and I could hear her, and after some time understand. I learned that as an American she, too, felt a stranger. She would put her hands on me softly, bathing me, checking for fever. Changing the bandage I had worn for so long, smoothing the hair that would never again grow quite right. She smelled of cleanliness, and sweetness. How many soldiers become beguiled by their nurses? She befriended me, took control. She fought for me. She extended me kindness, a kindness worthy of return. She was American—America! She brought a new life.

The doorbell rings, the chime faint in the garage. Is it Wilfred? Please, not Mrs. Fleming.

But it is Carl, my neighbor. I greet him. We retire to our chairs.

“I heard about your tumor,” Carl says. He wheezes when he speaks. “It’s hell getting old. But you’re older than hell.”

We laugh at this. I like Carl. He is unpretentious, in the way southerners are. He is also quite prejudiced. The word “nigger” frequently rolls from his lips, along with other expressions of scorn.

Carl is a World War II veteran, of the campaign in the Pacific. Our conversations often turn to war. Carl’s ship was sunk and he spent two days in the water. A number of his shipmates were eaten by sharks. He tells this story again and again, but I do not mind. He has not been in the ocean since 1944.