The Gendarme (25 page)

“We must hurry,” Sasha says. “Others will come.” She sets the candle on the floor, turns her attention back to me. With a deft movement she grabs hold of my shirt and rips it down its front. “Ah, your arm.” She presses the ripped cloth on the wound.

“I must go,” I say. My throat burns from the effort. I lift my legs, attempting to stand.

“Where will you go? Can you walk?”

“Yes. To her. She is . . . in danger. Araxie.” If she is even alive. I look about wildly, digging my fingers through straw.

“Wait here.” Sasha leaves the room. I continue my search, on the bedding, across the floor. The pain climbs up my injured arm, rendering it limp and useless, such that I must use my right arm, my fingers as rakes, the straw slicing under my nails. I find it half buried beneath the thick body, requiring both arms to remove it, an action producing such pain that I cry out in anguish. The room darkens, encased in a whispering black before brightening again. I hold the necklace before me.

Sasha returns. “Do you have any other clothing?”

I nod helplessly at the foot of the bed. She grabs my
gömlek
and swiftly undresses me, practiced hands slipping bloody pants over one foot, then the other, until I stand naked, looking down at her, any thought of embarrassment washed clean by my anguish. Sasha pulls up the
pantolon
, rewraps my arm, places a compress around my bloody ear, fits the
gömlek
over my injured head and arm. She stands before me when she has finished. Her breath brushes my face.

“Take this,” she says quietly. She places a small pouch in my hand.

I bend to examine it. A sheaf of bills juts from its top.

She smiles, a smile made sad by the candle’s dim light. The wrinkles are thick at her eyes. “I hope it takes you far.”

I search for something to say.

Sasha reaches over onto Mustafa, grunts, returns with his knife. “You might also want this.”

“Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you so much.”

She kisses me on my cheek, the hard, forward kiss of a man. “Go, before someone comes.” She glances at the prostate body.
“Twaqqa!”

I tumble out of the room, into the hallway, out the side door to the alley beyond. The sound of footsteps carries from somewhere. Voices dim and vanish. The first pink of dawn shows to the east, the sky above still purpled and black. The street is dark, the familiar landmarks hidden, such that I bump into a trash pile and a water barrel before I right myself, reestablish my direction. I hurry on, more by feel than by sight, my left arm dangling like a crippled dog’s leg. The arm’s limpness alters my gait, my shoulder slumped to the injury, to the point where I imagine myself a mirror image of the amputated Mustafa, his body tilted to his remaining thick arm. His face fills my mind again, his words in my ears, such that I see him again, even smell him. I picture him scouting, waiting, plotting his slow revenge. He would have obsessed over his lost limb, brooded over it, stared at the place it used to be, wailed as he considered its loss. I pause, searching opposing passageways in the darkness. Would I or anyone else have done less?

Objects move in the early morn, shopkeepers unlocking doors, herders tending stock, groomers preparing their mounts. A dog runs past, yelping, chased by unseen foes. The sweet smell of baked bread mixes with odors of moisture and manure. Blood enters my mouth, trailing down my face from my ear, its texture silky, its taste metallic. I hobble forward, past the Bab al-Makkam and its muttering dromedaries, the darkened suq, the shuttered homes of the wealthy. A rooster crows nearby, another farther away.

The first cries of the muezzin fall as I reach the broad expanse of the Bab al-Faraj, brighter now in the dawn, its sediments of people stirring and unfolding, gathering with the start of the day. I halt, aware of how my injuries must look. I glance around for a place to wash but find nothing. Instead I join the rotation toward Mecca, the wait for the recitation of words familiar even in Arabic. I remember, as the supplication begins, the morning in Katma when I thought I had lost her, the prayers, the sight of her up on the roof. I glance up now but find nothing, only the gray edges of once white buildings, the stirrings of pigeons and doves. My mind, so compliant till now in avoiding thought of the necklace, bursts forth in unleashed agony, imagining her garroted, stabbed, or otherwise hurt, her body left to rot in the street. What had Mustafa said, that he had been helped by a kind man? I toss this about as I kneel in the mud. Blood wells in my nose, spattering in droplets on the ground just below.

I rise afterward, shaking. Others on the street watch. I cross the boulevard, edge around a dusty date palm and the debris spread beneath it, past deportees, dogs, and old women, past carts and donkeys piled high with cotton, until I stand before the hospital itself, its window holes open like eye sockets. Walking around to its back, I search for the house she’d mentioned, the doctor’s house, only to find three adjacent dwellings: a nicer two-story, with a small balcony and pitched roof, and two smaller bungalows. All are shuttered, and dark, as if their inhabitants are asleep or wounded, or dead.

I knock on the door of the two-story, wait, knock again. My hand goes to my face, the dried blood that has stiffened. I catch sight of my injured arm, red beneath the wrapped cloth. My breathing is loud through my crumpled nose. I knock again.

No one answers. I glance at the hospital behind me, at the doors, the open window holes, the figures occasionally passing. Perhaps Araxie and the doctor are already at work. I wait, hoping to catch sight of her—even a glimpse will release me—but my distress breeds impatience, and I knock on the other doors, my fist hard on the wood. I expect no response and receive none. Everything is quiet. Eventually I turn, my heart thundering, my breath loose and shallow. I make my way to the front of the hospital.

A group of men stand in the hospital’s doorway. The breaking dawn leaves the entrance in such darkness that I cannot see or identify them, only the red embers of their
sigaralar
, rising and falling, rising and falling, hands to mouths to dark sides. Some part of me sounds a warning, a message dulled by pain but shrouded even further by fate, by a certain inescapable ruin. I recognize the men’s uniforms as I reach them, the olives and tans, the red epaulets and braids of Ottoman military officers.

“Well, my friend! We’ve been waiting.”

I make a motion to retreat but stop myself. There are four of them, two of whom shift quietly, encircling me.

“We have been told you are a Turkish soldier, a deserter. Is that true, Mr. Khan?” The man flicks his dying cigarette into the street.

Some reservoir of strength fires within me, finding its way to my voice. “Who told you this?”

The man laughs. “Does it matter? Are you or are you not? Do you have papers?”

“I was a gendarme. I brought a group to Aleppo.”

“Did you receive permission to stay, or to leave the service of the gendarmerie?”

“I did not.”

“Then you will come with us. Your country needs you, at least what is left of you after your punishment. You see, Ahmet Bey, this is a serious matter.” He moves closer to me, such that his face is more visible, tobacco-laden breath blowing in toward mine. I do not recognize him.

“In addition to deserting, you appear to have consorted with enemies of our country. This, as you know, is treasonous. You could pay with your life.”

He gives a head signal to the other officers, two of whom grab my arms. I gasp at the pressure, the onslaught of pain.

“I see you’ve been injured.” He evidently says or motions something to the officers, for the crushing grip slackens, and I am boosted upright. We begin shuffling down the walkway to the boulevard, half walking, half stumbling. Early-morning pedestrians crane to look.

“Tell me, Ahmet Bey,” the lead officer says, twisting his head to look at my face. The insignia at his shoulder appears to be that of a colonel, though it is hard to tell in the darkness. “Was it worth it?” He offers a half-turned smile, as if we are privy to a great secret.

I do not answer. From up in a hospital window comes a voice, in languid Armenian. I look up, as do the others, to see a woman standing there, a stout, older woman.

“She is gone,” says the woman, her voice chopped and broken.

“Hey! Time to wake up!”

I turn, careful of my injury, surprised at the absence of pain.

My fingers trace my wounded ear. It is whole, likewise pain-free. I sit, eyes open to a spare bed with white cotton sheets, purple fluorescent lighting, a thin man with a scabbed nose. My eyes cloud, refocus. John Paul speaks.

“They’re taking us outside again. Nap time’s over.”

It all comes crashing back then, the white walls and ceiling. The slippered feet of the asylum, the smells of excrement and ammonia. The metal bedposts perched above linoleum floors. I should be back—fighting, overcoming these soldiers—but I am here, only here. I close my eyes and lie down again, wishing the dream back upon me. Where have they taken her? What can I do? A renewed prodding interrupts, and I lift my arms at it, flailing. The bedsheet billows and cracks.

“Hey, now. Easy.” Lawrence’s drawl edges farther away. “I’m just waking everyone to go outside.” He holds up his hands against me, a tamer facing a lion. “Actually, you have a visitor. If you’ll follow me, you can see her now.”

But the dream! Lights flash, settling as I stand, stars retreating to individual lights, three doors merged now to one. John Paul’s head peeks from behind Lawrence, his eyes in narrow scrutiny. I clear my throat.

“Who is my visitor?” I ask. Is it she?

“It’s your daughter.”

I follow into the brightness of the dayroom, past others in line for the excursion outside. I see a head near the front, a glimpse of Sasha’s oversized jaw, and I am frozen, the thought twisting and circling that this man had helped me, helped
me
. And for what? I remain still, then, slowly, step forward.

Victor/Sasha shifts his head. His eyes are dulled, diluted by pain, but the same—gray and oval, wide set under leathery brows. I find myself unable to speak, only to stare, the pressure in my forehead bringing pain to my cheekbones. He returns my gaze, his expression firm and without acknowledgment, but nor is there any surprise. I want to touch him, to laugh. Questions gurgle and die in my throat.

“Thank you,” I say finally, my words thick with moisture. “Thank you for what you have done.”

His stare remains, his expression unchanged. Others are there, giving ground, eyeing us both with some measure of curiosity. He does not look at them—only at me, for what may be seconds, perhaps minutes. I hear Lawrence calling, the scuffling of feet, the sniffs of growing impatience, but we remain locked, connected by current, until the barest shift of his head releases me.

I step toward Lawrence, past blank stares and mutters. My feet make a flapping noise on the floor.

“Are you okay?” Lawrence’s brow dips lower than ever.

“Yes. Okay.”

But unsettled by this past newly found. Those who had helped had not known of my transgressions. No one knew except Allah, if he still cared to watch. Except her. Am I now like the man who sees, too late, his own errors? These things, this certainty I have sought all my life, but now when they come they bring pain.

I am led through the outer door, the same glassed-in room. Violet rises when I enter, dabbing at her hair with one hand.

“Hi.” She leans forward to peck at my cheek. The wrinkles around her eyes are deep and dusted in makeup. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay.”

Her smile fades.

“How are you?” I ask. My voice is weak, as if my vocal cords have been damaged.

“I’m okay.”

“Have you checked on Sultan?”

“I asked your friend Carl to do that.”

“Have you told Lissette . . . of this?”

She looks away, then back. “I told her you had to be hospitalized, for observation. I didn’t tell her it was here.”

I nod. She has put me here, my protector. My Violet. But I must protect her. Protect them.

She presses her hands together. I struggle to stay in the present.

“And Wilfred?”

“He’s okay.”

“Tell me, please,” I say. “Tell me Wilfred will never be put in a place . . . like this place. Tell me you will not bring him here.”

She looks down. “He’s okay,” she says. “He’ll be fine.”

“But
tell
me. Make me this promise.”

She stares at me, her neck flushed. “What promise, Papa? That his life will be grand? That he will never have issues? That the issues he has won’t get worse? I don’t think he would ever have to be put someplace, but if that’s what’s best, then that’s what we’ll do. I can’t promise anything.” She pauses. “Does it hurt you to know that? To know the truth?”

The truth. I shake my head, Wilfred’s image before me, then John Paul, his arms swinging. “He is so young,” I say. “His whole life is before him . . .”

“Papa, is it really Wilfred you speak of, or the idea of him? This perfect image you create for yourself.”

I still my hands. “What?”

“You want him as your extension. Your surrogate to live your life over.” She leans forward, eyes flashing. “Isn’t that it?”

“What?” I say again. But she is energized now, her lips wet. Her face colors and shines like a flower.

“Papa. Is there that much you regret?”

I stare. My heart lurches.

“I’ve lived my life,” she continues. “It may not have been the one you picked out for me, but it’s mine. Are there regrets? Of course, but not so many. I charted my own course. I dug into
life
. If I had it to do over I would do things the same.”

A shudder creeps through me, a cold twist like a knife. “And your child,” I say, before I can stop myself from saying it. “The one you gave up. Is there not . . . Do you not regret . . . ?”