The Gendarme (18 page)

Although I witness the girls in various stages of undress, from the bared bellies and exposed breasts on the dance floor to the more revealing glimpses I catch shuttling among the back rooms, I come to think of them more as sisters than as objects of desire. They tease me unmercifully, demanding I drop my trousers to exhibit my manhood, pinching my bottom as I walk past, deliberately exposing themselves as I enter a room, questioning my heterosexuality. The redheaded girl, Isis (which, I presume, is not her given name), takes a particular fancy to me, rubbing my arm as she asks pointless questions, insisting I accompany her on her walks to the hammam. Perhaps it evidences the degree of my obsession, but I offer her little interest. I think of Araxie constantly, dream of her, picture her face above the other girls’ bodies. I worry in equal amounts, of the imminence of her deportation, of my helplessness to stop it. I daydream so frequently the girls take to calling me Gharîb, Rîb for short. Different. Strange.

I see Hussein my third night at the
klimbim
. He enters late, well after midnight, and makes his way up to the front row of mats. I recognize him immediately, his strutting little chest, the way his head cocks, the pull of his neck as he slips around Sasha. They nod to each other, evidencing familiarity. He gives the impression of being a regular customer. My heart beats double time at the thought that I might have to serve him, but Sasha reaches him first, motioning me to my duties in the back. I pass within a few feet of him, my head down, my face pulled away. I calculate that I could spring at him, snap his flimsy neck before he knew what had happened, but what good would that do? I would be jailed, or shot, or hunted down with a vengeance. Araxie would still hang in limbo. And so I stay in the shadows, observing as he watches Bibi dance, cleaning the room the two of them will occupy, lingering long enough—too long—to see them through the large crack in the room’s door, the unwrapping of his robes, the twitch of his buttocks as she sinks and kneels before him. I busy myself elsewhere, careful to observe from afar when he emerges some time later, bids his muted good-bye to Sasha, and exits as the last patron of the night. I perform my end-of-evening tasks in a murderous frenzy, attacking floors and sheets as if they were enemies, shrugging off questions and teasing. By the time I am finished I am panting, black cauldrons of breath steaming up in the cool dawn. It takes hours to fall asleep. I do not speak to Bibi for days.

I see Araxie the following day, having arranged with Ani to meet her at the bazaar. I am vague about my new employment, telling her only that I have procured a job that keeps me up late at night. I do not mention seeing Hussein. Araxie looks better, even from the last time I had seen her, the color back in her cheeks, the added weight evident in her face and carriage. People stare as we work our way through the suq, craning their necks, caught by the oddity, the unsettling beauty of her eyes. She guards against this, or seems to, her gaze down, her focus kept to the ground. She keeps the scarf pulled around her. Her pace is measured and poised. If she notices the attention shown her she fails to mark or evidence it.

“What is the situation at the hospital?” I ask as a herd of goats pass.

She waits for the noise and stench to clear before answering. “I must leave soon,” she says tonelessly. “There are rumors that Talat Paşa has called for the extermination of the deportees, even here in Aleppo. The doctors say I am nearly cured, and there are many, many sick. More deportees arrive daily. People are lying on blankets in the halls.”

I nod. It is this way throughout the city. Refugees huddle in clumps between buildings, beg in doorways, sit vacant-eyed in the middle of walkways.

“Where will you go?”

“One of the doctors has made inquiries for me at an orphanage. Although they are filled, and I am older, he thinks he may get me in. In the meantime, he would like to train me as a nurse’s assistant. He believes my chances are better if there is a service I can perform. But it is frightening. Yesterday they came and removed a number of people, including several who had traveled with us from Harput.”

“And Hussein?”

She grimaces. “He is still there. He offered me employment with his sister, some kind of factory job—I do not really know what it is. I told him I was pursuing other things, that I was grateful, that I would let him know. This did not make him happy. I try to avoid him, but it is difficult.”

The image of Hussein in the
klimbim
’s back room flashes past me.

“I have something to give you,” I say, reaching under my shirt. I pull out a small package. Beneath its wrapping lies a necklace I purchased the previous day, a purchase I agonized over afterward, second-guessing myself for spending that which should have been saved for escape. I have thought much of this moment, envisioning in alternate scenarios her pleasure, affront, or indifference upon receipt of the gift. My hand shakes as I hand it to her. Will she refuse it? I find I cannot watch as she spreads the paper and opens it.

A sound emerges from her lips. She holds the necklace aloft, to where the light plays on it, sparkling the polished blue stones that fall together to form a pendant. Though irregularly shaped, the stones, when grouped together, look as one, perhaps cut from the same parent; I imagine an artisan working a lathe as I had with the knives. I watch as she fingers the stones, separating, letting them fall back together like a puzzle re-formed. I do not know the rock from which they derive, or the necklace’s true value, although I bargained the jewelry dealer down to almost half her original price. After contemplating asking one of the
klimbim
girls for advice, in the end I decided against it—I did not wish to associate them with her. I decided I simply liked this piece. I could imagine her wearing it.

“It is . . . wonderful,” she whispers. To my surprise, her eyes are murky with tears. “This is the first gift I have received . . . in such a long time.” She lifts the necklace over her head, draping it around her neck, then tucks it under her robes. She lifts her gaze to meet mine. “Thank you.” She wipes her eyes with her middle fingers.

The crowd presses closer around us, voices raised, then lowered. Two merchants make accusations in loud tones, a knife is pulled, light flashes on metal. I edge Araxie away from the commotion, my fingers on the crook of her hip, my mind on the certainty that the knife I saw briefly was one I had made. We stop in the shadow of a row of buildings, the air cooler here. A smell of sawdust rises, the charred scent of cut wood.

“I must go soon,” Araxie says. “I begin training this evening.”

We watch a pair of gendarmes escort a group of ragged deportees down the road past the bazaar. “I will protect you,” I say without thinking, without knowing what even I mean.

“Thank you.” She tilts her head toward mine. The odor of soap clings and perfumes the air.

I want to say more, to prolong things, but do not. We linger a moment, her light eye upon me. Then she turns and walks on, through candle vendors and shepherds, baubles and bread on a stick. I watch her go, awash in the bittersweet charm of surrender. The fear of what lies ahead.

 

 

 

Violet and I drive
back to Wadesboro. I am silent, thinking. I am remembering, for some reason, the birth of Violet’s first child, the strangeness of it, the uncertainty. Violet had been sent to a home for unwed mothers, in New York—this would have been 1955, maybe 1956. I was working the day she left. Carol told me about it, how Violet had stood by the door and proclaimed she would never be back. But then one day she returned, only smaller, and older. I never saw the child. She did not speak of it. As I think of this now, I do not remember if she bore a boy or a girl.

It is strange how these thoughts come, a boy or a girl. Does she think on this now and shake her head in slow wonder? For me the past is so dominant. Memory receding, obscuring—discovering something new is like finding hidden treasure. Or an unmarked grave. I look out from the car as the sky clears, the sun shining cleanly through pine needles made golden. The taller trees bend and sway, their lower branches like hands on thin hips. Will I see this again or must I only remember it? A hawk passes above, its wings beating downward in broad, slow, smooth strokes.

I lower my window to let in fresh air. The sweet smell of smoke enters from a planned burn up ahead, a fire in imitation of nature set to clear underbrush. The aroma brings memories—of cook fires, the little hearth of my parents—and I am remembering, almost touching, when something else enters, some darker connection that grasps and takes hold. I pitch forward, my hands on my knees, and I am shaking. Lights flash. Darkness follows, then deadening silence.

Daylight returns, a grimier light like that at a cloudy day’s end. A group of women gather around a fire, dancing or, as becomes apparent, being made to dance, onlookers pushing or prodding them on, men with knives, with long-barreled guns. One man urges them to sing, then demands that they do so, such that soon high-pitched wails merge with the crackle of flame, the shouts of derision. The dancing women are of varied ages, some old and shuffling, some merely girls, thrashing all apace in a terrified rhythm. I watch as a man reaches in with a sword and stabs a young woman, slicing her breasts off with quick, violent strokes. She bleeds, great buckets of blood, her screams mixed with the thin trill of the others. The crowd grows larger, more demanding, edging the dancers closer to the fire. Soon the wails are all screams. The sour odor of burning flesh mixes with the smell of wood smoke. I turn, toward others standing off from the onslaught, women with arms folded across their chests, looks of indifference or satisfaction splashed on their thick faces. I open my mouth but nothing comes from it, no sound. The smoke becomes thicker and I cough silent coughs.

 

 

 

We sit before Dr. Wan,
a truant child with his mother. I am the center of attention, the patient. The problem. Am I thus so like Wilfred? I picture Violet before principals and guidance counselors, her eyes reddened, the same crease corrugating her brow. I have been in her position with Carol, seeking answers that provide direction, attempting to decide between options, each unappealing. It is lonely and frustrating. Carol could be as mean as a chained dog, exacting and obstinate, then gleeful and bubbly as if hosting a ball. I am unlike her in this. I have these episodes, but my mind is still here. I am not so needy, so selfish. Would it not be much better to drop everything now, to let things play out? I have tried to tell Violet this, that I am fine without treatment. That rest and resignation and natural course might be best. She only listens and shakes her head, as if my preference is irrelevant or my thinking merely childish, my passivity the simple product of a closed, too-damaged mind.

Dr. Wan is both comforting and apologetic. “The spells you describe sound like complex partial seizures,” he says, “not uncommon. The dream states, though, are unusual. We will adjust your medication, but I think it is best that you be monitored. I have suggested to Violet that you see Dr. Mellon. He will arrange for your placement.”

My placement? I know Dr. Mellon. He is a psychiatrist, a Rotarian. I am already being monitored. I do not understand this.

Dr. Wan looks genuinely sorry, as if he has forced me down a far plank. “How are you feeling? Any headaches?”

I shake my head. I want to ask questions but it seems best not to do so. Violet examines her nails, looks away, examines again. A nurse arrives and administers an injection.

The day stretches on. We leave Dr. Wan’s office, drive to radiology for my treatment, drive on to Dr. Mellon’s, fill out more paperwork, sit in yet another waiting room. It is again as with Carol, the parade of offices, the personnel in white coats. I glance at Violet and feel pity and pride. There were scattered illnesses in her childhood, a broken arm once. Did I not wait on her so, trusting in gloved professionals? Hazy memories stream back. The day I obtained my citizenship we waited in a room much like this. They gave the girls little flags—Lissette was young then, maybe eight? We had ice cream after. We had a dog at that time, a boxer mix we called Jowls who let the girls ride his back. They placed the flags in his collar and made him march in a parade. I followed, strutting around the living room, Carol clapping, the “Stars and Stripes Forever” crackling forth from the radio. Did we make movies of this? I should find them and watch them.

Dr. Mellon is loud. I remember he likes to slap people’s backs. He is a black man from the islands, his teeth large and white. The reason for Dr. Wan’s hesitance quickly becomes apparent.

“Look,” the big doctor says, spreading fingers like daggers, “this is going to sound worse than it is. From your descriptions, you’re having delusions or hallucinations, maybe hypnagogic in nature. I’m going to place you in SGPC for a few days, at least until a bed clears in Eastside. You’ll be fine—it’s not a bad facility. You can be monitored there, your medication checked. I think it’s the best thing right now. I’m on the staff, but because of protocols, you’ll first see another physician, probably Dr. Wellman. He’s a good man. I think you’ll like him.”

My stomach drops, as if a stone has crashed through it. SGPC. South Georgia Psychiatric Center is the state mental hospital, the place crazy people are sent. I glance accusingly at Violet, who stares at a far wall. “The institution?”

“I know. Relax. It won’t be that bad. I’m going to prescribe a psychotropic drug to try to cut down on these episodes. Given the medication you’re already taking, you really need to be monitored.”

“Can Violet not monitor me at home?”

He smiles, his lips stretched. “I don’t think so.”

The rest of the conversation is lost. I am stricken, observing as if through thick glass. The oddness of this room, the lilt in Dr. Mellon’s voice, the interracial aspect of his practice (so odd for Wadesboro), the people I recognized also waiting to see him. An institution. A
hastane
. Anger cuts through me in a spasm. I quell it. How could . . .? This cannot be. I am a victim, of incompetence, injustice. I am okay! And yet these images, this smell—I erect a large wall but they seep through, relentless. The fire, the women. I rub my nose with both hands. I grip my chair to touch something, to stay aligned with things present, but still the room starts in motion, textbooks mixed with potted palms, with hooked lamps and rifled papers. I lean forward to ground myself against dizziness, determined not to dream or collapse as the blood shakes within me. I think of Carol and rows of white cots, and for a moment I am back there, wrapped in bedsheets in London, someone asking me something using bright, foreign words. Why would I speak this language? “Sir,” they say. “Sir.” The hospital dark and smelling, the echo of footfalls. The excitement the day the queen visited and spoke to other patients. Then things shift and I am working in darkness, fumbling with pipe fittings and cold earth like a mole, but providing. Working. If I work and do well there may be a promotion. Promotion? A man laughs and others join him. My name is spoken. A hand grasps my shoulder and pulls me upright.