The Gendarme (16 page)

Once a week (for the two weeks I have been there) Abdul permits me to accompany him to the public hammam, or bath. The one near his shop is large, larger than the one in Harput, with spacious separate sections for men and for women. We walk over, our towels and clean clothes slung from our shoulders, to the squat stone building set among rows of fine houses. Abdul’s words to the initial attendant bring us to an anteroom, where we disrobe and give our blackened clothing to another attendant. We wait, naked, for yet another attendant to lead us into the bath itself. The place smells of mold, and soap, and some fragrance I know but cannot place. It is warm, to the point that if we wait long in the anteroom I begin to sweat. Sometimes there are other men, sometimes entire families, from withered, white-haired grandfathers to school-aged boys, rich and poor, fat and skinny. Sometimes we are alone. The decades of knife making are evident in Abdul’s body, from the definition in his aged shoulders to his darkened, muscular arms, to the scars that show once his skin has been cleaned, markings that make the rest of his body look white and smooth in comparison. I find similar scars across my own skin, blemishes I have not noticed before. Sometimes we hear women through crevices in the walls, snatches of laughter and conversation, exclamations. Other times it is silent. Although I know Abdul has a wife, she never accompanies us to the hammam. In fact, I never see her at all.

Attendants lead us to the main chamber, where heated water is directed into pools, where other attendants dip the
tas
bowl into water, pouring it over us in dribbles, where we are scrubbed with a
kese
, a rough cloth mitt, to the point that often we bleed from the newly visible cuts on our arms. The attendants seem to anticipate this, as I suppose they have bathed Abdul for years, for they appear with clean cloths and cool salve, dabbing at abrasions, wrapping bleeding flesh. Then they dry us with our towels, smaller and thinner than the
peştemal
-type cloths we used in Turkey, and bring our clean clothes. I always leave the hammam refreshed but tired, a fatigue at once heavy and joyous, like the draw of a blanket on a cold, bitter night.

My work leaves me little free time. For the first few days I go to bed almost immediately after the evening meal, barely finishing the raw onions, bulgur, pistachios, and almonds before sleep overtakes me. After several days, though, I grow in strength, to the point where I clean myself as best I can and venture out before dark, to the bazaar, to hover near the woman selling jewelry, to prowl the curving alleyways, the area around the citadel. I search for her, or for Ani, dodging in and among people and animals, steering near the hospital but never too close. One day I see Hussein, his hands thrust in his pockets, crossing the street some distance away, hurrying, as if on an important mission. I grow bolder. Soon I am loitering across the street from the hospital itself, searching the faces of those entering or exiting. After several days my vigil is rewarded, when Ani’s familiar form appears in the doorway, then edges off down the street. I stay on the other side, working my way down in parallel fashion until I judge us a safe distance from the hospital. I cross, catch up, and tap her once on the shoulder.

“How is Araxie?” I ask, my heart thumping in my voice.

Ani starts—my appearance still instills fear in her—but then recovers herself. “She is much better,” she says in Armenian. “She is able to work in the hospital and perform some small chores.”

A battalion of uniformed schoolchildren pass. I pause. “Will she be able to stay there?”

She frowns. “I do not know. We hear different things. There is a continuous stream of new refugees, many of whom are quite ill. Many that came with our group have been moved out—I do not know where.”

I swallow. “Can I see her?”

She looks to either side, as if expecting an observer. “I will ask her. I will see if she is willing.”

She turns and goes back to the hospital. I rub dust from my arms, spit in my hands, wipe dirt from my face. I have not had a haircut since Katma, my beard longer now and bushier, to where it enters my vision if I look down my face. I stare at my clothes, at the faded and ripped shirt, the pants with tears at both knees. I dare not wear my old police tunic for fear of being recognized as a Turkish deserter. At one point I considered a robe but decided against it. Abdul pays me only a few lira per week, which I hide in my pile of belongings in the corner of the shop—barely enough to buy food, let alone clothing. I run my hands through my thick hair. I glance at the scars on my arms.

Traffic moves around me. Elderly women and small children, probably Armenian, beg from doorway to doorway. A strange contraption proceeds slowly down the boulevard, metallic and belching fire at one end but operated of its own accord. Its driver, who steers by means of a shiplike wheel in its prow, waves to the gawking crowd. A group of newly arrived refugees pass going the other way, browned and mostly naked, the breasts of the women flat and curling. I look for a gendarme but do not see any.

A tug at my arm sends me whirling around. She stands next to me, dressed in a black veil with orange bands, her hair and skin hidden but her eyes unmistakable, the blue almost turquoise, the brown soft and dark. I find myself unable to say anything, only to take in her face, the wisps of her hair, the faint shape of her body underneath the dark covering. She looks healthier, her face fuller than when I last saw her, the pull of the veil making her seem older and taller, perhaps more exotic. I think of things I might say to her, how I have thought of her every day, almost every minute, through banging anvils and scouring baths and smoky lunches and sleepless nights. I take in a breath. She says nothing. She does not smile.

“You look well,” I say haltingly. “I mean, better. I am glad.” I am unsure of my wording, or what language I speak.

She nods. “I owe you many thanks,” she says softly, almost inaudibly. Her eyes close and reopen.

“How long can you stay there, in the hospital?”

She grimaces, looks away. “Not much longer. There are so many refugees, so many desperately sick. I am nearly recovered.”

“What are your options?”

She presses her lips together, whitening them with the pressure. “I am too old for the small children’s orphanage, too young to take a trade. The homes for refugees my age are filled, at least the ones I’ve been able to locate.” She pauses. “I hear stories of refugees being shipped back to the desert, to die.”

I grasp her arm beneath her
libas
, my face close to hers. “I have a job. I am saving some money—perhaps enough for us to leave. Perhaps we can escape . . .”

Her face lifts upward. “But you will have to save a long time. I am afraid I have little time left.” Her hand snakes from beneath the covering. She touches my arm. “The leader of the hospital, this man Hussein—he shows me much attention, too much. He is always asking about me, asking me to accompany him into the garden, bringing me little gifts, little candies. It worries me, his intentions. But I am in no position to refuse.”

A dagger pierces my heart. I cough and draw in breath.

“He asks about you,” she continues. “He asks your name, whether I have seen you. He asks Ani.”

“And?”

“I tell him the truth, that I have not seen you. Ani has told him the same.”

“What do you think will happen?”

She shrugs. “I do not think it is for me to know. I wake each day, thank God for my life, look for God’s hand wherever I find it.” She studies the ground again, then looks in my eyes. “I must go.”

“When will I see you again?”

“Look for Ani in the bazaar,” she says over her shoulder.

I watch her retreat until her form becomes distant. She crosses the street, to the other side, where the hospital lies, a thin black figure, ghostlike and then gone. A taste forms in my mouth, unimproved by my spitting. I glance down the boulevard, half expecting Hussein’s effete form to materialize with an army marshaled against me, but there is nothing—only the crowds, a herd of goats, the beggars, the refugees. With slow steps I make my way back, down the promenade, across the dirty Kwaik River, looking back, waiting for something, for someone, but there is nothing. It is almost dusk when I return, easing my way through the doors of the shop, sliding in darkness to my cloth on the floor. I hear Abdul’s cough before I see him, his head bent through the opening that leads to his house.

“Someone was looking for you,” he says between gasping eruptions.

“For me?” I have been fogged and numb since seeing Araxie. This news brings me back.

“Yes. A man, asking if I’d had anyone ask me for work.”

I nod.

“I did not tell him anything.” Another cough comes, deep and coarse-sounding. He raises his head to bring in new air. “Why would he be looking for you?”

I do not answer. I shake my head. “Perhaps he is looking for someone else.”

“Perhaps,” says Abdul. He reaches for another breath, and pulls his door shut from within.

 

 

 

Rows of pecan trees
skip past, their lines rigid like soldiers. Lights fade. The car’s wipers whip and slap. We are driving again, this time to Tallahassee, to an appointment for a scan unavailable in Wadesboro. I am calm, my mind on the dream, on her, the way things are released as from a slow, leaking faucet. It was this way in London, the way memory came back, almost sequential then, patterned. First my name, appearing one day after months of not knowing. A few bits of early childhood. People. A trail through some trees. A rug’s distinct patterns. Recollections surprising in their hard certainty—once arrived, unassailable, like supports screwed in place, never to be altered again. Yet frustrating, enormously so, in their scarcity, their cold isolation. Why these scraps and no more? I wanted the war, the good and the bad, all of it. I wanted to know. Instead I was teased, my brain and body constrained. Permitted small memory but only singly, in waves.

A young doe feints toward the highway, retreats in a flash of white tail. The rain is spattering, intermittent. Violet keeps both hands on the wheel, skin hanging loose below the knobs of her wrists. She has taken off work on account of the incident, the black man—was that yesterday? Perhaps the day before. No police vans, yet, although Violet holds whispered conversations that speak of some destination, some plotted future placement. I ignore these, or shield my anger when I think of them, for in truth I vacillate between a determination to keep my life as it is and a slumping indifference to whatever might happen. Perhaps the tumor brings this malaise, or perhaps merely time, but the vitality I find now exists in the dream. I think back again, checking my arms for scars, noting the discolored skin, the straps of flesh among moles and black hair. The smells of the hammam wrap around me, the fragrance that is like sandalwood but is not, the odors of soap and wet hair. It is a new life, almost, a younger life. I sigh and stare at yellow paint stripes, the curled lengths of wet asphalt.

We stop at a gas station near the state line, Violet gripping the pump as I stand watching, half wet. I want to be helpful. I trudge inside to the “Food Store,” to the glare of advertisement and sourish smell, where two overweight clerks, one white and one black, mutter hellos and look back out at the rain. I gaze at the assembled goods, the double-aisled row of candies, the triple cooler filled with soft drinks and beer, the potato chips and cheese swirls. Locating the tiny grocery area, I examine a can of baked beans priced at three times its value. I wonder if there is halva. Kibbe?
Sucuk kebab
? I move back to the snack section and select a package of peanuts, bring this to the counter. The black clerk greets me with a star-emblazoned gold tooth.

“Will that be all?” She tugs a chain at her neck.

“Some gas also, please.” I gesture toward Violet, who puts the hose back in place.

“Okay.”

Her register whirs. I glance at the jar of pickled pigs’ feet behind the counter, the flesh pink and humanlike, the juice murky and stained. A wall of chewing tobacco stands behind it. Levi Garrett, Trophy, Morgan’s, Taylor’s Pride.

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

I look up, surprised but then not. “I am from Wadesboro.”

“Oh.” The gold sparkles. “You been there long?”

Memories flash past of the years in New York, of jabs and taunts, fights. An immigrant. Then Georgia. Wadesboro during the Iranian hostage crisis, when America’s attention (even Wadesboro’s) turned to the Middle East, the heritage of any darker-skinned person new grounds for derision. The jeers, “A-rab,” “sand nigger.” Some from neighbors Carol had known all her life. I withdrew from it. The kids were older, they were both blond—they were shielded. For this I was glad.

“Yes, I have been there some time.” I hear the silence surrounding my answer. The other clerk raises her head. “And you?”

The black clerk scratches her head. I hold her gaze. “Yeah,” she says. “I’m from Pelham. Been here all my life.”

I think about this as we continue our journey, past the brick and hedges of Deerfield Plantation, the blue-and-orange “Welcome to Florida” sign, the liquor store perched at the invisible state line. Six or seven generations now since the clerk’s ancestors arrived—she probably thinks of herself first as American, only second as black. I know the looks she receives, the constant striving to be something else. Does she think of her forebears? I wonder whether their lives interest or plague her, whether she secretly wishes to examine slave logs in Africa or whether, like me, she has blocked it all out, relegated it to an element of the past, as nothing that could ever be changed or would be. I wonder if she hates herself, or white people, or the whole of the oppressive South. I wonder if she dreams of restraint.

I feel myself slipping at the first Tallahassee traffic light, at an intersection fronted by a cleaners, a convenience store, a bank under construction. A clinking noise enters the car, perhaps from the job site nearby, like the sound of machinery but softer, more striking, until I am falling, slumped in my seat, sinking as I had in the university cafeteria, my hands to my lap to my knees. I hear Violet’s voice, fading, calling me, and then no more, only the clinking, rhythmic, repetitive, continuous. Monstrous.