The Gendarme (7 page)

The man looks familiar, in a scruffy, indefinable way, but they all look familiar after these weeks of plodding—the same battered fez, the same faded waistcoat. I start to ask if he has anything to say but think better of it, my tongue staying fixed in my mouth. Thankfully, the man is not groveling. His chest heaves in and out, his breath rasps in his throat, but he says nothing. Is he thinking of how he came to be here, dropped into a world of more powerful foes, how his life will be ended with the suddenness with which it began? I half listen as Mustafa speaks, his body tensed, his eyes blinking. I nod. It is as I reach for my gun that I see her, standing behind the other guards, hair under the cap again, my shirt still on her shoulders. I remain calm, not starting at the sight of her, not alerting the others to her presence in an area in which she is not allowed. I continue my motion, raise the weapon. I shoot the man once in the head.

I do not think much about it. It is the only real course, given the circumstances. If I fail to maintain control, my own life is in jeopardy. This is no place for a trial, and it is not as if the man has not probably done what he was accused of, or that he will not die soon, anyway. He is, as I think about it, an anomaly in any respect. Most able-bodied Armenian men were forced into labor or executed before the marches even began. He must have been wealthy or particularly adept at bribery to have survived for this long. By the look on his face he knew this, and was not ungrateful to die.

But she disappears. I hunt for her afterward, as the guards break up into watches, as others pull struggling young women off into the night. I examine each of these, especially that of Mustafa, to forestall her being selected by some other gendarme. I am sure this is noticed, as I have not done this before. My shirt will have been seen on her. And her eyes, how can she hide them? Yet I cannot find her. I work my way once through the caravan, then back. I scour the camp’s perimeter. It is as if she has vanished, into the darkness that surrounds us.

 

 

 

White light bites
and cuts me. White blanket, white chair, white walls, white ceiling. My head hurts, as if the whiteness has now entered and will not be shut out. A space closed for so long becomes open. Is this London? Then the frame hinders my head, the box-like apparatus. I peer around, remembering. I am still alive.

The dreams have continued. Despite the radiation, despite everything.

A man approaches. “Well, and how is the patient?” Dr. Wan pulls at his mustache.

I shiver, awake. “I am tired.”

“The surgery was quite successful.” His mole broadens, flattens. “You felt nothing, I trust?”

“Nothing.”

Violet appears behind him, saying something, but I am drifting, my thoughts mixed. My past. The Depression—how I fought for mere pennies! Hungry and cold, only one meal a day. An immigrant, we were all immigrants. Escaping. Harry Wan, too—at what age did he enter? Different, like me, in this rural environment. He has picked up the language, considers himself an American. Does he dream of his old country? I wonder what he regrets.

“Doctor?” I pause. “I still have these dreams.”

The mole bunches, like a pencil eraser. “Just now? During the surgery?”

“Yes.”

“Hmmm.” He glances up. “Let’s see if they continue. If so, I will alter your medication. It may be a function of the drugs in your system.”

I nod. He bows again.

“Wonderful!”

He exits the room. Violet and I look at each other. I close my eyes.

 

 

 

Katma is a filthy,
noxious repository for deportees gathered from the farthest points of Turkey, from Kayseri, Bitlis, Diyarbekır, Erzerum, and even Trebizond, far up on the Black Sea. What was once a quaint market town, with stone buildings, terraced gardens, and a small market, has swollen in size like a blood-gorged tick. People, animals, and insects are everywhere, the smell of defecation hanging low in the air. From a distance the town looks like part of a hill that has been leveled, broken and crumpled into mud-colored clumps. Up close the browns turn to grays, speckled in places with dusty clothing, faded trees, squat and shallow buildings. Black-cloaked townspeople eye us from the outskirts, evaluating, calculating, some with disdain for our group’s imposition, others with the greed of the expectant profiteer.

We arrive about noon, guided the last part of the way by a toothless official, an older man named Hassan, who rides out to greet us. The deportees are to be confined in a specific area, a wretched tent city resembling a giant encampment. There look to be several thousand there—the familiar hungry faces, the black clothing, the lethargic-looking children. It could be our caravan, except multiplied tenfold. Hassan has little information about plans going forward, only a vague direction that our group needs to stay together, that plans are changing, that we will move “east” at an unspecified time.

I direct our group to one end of the camp, near large areas of digging I later learn will become burial pits. Flies cover everything, entering our mouths and noses, lodging in our clothing, swirling about our eyes. The earth stinks, as if the bowels of hell have erupted, burrowing into pores even as sweat seeks escape. I cup my hand around my nose and mouth and make everyone file past me, ostensibly to warn them to stay together but in actuality to search for her. I have not seen her since the episode at the campfire three nights previous, despite my periodic forays through the ranks of the deportees. My concern has grown with each search, the possibilities emerging of her having been carried off during one of the nightly attacks by marauding Kurds—although at my insistence the guards had curtailed much of that thievery—of an abduction by Mustafa or one of the other gendarmes, or of her simply having run away. Almost all of the deportees pass by before I recognize her, clad in a black frock that exposes parts of my shirt. She wears the cap again, her face darkened with dirt, hand against her mouth, eyes following the ground. I pull her out of line, make her stand to one side as the remainder of the group files past. Then I take her with me as I deal with the guards.

The gendarmes are a problem, as I had known they would be. Only I had been a prior member of the gendarmerie, the country’s paramilitary police. The others had been recruited by the
kaymakam
, a senior official in Harput, from among a group of thugs and other
çeteler
deemed unfit for military service. In addition to Mustafa, I had known several before. Ismail, who has a bad leg, is a friend of a friend. Izzet is the butcher’s son. Ali joined us at Gerger when two of the original gendarmes returned to Harput. I remember thinking from the outset what a struggle it would be to keep them under control. After a brief skirmish on the first day out, in which I knifed Tevfik’s beard to a wooden wall, they more or less followed my instructions. Still, I watch them, day and night. I recognize them for what they are, more dangerous than any enemy.

Some insist now on leaving, claiming they have not been appropriately paid. Others maintain they are needed back home and never intended to go this far anyway. Still others inquire about lodging. Where are they supposed to stay in this overcrowded shit-hole? I deal with the money issue first, according little sympathy to these who have profited well from the bribes of the deportees. I dole out a few lira to each, inform Tevfik and Izzet they are free to go if they choose. The others, whom I feel are more loyal in general, I ask to stay on, at least for several more days, until we determine what is requested of us. I can offer them no lodging, provide no guidance as to where to sleep and what to eat. I ask each of those staying to meet me each morning for instruction, knowing it is likely some will soon melt away. I dismiss the group. I wait until they have filed away, till the muttering and questioning looks have evaporated.

“I have been looking for you. Why are you hiding?”

She does not reply. Her head angles down, away from me.

“Look at me.” I cup her chin in one hand, pull her face gently upward. The mismatched eyes swing into focus, a hostile gaze now directed upon me.

“I will help you,” I say. “For now. At least get you out of this mess.” I gesture at the fly-covered encampment.

She shakes her head slowly, her focus back on the ground.

I grit my teeth. “You have no choice. Come with me. Now.”

I reach for her. She pulls back. I reach farther, grabbing this time, my fingers on the tendons of her thin upper arm. Her resistance continues, a pull of surprising strength, then as quickly relents. I find myself sweating.

“Please don’t touch me.”

I stare at her. Does she know what she says? I could kill her if I wanted. I motion with one arm. She trudges in the direction I point, pulling a string bag over one shoulder, her chin puckered and stretched, her gaze held to the ground. I fall in behind her, my head following the swivel of her back, the shift of her hips as she slides through the crowd. We pass a small bazaar catering to deportees still in possession of valuables, the smell of bread and bulgur mingling with the stench of the camp. A cook fire burns somewhere, its smoke in our path. Here and there stand more well-to-do Turks, resplendent in red fezzes, talking and smoking brown cigarettes, entering teahouses, retreating with bottles of raki. People bustle about—soldiers, deportees, merchants, and townspeople—all crammed together in a great ball of dust. Herders tend animals—goats, sheep, and chickens—available for purchase, for slaughter. Babies cry, men shout. Donkeys bray like wounded monsters. Even the women seem loud, chattering as they tote water bottles, shouting after their children. We pass flat-roofed houses constructed of gray stone, broken by layers of wooden beams, fronted by little walled courtyards. Other abodes are simpler, composed of mud brick, with few windows. Dusty trees stand limp and forgotten—an elm, maybe, a walnut. It reminds me of some place I cannot recall.

I had inquired discreetly of Hassan, the man who directed us into the city, of where I might find lodging. Several coins produced the name and address of someone he told me could help. It takes us a while to locate it, a dingy stone building on a narrow side street, but the squat woman who answers the door is more than willing to provide a room at an exorbitant price. Araxie keeps her gaze downward, boyish in her height, her cap and billowy clothing enhancing this ambiguity. The proprietress eyes her quizzically but says nothing. With a flourish of tucked bills and the sweeping gestures of a fighter, she shows us to our “room,” a small, curtained-off area in the back of the building. A wooden platform covered by straw and a brownish blanket form one side, leaving what little space remains as stable area for my horse. The curtains bow from the sag of the ropes that hold them aloft, leaving gaps of darkness between stretches of cloth. From beyond unseen feet scuffle, voices hum, animals mutter and grunt. The woman points us down a narrow hallway to a communal bathing area, similarly curtained and evidently utilized by everyone in the building (and perhaps members of the public as well). We are made to believe that a servant named Vahan will provide heated water from the stove at our request. The sound of someone being scolded rises from another part of the building. I conclude—correctly, as it turns out—that this is the unfortunate Vahan.

Other boarders pass as we make our way to our room, soldiers in new olive uniforms, prosperous-looking merchants, and other, dirtier clientele, perhaps gendarmes from other stalled caravans. I draw the curtain behind us, pull my bedding from the horse, eye the blanket provided, then toss it aside. Folding the bedding on the straw, I place the rifle at one edge and sit. My horse, Gece, snorts and paws the mud floor. Araxie remains standing, her head still angled toward the ground. I grab some bread and apricots from my pack and offer them to her, but she ignores me, her jaw set.

She turns after a time. “What do you want with me?” She asks this in Armenian, with which I have only general familiarity, but I understand her nonetheless.

“I want to help you,” I say in Turkish. “I think you need it.”

“Why?” She also switches to Turkish.

I do not answer. My mouth is dry. I seek to explain, to put words to the things that drive me on, but cannot.

“Why would I accept help from you?” she asks.

I pause, still caught in my efforts. “Because you have no other option.”

Silence settles upon us. Someone sneezes in the space beyond. A pot clangs in a distant kitchen. “My option is death,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. “Why should I live? My mother died before the start of this journey. The man you shot several nights ago, at the campfire, was my father.”

I roll back on the straw pad. Rough sounds like a dog’s bark wind their way up my throat. I swallow. “I did not know,” I say finally.

“Would it have mattered? We are oxen to you. Why not just shoot us all now?” She pauses, sucking in air. Another sneeze echoes behind her. “What is it about us you hate so?”

I spread my hands before me. I clear my throat. “I am only a small piece in a large puzzle,” I begin quietly. “I have a job to do. I did not ask for it, nor have I questioned its rationale. To do otherwise is to invite my own death. I, too, have wondered at these things. But there is a war. Your people have allied themselves with the enemy. Even now, on the northern and western fronts, Turkish soldiers are fighting and dying to preserve our country. What do you expect us to do? The Armenians cannot have it both ways. Perhaps it is a good thing that we should be separated. Perhaps we were never meant to live together.”

“The Armenians in my town never allied themselves with anyone,” she says flatly, softly. “We do not know any Russians. We are no danger to you, or to any other Turk. Yet we are treated as dogs, or worse. Before we left Harput, I watched a crowd set an old woman on fire. The townspeople laughed and clapped. Women, men, children—everyone. Our neighbors. What you have done, what you are doing, is murder. It is monstrous. There
is
no rationale.”