Tibetan Cross

by Mike Bond

  A roar, boulders bonking down as a dog cleared the brush and tilted head-down above him, gnashing, panting, slavering. “Come here, boy. Don't growl – they'll hear you. Let me up!” Up this hill, dog roaring, going for his throat, knocking him back; he slid to the edge, dog at his face, legs off the cliff he sprung backward, outward, spinning, down through rushing cold blackness toward the boulders below, crashed into choking sea and with its shock, and swam hard and steadily outward and west, the waves against the cliff a white line to his left.

  So good, the sea. So fresh, clean, cold. Swim forever. Live.

  The shoulder began to dislocate and he swam slower, tucking it in, but the waves then swamped him, dragging him shoreward. Go with them, he told himself, but closer were rocks and waves thundering like falling houses and he paddled westward till the waves were softer and brought him into a stony bay, where he drifted to the shallows and watched the hills, waves rippling coolly over his shoulders.

  Lights – on the cliff where I jumped. He clambered to his feet and ran west, from the lights, through the shallows.

  An hour later he flopped into the tidal pool of a mountain stream, gulping its sharp half-salty water, stood, took a breath, and began climbing its steep cataract, keeping feet and hands in the water. After a quarter mile it near-leveled through a valley lush with grass and flower smells, the moon bright above him. He slumped to the earth. Ten minutes, then run.

  HE WOKE SUDDENLY – crunching earth, something sliding past a branch and waiting. This fist-sized boulder. Heavy in my hand. Kill.

  It halted, neared, pinging a twig. So stealthy. Dog? Gently he stood, aimed the boulder. Die with me. Further uphill, pebbles rattled, thunked to a stop. Others.

  Against the first carmine edge of day a blunt shadow inching closer. In his ears the stream's dulcet trill. Far laugh of a gull – early morning. Boom of the sea. Die with me.

  Diktam odors on the dewy air. Dawn breeze from the east. I do not regret. The shadow slipped closer; he hurled the boulder, hearing it smash as he spun and rolled from the bullets that did not come.

  Feet pounding in all directions, branches crackling. Downhill a sheep bleated. Another answered from above, a third. Gravel crunched; sheep outlines cut the red horizon as they quick-stepped past. His lip hurt. He relaxed his bite on it, tasted blood.

  He wormed through the damp scrub to where a lamb lay, one rear leg quivering. His fingers found the gelatinous bubbly mess where his boulder had crushed its skull. Ten feet away the sideways outline of a ewe. Everything I do is evil.

  The east was red and lavender, then orange, then yellow, then white. He moved westward through the thickets until above him rose the ridge before Sitea, the road a pale suture across its dawn scrub. He crawled to the ridgetop and looked over.

  Sitea crouched against the sea's frontier, its houses bunched like bones on a riverbank. Yellow scrub flowers glittered like daytime fireflies in the sun, warming his chest and face; sage, mint, cardamom, and diktam odors swam round him in the breeze. A truck backfired on the steep road down to the far side of town. At the edge of town a boy with a pitcher of milk stopped to pee on a wall. A shopkeeper was sweeping his sidewalk. A ship's officer in a blue sweater and black peaked cap walked purposefully out the dock toward a lighter nodding on the swell. Further out in the misty bay a tacky freighter slouched at anchor. I'm still alive, Paul.

  Seventeen more days now.

  A dusty white Mercedes slid down the mountain into town. A tall man in a red beret stepped from it and tugged at the telegraph office door. It was locked; he checked his watch and glanced up the mountain. He crossed suddenly from view to the closer side of the street. Cohen wormed tighter into the brush.

  The man in the red beret reappeared, bending to speak with an ancient woman in black. He kissed her on both cheeks, went into a shop, and came out with a paper bag. The persian shutters of the telegraph office rolled up and the man entered, tugging a letter from his pocket. He emerged and drove away.

  A bell sounded eight; somewhere a goat was complaining. The white Mercedes came back down the mountain. It was cleaner and Cohen saw it was not the same. It halted behind a red Datsun pickup parked under plane trees in the town square. Three men left the pickup and leaned into the Mercedes’ passenger window. A huge bald man in a brown suit got out to speak with them, four others remaining in the Mercedes.

  The freighter's whistle echoed over the bay. The fat man gripped the shoulder of one of his companions, with his other hand shielding his eyes as he scanned Cohen's ridge. Checking their watches, the men returned to the Datsun. Four dogs, three black-and-tan, one all black, stood up quickly in its rear, tails flicking. The men drove the Datsun east, out of town. The fat man crossed the square and entered a squat building with a blue police sign over the door.

  The Datsun stopped on the ridge road a mile above Sitea, glinting red in the early sun. Cohen trotted down the ridge away from the town and sight of the truck, and followed a gully down to the sea.

  From the sea edge the freighter was nearly obscured by a gauzy mist glued to the bay. He limped rapidly eastward along the waterline and around a stony headland.

  The freighter lay opposite the headland, severed from the water by the mist. Waves rolled past, refulgent at their tips, green and murky in their troughs. He took off his shoes and tied them round his neck, buttoned his glasses and wallet into his shirt pockets. Salt seared his knee as he waded into the water and struck out northwest, left of the freighter, the steep frigid waves slapping down his throat with each breath. The freighter kept its distance as currents forced him back to shore.

  He swam north, directly into the waves. Almost imperceptibly the land slid past, a bent pine on the western horizon inching southward against a distant cloud. He glanced up to check position, inhaled cold salty water. He had moved east again, away from the ship. His feet touched the beach below the headland.

  In the shallows he caught his wind, then set off northward, shoulder aching, lungs burning with briny water and oxygen thirst. Each time he tried to rest the waves yanked him down or rolled him shoreward. He floated gasping on his back, gray sky spinning, white crests in his face. When he turned to swim the shoulder slipped out; he dogpaddled one-handed, dragging the arm. Waves drove up his nose and down his throat; in all directions they blocked the horizon.

  He dove beneath them, frog kicking, rising for breath every stroke. The mist shifted like a veil, the freighter vanishing and reappearing. The current pushed him northward out to sea, the freighter sliding away, the land with her.

  11

  IN THE HOLLOW of a wave he twisted the arm again into its socket and pounded savagely against the current until the ship's starboard, seaward side grew tall above him. On her stern canted slightly toward him he could read part of her name, chalky against rust: “AZEMSKI,” and “nbul.” A wave took him away; he fought toward the bow and its anchor chain frothing the sea.

  A man moved along the starboard rail, lingering aft where the rail was broken and linked with rope. The current coiling round the bow began to push Cohen sternward; he grasped the stern anchor chain. It was greasy, pitted with rust, unbelievably cold.

  Metal clanged distantly from the port side, voices called. He dove, the water overhead an opaque green as if below ice. He climbed hand over hand up the starboard anchor chain. His hands grew numb; he squeezed the chain between his thighs, willing himself upward. When he was ten feet below the rail a voice called from the bridge, another answering from the stern above him. He hugged the chain, not daring to drop back into the sea.

  The freighter's screws were turning to a deep hum in her hull and a roil of dirty bubbles at her keel. He reached eye level with the deck, the rope rail swaying above him in the wind. The deck shuddered as the anchor chain lurched upward. Feet echoed toward him. He grabbed the deck rim, feet slipping from the chain as it ground past him. Hand over hand he retreated behind the upraised lip of the stern. Two voices argued above him in Arabic and Greek. With
a swoosh the anchor broke the surface, grated upward, and clanged against the side. The winch screamed and halted. The voices diminished, still yammering.

  He waited until he could wait no longer, then waited more. The sea swayed trancelike, licking the stern, urging him to look down. He mustered every trick he could remember to avoid it and the agony in his shoulder, to ignore the frozen finger ache and relentless shiver that threatened to shrug him off the rust-flaked lip of the stern.

  The town, under its green and granite mountain walls, boats bobbing like gulls before it, was sliding behind him. Figures stood on the dock. One, bulky and tall, pointed toward the freighter. Cohen swung along the starboard edge, chest scraping white rust from the letters of her name, lunged over the side and darted to the cover of the stern crane.

  Portside, aft of the bridge, hung a canvas-shrouded lifeboat, the words “PETR VYAZEMSKI” and “Istanbul,” on its stern. Yanking loose two stays on its outboard rail, he squeezed beneath the canvas into its musty warmth.

  THROUGH A GAP in the canvas the leopard sprang; he fell tripping through vines into quicksand. The leopard leered down, a grinning lemur's face. Mire choked him, the leopard snaking after him; he woke banging his head on a thwart in the blistering blanched light of the lifeboat.

  The sun's yellow orb bore through the tarpaulin like an ingot; the airless space stank of lead paint and stale canvas. He pulled the water jug from under the gunnel and drank half its rusty contents, and slept.

  IT WAS DARK. He sat up shivering. His knee throbbed. A running sea smacked the hull; the diesels hummed distantly and surely. He raised the outboard lip of the canvas. Heading west. After tonight, it's sixteen more days, Paul. Closer all the time. But where the Hell am I going? An indistinct white edge at eye level denoted, he decided, the remote attack of the sea on the headlands of Crete. Mountains loomed against the shattered starlight. To the west, a faint mass of light waited in the ship's course. Heraklion? After perhaps an hour he chanced another look. Beyond the bow the lights of a city poured down hillsides, white tracers of auto lights nipping in and out.

  Will the ones who hunted me in Sitea be waiting here? The fat one in the Mercedes? Maybe he was a nobody. Whose voice did I hear, last night, giving orders – “I want him now!”

  Maybe Claire and the CIA are still wandering the bush. Thinking I fell off that cliff and drowned. No – the guys in the Datsun were looking for me this morning.

  The diesels accelerated into higher pitch, then slowed. The ship began to rock, swaying the lifeboat. The city lights drew closer, clarifying flotsam and oil streaks on the black roll of the waves.

  Heraklion's stone jetty curved out to them, its spine lit by vertebrae of humpbacked, pallid lamps. The ship docked under the gleaming waists of larger freighters. She rang with voices and movement, quieted. Can I go? Where? Not safe to move, not safe to stay. The engines stilled. Waves fussed steadily at the hull. A chill vapor sank through the canvas. He huddled his shirt about him.

  Like a cat, he thought, how she arched her body under my hands, the purr in her throat as orgasm drew her inward then out in shuddering gasps. She and Stihl and the monkey man killed Alex. And I'll kill her. He changed position, bitten by cold.

  MORNING rose with a steely mist and the odors of coffee and smoke. Trucks banged on the quays. Cranes boomed and whistled; from all sides came the clatter of feet on steel and voices of command. Heavy, large things were being unloaded from the rear hold; the men were nervous and yelled frequently. He rubbed himself steadily to warm up. Take me away, ship, far away – I'm free; no one looked for me; they thought I drowned! Now they think I'm dead, they'll stop looking for me. I'm free!

  Soon the sun once more burned whitely through the canvas, the lifeboat again a sweat bath. Then Heraklion was behind them, the fresh sea breeze nipping through a crack he had opened beneath the canvas. Gulls overhead cried out the course. The engines chugged regularly; waves swished under the bow. It was impossible not to think of food.

  DAY'S HEAT BECAME evening's chill, then night's frigidity. Unable to sleep from pain, cold, and hunger, he recalled each of the best meals he had ever eaten, evoking the nuances of each dish. He tried to count all the women he had ever slept with, beginning with the first ticklish nervous high schoolers, tried to remember each one's name, the look and texture of her body, her face within the grip of wanting.

  His body hardened, the flow of blood warming him. He felt sad at all the lives he had touched, each woman in the act of love, many now nameless to him, so many now forgotten, when each had been so precious, had he known. And it was sad to think that many would not remember him either, that he no longer existed for them, or only as a casual, unvalued fragment. Yet in coming, loving each other's nakedness, in the moments when the barriers to awareness had fallen, how close they had been, to each other and to something far beyond, then almost palpable and now beyond reach.

  The cold seeped back. The knee had brought on a quaking fever. Where am I going? His hunger and shivering grew stronger. What day? How many till Easter? Is it sixteen? Fifteen?

  He slept, shaking, awoke. Darkness. He slept again, woke in darkness. Feet pounded the deck. Voices. The lifeboat shook. Ropes slackened; a flashlight danced over the canvas. Its beam crashed in on him. A shout. He sat up, transfixed by the light. Strong hands grasped his wrists, dragged him over the gunnel and held him fast against the lifeboat's side. An unshaven face snarled at him out of the blinding light. Spit sprinkled his face, a finger jabbed his chest.

  They yanked him forward to a companionway. The captain in the blue sweater and black peaked cap came up the passage, sleepily rubbing the back of his neck. He barked at the crew. “I tell them,” he yelled, “to throw you over.”

  “That seems excessive.”

  “You a pain in the ass.”

  “I'm sorry. I mean no harm.”

  “You plenty time no harm now.” The captain's scar was white. “In Algiers jail.”

  “Please let me work. I need to go to Africa…see a girl.”

  “I make you work first, then throw over.”

  “I can't swim that far.”

  “Why you pick my boat?” The captain was unshaven, with glaring, pitted eyes under thick, ridged brows, a narrow prow of a face, teeth bending sharply inward. “How you get my boat?”

  “Swam.” Cohen used the word with reluctance. “Climbed the anchor chain.”

  The captain rubbed his face, glanced at his watch. “For damn hippie I get up two a.m.” He muttered at the two sailors holding Cohen. They led him along the passageway, down two flights of stairs, past the galley, its food odors screaming at him. He stopped them, pointed at his mouth. They jerked him forward.

  At the end of this passageway a closet. He saw pails and mops, a sink, and boxes of plastic jugs, before they pushed him in and slammed the door. A bolt slid home.

  The air was warm and fetid. He pushed aside a bucket and sat. Steps approached; the bolt slid back. One of the sailors handed him a cup of Turkish coffee and black bread smeared with grease. The door shut.

  Coffee spilt stinging his fingers. He devoured the bread, swallowed the remains of the coffee and licked out the grounds, felt his way to the metal sink and drank. It was warm, stinking of bilges.

  In the morning other sailors took him to the captain, who sat smoking, coffee by his elbow, at a table in the mess.

  “How you like you cabin?”

  “Better than the lifeboat.”

  The captain stubbed out his cigarette. “What we do with you?”

  “Let me work.”

  “You got money?”

  “Twenty dollars, maybe.”

  “You be in jail long time, with only twenty dollar.” The captain relit his cigarette, puffed hard.

  “You go to Algiers?”

  “What that matter you?”

  “I'd like to go there, too. Where are you from?”

  “She is of Istanbul, this ship.”

  “You are Turkish?”
r />   “They.” The captain waved his hand at the two sailors still watching from the passageway.

  “Petr Vyazemski, that's not a Turkish name –”

  “Does it matter…” the captain grinned, sucking in his lips, “…to you, in Algiers jail?”

  “Is it your name?”

  “You are dumb. You think we not read Shakespeare, Byron, Hemminghvay?” He puffed smoke.

  “He is a writer?”

  “Ah, the ignorance of world make me weep! A king of poets he was. You like Pushkin? He's nothing. You think Yevtushenko is poet? It's a laugh.”

  Cohen inhaled the freighter's carious odor. It was as if all the rats of Alexandria had gone to sea in her. Tan paint curled down in broken blisters from the ceiling. “I have read others,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail…”

  “Communists. Kept poets.”

  “Nabokov.”

  “He terrible. He too leave Russia.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  Again the indrawn, acerbic grin. “For my health.” The captain drained his cup, slapped it down on the table. “What I do with you?”

  “I'll do whatever you need, clean, polish…”

  “You would polish this old whore?” The captain stood and slammed his chair against the table, hollered into the galley. “This Dmitri,” he said to Cohen. “He give you food. Then you go bridge. Look for me, Andrev. I tell you work.”

  “Can you tell me first what day it is?”

  “Day?” A rapid explosion of Cyrillic sounds at Dmitri.

  “Subbota! He say Saturday. So! You work good, go Algiers. No work good, go Algiers jail. Capeesh?”

  “Capeesh.”

  Rotund, hairy, blue-tattooed Dmitri served him a large platter of rice with small lamb chunks, black bread, and Turkish coffee. Saturday. Two weeks and a day. When the food was gone Dmitri motioned for his plate and refilled it.