The Gendarme (8 page)

I do not respond, for there is nothing I can say. I recognize the simplicity of youth in her statements, the naïveté of black and white. If I were in her shoes, would I not feel the same? But the Armenians have brought this on themselves, with their secrecy, their clannishness, their duplicity and trickery. Of course there has been injustice, as there would be in anything. There are undoubtedly honorable Russian people as well. But at some point one has to pick sides, choose his allegiance. The Armenians have made their decision. There is nothing I can do about it.

I lift my head. “Why did you not leave sooner, if your father had the means to do so?”

“We talked about it, but my mother was sick. She died two weeks before we were forced to depart.”

I nod. I look away. This young woman has lost so much. How can she bear to be with me, the man who has killed—killed her father? My tongue curls and sticks as I ponder this circumstance. She has little left to fear, this one, not starvation, or pain, or even death. Is she plotting even now to slit my throat as I sleep? I should kill her, I think, before she kills me. I should . . . but I should do many things I will not, I cannot. I regard her again as she stands straight, feet apart. She stares at nothing. I cannot bear to look more.

“Sit. Please.”

She starts, as if she has forgotten my presence. She looks at me sideways, the light eye turned to me now, then lowers herself to the straw, tucking one leg beneath her.

“Do you wish to bathe?” I ask. Even the poorest of Turks bathe regularly, usually at the public baths.

She shakes her head with such vehemence the cap falls from her crown.

“Not with me. You may use the bath first if you wish. I will make sure no one enters.”

She hesitates, then declines.

“So.” I stand, pulling the rifle with me. “I shall bathe. You shall remain here. If you attempt to leave, I will instruct the proprietress to stop you. There are very bad men here, men who will not hesitate to hurt you and use you. You are safer with me.”

I part the sagging curtain, close it again, and make my way down the hall.

Time.
Time has moved on since the tumor’s arrival, spring into summer, blooms into green. I view the drive home from the hospital with new eyes, noting the shapeliness of the trees gracing Miller Street, the shuck and dive of a pair of cardinals, the stare of a wrinkled old man. Roses, Wadesboro’s pride, burst from planters and gardens, in reds and purples, oranges and pinks. The last of spent pollen yellows lips around puddles. A train murmurs in the distance, its whistle low like a wind. Life continues, with or without me. I touch my head where the metal frame had been fastened. I am still here. I am still a part of it.

Home feels cool and comfortable, strange. I am tired but afraid to sleep, jumpy but slow, sad and elated at alternating intervals. I have little to do yet time passes swiftly. My daughter Lissette calls. We chat about me, about nothing. A stream of visitors forms—someone over, someone calling, someone delivering something. It reminds me of Carol’s last days. Casseroles show up, left by the door like abandoned infants. Flowers arrive, sticky and pungent. I am unable to avoid attention, even as to some degree I feed on it. I brood, I mope, I act like a child. I resent Ted and Violet and the others around me.

I think about the dream. Do I
remember
these things? I search for my records. I even climb into the attic, much to Ted’s dismay. But it is in the garage that I find it, the box I remember, its top gray, its edges still sharp. I bring it into the light, and read of myself.

The words are clinical and spare. I was taken from a trench in Çanakkale, the battle of Gallipoli, on 29 August 1915. My clothing had been ripped away, my head completely bloodied. From where I was found I was assumed to be British. I was evacuated through several steps to a hospital ship, where I was diagnosed with shrapnel wounds and brain injury. I was not expected to live.

But I did live, for several weeks more. The ship left for Southampton, carrying me with it. We arrived 23 September 1915. I was taken to a military hospital. A coma, the chart indicates. Damage to the parietal lobe.

The writing changes here, someone new has taken over. Not Carol, yet. Notations are made about my nationality. Perhaps my coloring? I am copper-skinned, though not dark. I awoke from my coma on 10 October 1915. “Turk” is scratched in the margin.

I remained in the hospital for another 217 days. The records show that I spoke no English, that I suffered from amnesia. I spent much time sleeping. I developed a fever, then pneumonia. Again, I was not expected to live. But I did.

Carol entered the picture—I recognize her handwriting on the chart. She must have saved this (what patients get their charts?). Gradually, I recovered some of my memory. But the war dragged on. There is a sheaf of paperwork on the issue of what to do with me. Was I a prisoner of war? Should I be repatriated, or exchanged? Carol was a force by this point, advocating on my behalf, turning back officials who wanted to move me. She claimed later there was immediate physical attraction, but I think she felt pity. She succeeded finally in marrying me, to prevent my deportation. I remember our wedding day, a bleak, cloudy afternoon, a robed and wigged judge. Our wedding night was spent in a freighter line’s gritty departure area. Carol had papers, our luggage, and a plan. I have thought many times since of her acts of defiance, first against the authorities, later her own parents. I am still not sure how she did it, or why. But Carol, once determined, was not one to be denied.

I think back on the dream. My injury was early in the war—near its beginning. The deportations must have taken place at about the same time, or after. The records prove what I thought they did, that I was serving in the army then. But Burak, my brother—where was he, and when? Are these his dreams? Does he speak to me now at the end of my life? I grasp at this improbability, I want it to be so. To explain things! But . . . I do not remember. I cannot.

It is difficult, this absence. I think again on the things I created to take the place of lost memories, even war memories. My valor, my medals. My glory. I have harbored these for so long now they become almost real, a convict’s belief in the truth of his innocence. What is truth without memory? What is now without then? As an immigrant, though, I found the blanks to be helpful, focusing me then on the present, the future. I was determined to make my way in America. I started with nothing and worked my way up. I am proud of my accomplishments, the solid strength of my efforts. Yet at the end of my life these dreams come, and the ground shifts. I find myself in a dark, tilting house.

Later, I ask Violet to take me to the library. This is a strange request, one Violet raises soft eyebrows to. I have difficulty reading now. I must put on thick glasses, which make my eyes look extra large. But she agrees. We climb into her Explorer. It is a sunny day.

“Do you think about the afterlife?” she asks.

We pass Mrs. Fleming’s house. She waves from a window.

“I think of the present,” I respond. This is true. I do not wish for a religious discussion, if that is where she is heading.

But she says nothing more. I glance at her. I am ashamed now of my reticence. “Thank you,” I say. “For the driving.”

She nods.

I want to touch her, to place my hand on the wheel. She will leave soon, once I recuperate. I know this. I accept my abandonment. Still, we have gotten on well, we have not fought. I have tried not to meddle. This procedure—has she not pushed for it? The extension then of my life. I want to stay on this course for the time that is left us, balancing, steering. It could be years! I will be patient.

I look at her closely. She has Carol’s jaw. I think of Carol, her parents. Her mother died just after we moved to Wadesboro, but her father lived longer. Carol had left, joined the war effort, and come back to find a home filled with friction: her parents’ anger over her leaving, her marrying without their consent. A foreigner? A dark-skinned foreigner who spoke no English? The discord lessened with her mother’s rapid death, her father softening, fading, sitting each day in an old, browned recliner watching pastors and football and drinking beer from a can. I thought once to ask him if he knew his eldest daughter. Do I know my own children? Eyes and hair and chins given, accepted, but then differences. Distance. Their lives are not mine. I remind myself so.

We reach the library. I make for the reference section, the encyclopedias. Violet follows at a distance, curious but respectful.

“What are you looking for?” she asks eventually.

I shush her, continue my work. I have my big glasses out.

I am reading about the Armenians, the deportations. There are pictures, similar to the ones in the magazine. I find I must stay away from these, I must concentrate on the text. I am looking for dates, and I find them. The article states that the deportations began in 1915, continuing into 1917, and beyond.

I close the book. There—1915. I was not there. Almost a century has passed. Why must I dream this?

I read some more. I find another encyclopedia, another article that discusses this exodus and its circumstances. It explains that the Russians—Christians, like the Armenians—began driving Muslims from the Caucasus in the middle to late 1800s, and that Armenians living in the Caucasus took an active part in this forced relocation. The northern part of Anatolia became inundated with over one million Muslim refugees. When World War I commenced, the Turks in Anatolia feared a continuation of the Russian march into Turkey, aided by their allies, the Armenians.

I sit back, close my eyes. It is difficult to think of this, to concentrate so. But I continue my search, I find one more article. I must ask the person at the desk for help in using the card catalog—I am not familiar with libraries. Violet has wandered away but is back now, her head twisted as she pretends to read spines of books.

This article is longer, a small book, almost. The author’s name is Hollingsworth. It states that near the beginning of World War I, small Armenian bands attacked in Urfa, Bitlis, Musa Daği, Karan Hisan. They targeted the war effort—army recruiters, government buildings. The Turkish authorities were concerned about insurrection, one that, given the size of the Armenian population, could spread throughout Anatolia. So the deportations commenced. The official Ottoman order spelled out compassion for the deportees, instructions for selling property, caring for health and sanitation. Still, by some estimates almost one million perished. The Turkish government eventually charged hundreds for crimes committed against Armenians. Talat Paşa, Enver, Cemal—all were found guilty, and sentenced to death.

“Papa. What is this all about?”

We are back in the Explorer now, the wind in my face. I stare out the window at a boy on a bicycle.

“I am trying to understand,” I say slowly. “These dreams have triggered things, things that are not memories, but because I have so few memories of this time, they confuse me.” I pause.

“And what is it you are looking for?”

I hesitate. “There was a deportation, of Armenian people from Turkey. During the war. I was not there, but for some reason I keep dreaming of it.”

“Do you think it’s a past life?”

“How can it be a past life if it occurs during my own?”

She ponders this. “I don’t know.”

Another thought comes to me, one that has lurked, unexamined. A cross-check. The only tangible link to my childhood.

A man visited me once, while Carol was still alive. In 1974, maybe 1975. His name was Recep Gencay. He claimed to be from my village, in Turkey, to have known me as a child. I do not know how he found me, or why, but he is the only person to claim connection with this life from before.

Recep knew a number of things, including things about my parents, my brother, even our dog. He remembered children I remembered, the streets, the places we would go. But it was an odd and uncomfortable meeting, for I could recall only a few of the things he did. I had no recollection of him, for example. I tried to explain this, that digging back to before was like trying to go back in the womb, that the bed on which I was birthed was in London, not Anatolia. He did not understand. He seemed agitated and regretful, continually asking my pardon. I thought of him for a time as a spirit. I had no wish to see him again. But now . . . He had mentioned Burak specifically. I dig my nails in my palms.

I turn to Violet. “Do you remember the man who came to see me once, who claimed to be from my hometown?”

She shakes her head.

“I think he lived in Jacksonville.” Yes, that was it. Jacksonville. “Perhaps we should go there.”

“Go . . . to Jacksonville?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

I scratch my head. “Perhaps tomorrow.”

 

 

 

Araxie is gone.
I am alone, except for my horse. I grab my rifle, feel around in the dark. Gone. I peer into the hallway, listen to the snores and stirrings from the curtained-off areas, sniff of the stale, cool air. I creep down to the bath, thinking she might have decided at last to bathe, but the area is dark and silent. The kitchen, the small, dank area where we take our meals, the small vestibule at the entrance, and the corridor are all empty, devoid of any movement.

I slip out into the silky dawn, stifling the need to urinate. If she ran, where would she go? I consider the possibility of abduction but quickly dismiss it. I would have heard any scuffle, and the bulk of the other boarders were so dirty and violent-looking I cannot imagine she would go with someone else on her own.

It seems more likely she has decided to flee, to where, I know not. We have been in Katma for four days, holed up in our room, our
oda
, waiting for word of our movement. Our ultimate destination has never been clear, only the “border,” the limits of Turkish-speaking Anatolia. Now rumors abound. Some caravans are apparently pushing on to the Syrian city of Aleppo, several days’ journey southeast, others are supposedly being diverted into the desert, for extermination. The ranks of corralled deportees have grown since we arrived, the conditions of the holding area we call the “pit” progressing from squalid to intolerable. Hundreds die each day, the dead hauled out each morning to new burial dumps dug hastily beside ones filled the day before. The ground in the pit has become that of an animal pen, filled with clumps of human excrement, its stench overpowering even at a distance. Military officials fear the onset of disease, less out of concern for the deportees than for the possibility that it might spread to the troops or the town’s general population. Deportees with the strength or valuables left to do so hire carts or make out for Aleppo on their own. The rest wait in misery.