“That will be all.”
He twists his fingers deep in his beard. The noise around us eases. Heads turn, onlookers retreat. For a while no one moves or says anything. Even the older women quiet. Then he turns and stomps away.
I look at the girl. “Come with me.” I motion away from the crowd.
She proceeds. The moon has risen, a quarter globe eaten by darkness. I keep her in front of me, directing her away from the camp with prods of my rifle, down a small ravine and onto a sandy streambed. We march up it some distance, past rocks that take the shape of silent workers—here a gravedigger, there a basket weaver—past a small hill, until no sound from the camp can be heard. The stream sparkles, broadening in spots to a full stride in width, narrowing in others to no more than a trickle. I wonder if she is thirsty. The deportees are permitted water only after the gendarmes, and then sometimes for a price. Often the wells have been polluted by previous encampments. Corpses have been discovered in several. Even the gendarmes sometimes go without.
“Do you want to drink?”
She turns. The cap has been lost now, her hair falling free down her face. She holds my gaze for some time, perhaps not understanding. Then she sinks to her knees and cups her hands, pushing hair behind her ears to sip.
I stare at her, at the lean, stretching figure, the buttocks lifted high in the air. The water splashes and patters, insects motor and hum, a bird calls from somewhere, but all function outside me as if I do not exist, as if I’ve become paralyzed, encased in a moment to be remembered forever. Some part of me thinks to join her in drinking, but I remain motionless. I wait. She rises, a single, supple movement, brushing hair from her face, wiping her mouth on her forearm. I place my gun on the ground. I will later recall excruciating desire, broad thirst, and certainty. I will remember the feel of the breeze, the position of the moon, the smell of the damp earth. I step toward her.
A painful erectness brings me halfway awake. I twist, the dream slipping from me. Things outside—the great breathing air conditioner, a distant truck’s groan—interfere, interrupt. Recognition follows. A clock spins, five a.m. All is dark.
A snoring comes from the other room. Violet? I remember, the home health person. Ted. Violet is to be here at six. I struggle up from the bed.
I am shaken, pulled by the dream. Why must I dream this? I was a soldier, not a gendarme. I scan my memory, coaxing, summoning forth some recollection . . . but there is nothing. No girl. No dusty trek.
I shower. Violet arrives; I am pleased at her attentiveness. We say good-bye to sleepy-eyed Ted and make our way to the hospital. So soon, this procedure! Radiosurgery, beams of focused radiation more precise than a surgeon’s knife—I make no claim to understand it. I am a quiet patient. Dr. Wan said the procedure will last several hours, that a preparation is first required, a frame attached. I wonder again why we bother.
An electric door whooshes. I am maneuvered, catalogued. A man tilts his head and its raccoon’s-tail hairpiece, steering me down floors shined to slick, sparkling brightness. Others march past, sneaker-clad, holding clipboards. A redheaded man pushes an overflowing cart. All nod. I say hello. I recognize Faye Blanton, whose husband, Bill, is in the Rotary Club. I see Terry Crabtree, Carol’s friend. A smiling man reminds me of the gendarme Izzet. I scan patients in a holding area, focusing on ear shapes ranging from rounded to crimped, elongated to flattened, corrugated to bearded to tilted to protruding. Would I know Burak’s if I saw it? Wilfred’s? I finger my own ear, its thick knobs and hackles.
We wait. I flip through one of the magazines arranged for those waiting, an old news periodical. I have little interest. But it is there that I see it as I turn the last pages, a photo of dark-eyed women and children standing on a dirt roadway, their faces solemn and gray.
I flinch. Air exits my lungs. I recognize these people. In the dream I am driving them to Katma.
I push the magazine from me, then scratch at it, reexamine. I grasp and grab at my chair.
“Papa!”
I breathe, and things still. The article below the picture describes an anniversary, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Armenian genocide. But it is the picture that holds me. My hands shake and flutter.
“What is it?” Violet cocks her head.
My hands tremble still. My heart is beating, beating. “It is nothing,” I say, but my mind is adrift. The dreams, this . . . I know about the Armenians, of course. There were a number in Mezre, the village in which I grew up. They were neighbors, traders, artisans, bakers. Some fought in the war. There was a resistance, of sorts, an alliance with Russia, our enemy. Many had left the country, or been forced to leave. They were different, but I had no quarrels with them. How then to explain this, this recognition? These dreams?
My name is called, the wheelchair spun. We enter a room with yellowish wallpaper. A nurse shaves my scalp, the sound odd and distant like a scratch against cardboard. The metal frame to be affixed to my skull is presented, measured, held aloft, taken away. A technician appears and delivers a shot. Then everything blurs: swarming figures in white, unidentifiable background music, words spoken but not understood, Violet’s pink lips. People stand as in the magazine’s picture, unsmiling, downcast. I feel the onset of coldness, the brush of fierce wind. Then darkness, like the drawing of a curtain at the end of a play.
The girl speaks to me. We are back at the stream, the moonlight drawing outlines, of lips, hair, eyelashes, shoulders. I am aware, at some level, of confusion, of not expecting to be here, of the sense of a movie interrupted then resumed. I even know, somehow, that a procedure is under way, a mass in my skull is held in mid-eradication. But still I am here, at this stream in the hills with a girl I have pulled away, my desire as pressing as if it never left. Dryness thickens my mouth.
“I have been here before.”
The words slow my approach. Did I know she spoke my language? Some of the deportees do, though usually in a languid, marble-mouthed accent.
“I used to travel often with my father. He . . . is a spice merchant. We have visited Adana, Smyrna, even Baghdad.”
I have been to none of these places. My father was a knife maker.
“Have you seen the ziggurats? The best is on the road to Baghdad. The hill behind us reminds me of one, overgrown now and forgotten.” She turns to examine the small rise, barely visible in the background.
I examine her from behind, the dark, thick hair, the narrow hips tapering up to their zenith. The dark skin. How can she prattle on, knowing the fate that awaits her? She is stalling, she must be, for she would have seen too much on this trek not to recognize the reason for her culling. The memory of her red, wild eyes comes back to me, the disdain I feel for her race. They are all so superior, these Armenians, so prone to condescension, boastful of their education, miserly and clannish, worshipping their God in their little round churches. Better than us—I heard one now-dead deportee proclaim the empire’s demise without Armenian bankers, lawyers, merchants, and traders. Yet if the Armenians are so smart and the Turks so stupid, how have we arrived at the current situation? Power will dictate, just as in nature, just as in battle. Just as it will tonight.
“What did you say?”
She turns back to me. “A ziggurat. They were temples of a sort, used in the ancient sects, before Christ or Muhammad, before anything. They were meant to be houses of religion, where the gods could be close to mankind.”
I pause, digesting this information, poised between violence and something I cannot identify, curiosity perhaps, even tenderness.
“Shall we climb to the top of the hill?” she asks. Her mouth flattens, the beginnings of a smile. “Bring ourselves closer to God?”
She is off before I can answer, moving laterally, then climbing. I grab my gun and follow. She moves swiftly, at times too swiftly for me to keep pace, such that at one point I conclude she is attempting to elude me, and call out for her to stop. If she hears me she does not show it, but appears moments later, hands on hips, one
leg in front of the other, waiting with the air of a governess slowed by a child. She gives such an appearance of innocence, of a girl playing hide-and-seek, that I reconsider my appraisal. I envision the shock she will experience when we reach the top, the change in her demeanor at the onset of adult pursuits. I find the thought invigorating, my efforts redoubling. I see myself from above, a predator fixed on its prey. Gasps follow my exertion, the taste of salt in my mouth, the tantalizing scent of conquest sifting up through my nostrils. I hear myself snorting, feel the tightening in my groin. I reach the hill’s crest, and slow.
I cannot find her. I start to shout, then stop, probing instead among the bushes and trees adorning the small plateau. All is silent, even the birds. A knob of larger trees stands in the middle, cathedral-like, branches lifted skyward; I make for this, leading with my rifle, suddenly aware of the possibility of entrapment, of a confederate secreted in murderous ambush. But then laughter echoes, a stirring of leaves, and she appears from behind a tree as if disgorged from its center. I stop. I point the gun at her. Her smile slowly withdraws.
“Take off your clothes.”
She stands motionless. Then slowly, ever so slowly, she shakes her head.
I step forward, the gun bobbing in front of me.
“I will shoot you.”
She shakes her head again.
I edge closer still, to a point at which the rifle is only a short distance from her chest, to where she could reach and touch its smooth barrel.
“Now.” My breathing has shortened.
She does not move.
With one hand I catch hold of her blouse, ripping it down the front in a screeching surrender of fabric. The movement brings me closer to her, the rifle briefly to her side, such that if she wanted she could grab my gun hand and wrestle for the weapon, but she does not. The force of the assault does not pull her toward me. Perhaps she has anticipated the attack and steeled herself against it. She remains still, her arms at her sides, the tattered cloth sliding off her slim torso to heap on the ground below.
The moonlight falls onto her bare shoulders, thin and undeveloped like a boy’s, her small breasts with their dark, chocolate-like nipples. The oversized pants seem clownish now. The mismatched eyes shine clearly. From one angle she appears dark and sensuous, from the other cool and aloof. I find it amazing, this effect of looking at two different people. I place the rifle on the ground. I loosen my shirt, pull it over my head, searching her face for the tiniest guilty hunger, but there is nothing, no trembling lip, no piteous pleading. Just those eyes, dissecting, analyzing, as if she has seen all this before. Perhaps she has.
I unbuckle my belt. My pants drop to the ground. I bend and kiss her, my hands on her shoulders, my tongue thrust deep in her mouth. She does not reciprocate, but neither does she clamp her mouth shut or resist. Her eyes remain open, her body taut but not rigid.
I force her into a crouch, then to a prone position on the ground. I reach my fingers under her pants and pull them from her legs, careful for some reason not to rip these, exposing her lower body to the night. I stare at her for a moment, at the smooth skin and long legs, then return my face to hers.
Her mouth has shifted position. Her thin lips move. “Why?” she asks.
I hesitate. Why what? Why this act of congress, handed down from Allah himself? Why the deportation? Why her? Why me? I feel my desire starting to wither, my hesitation forming a course. I grab her breast to right myself, place my mouth back on hers, my other hand between her legs, but all to no appreciable effect. She continues to stare, the eyes now unnerving, as if they have somehow brought this on, have visualized this, have known that this word at this time would trigger this reaction. I grab her hand and direct it to my groin, a final, unsuccessful effort at resurrection. Then I roll off her, shaking, an emasculated fury building within me.
She remains prone. The mismatched eyes, so beguiling before, now gleam with bewitchment and evil, the leer of a venomous changeling. Her mouth is closed. I kick the ground with my boot.
I know then I will have to kill her, that should this episode spread through the caravan it will undermine my authority, perhaps endanger my life. I rise to my knees. Wrapping my hands around her neck, the tremble of her breath runs up through my fingers. She does not move. I press down, into tissue and cartilage. I close my eyes against the mesmerizing gaze. A series of convulsions erupt beneath me, a single, choking gasp, the sound reverberating longer than it should, louder, her voice in it, the voice that only minutes before had asked if I’d seen the ziggurats.
I hesitate. I ease my grip. Then, shaking, I release her, my hands falling free to my sides.
Her eyes widen, tears at their corners, her lungs refilling in small, quivering pants. She makes no other sound. An ember of anger springs up from my chest, a need to rectify, to address the amplifying humiliation I know will rise and suffocate me. I lift my arms back toward her. Her eyes follow the motion. She does not brace against it, or flinch, or tremble, or whimper. It occurs to me suddenly that she wants this somehow, that she knows this will happen, that she is fully and humbly prepared to die. At this place, on this hilltop, closer to the gods.
I pause again. My arms return to my sides. I lower my head to her neck, to where the rhythm of her pulse buzzes up through my nostrils.
4
It takes time to focus, to recognize the suite at the oncology center, to pinpoint the music humming somewhere, the people bumping about. I am in the middle of a room yet no one seems to see me. My skin is cold. Could it be I am dead now, a corpse justly ignored? But then a nurse appears above me and asks a soft question. I lift my head.
“What happened?” I ask.
The nurse looks like Violet. She squeezes my hand. “Nothing, yet. The frame was put on, and the imaging—don’t you remember? We have to get the automatic positioning set.”
Pressure tugs at the corners of my head, coupled with a general numbness and brief, grating pain. A vague recollection sweeps over, of needles and screws, of Dr. Wan yanking my head like a bridle. I stare at a video camera up on a wall, thinking of the camera we once had. A Bell and Howell. We could not afford it. I wanted the girls to have memories, though, to see themselves. I wanted them to be happy.
The grogginess from before beckons. “Is it okay if I sleep?”
“Sure.”
I drift toward slumber. Time passes. It is night—no, a gray dawn. I am under a house, planting pipe. It is cold, the soil damp. I blow on my hands. But then I fall back to the dream, the dream that continues; the long, dusty trek. I see her eyes and their burning. I hear her gasping for air. Darkness rushes but my arms are pinned back like a fly with pinched wings. I twist, I elevate my head and its tottering frame. My voice catches.
“What is your name?” I ask.
I drape my shirt over, to cover her. To amend.
She answers in slowness, in syllables. “A-ra-xie.”
She looks away, the starlight brightening her light eye.
I stare, and wonder.
We return to the caravan, she and I. She wears my shirt. We do not speak, or if we do it fails to register. I speak her name in my mind. We part as we reach the first tents, their flaps smoky in the gray dawn. I have no explanation, no plan for addressing the situation I have created. I give her a small blanket, to wrap her bruised neck.
No one sees us approach. The forward guard, Ali, sleeps with his head to one side, his mouth open to the cool morning air. The rear guard, Izzet, paces the caravan’s other side, barely visible in the dim light. Little else moves within the clumps of cloth and dust, only the rustle of a body turning over, a baby’s whimpering. A wolf growls in the distance. We rarely see wolves but often hear them, their feasting evident in the litter of other caravans. Another growls and the two join together. Still, it is surprisingly quiet. Araxie picks her way through the rubble, as nimble and slight as a ghost. She moves quickly, silently, the folds of my shirt lengthening her arms as she walks. Then she is gone, the sun u
p, the demands of the day back upon me.
The camp stirs to action, prodded by the guards. It is a ritual all have grown accustomed to, this shouting of the gendarmes, the groaning of the deportees, the wailing over deaths that have occurred in the night. Regulated trips to a nearby well follow, the shuffling use of a stinking latrine, the search for swallowed coins now embedded in feces. The gendarmes have begun to demand payment for services, for protection from raiding Kurds or villagers, for permission to access wells. The deportees protest but pay. Most have secreted valuables within the folds of blankets or tents or their own bodies. Usually there is a village to trade with, providing yogurt, milk, and meat for the guards, leftover scraps for the deportees. One day grows into the next, a stirring of dust and rock, sun and air. We seem to plod in an endless circle, our pathway littered with the debris of those traveling before us, the bloated, blackening bodies, the discarded tents and baggage. Heat and boredom make the guards’ tempers short. Disagreements end violently.
On average we leave five or six bodies behind each morning. Occasionally someone still alive will refuse to go on. Several days earlier a pregnant woman declined to continue, sitting and not moving, ignoring the pleas of her family. She was left behind in the middle of the road, her skirts gathered around her, eyes closed, belly exposed to the sky. When her small form had vanished behind us, one of the guards rode back. A gunshot followed. The sound sent a tremor through the deportees, an enlarged breath of despondence, such that I eyed the group for signs of trouble, but nothing transpired. It is too bad about the woman, the circumstance, the entire situation. But she is probably better off.
I hear from time to time the whispers of our inhumanity. Even the Germans, our allies, condemn the deportations—I heard one of their engineers say as much before we left from Harput. But what would they have us do? The Armenians are our enemies, allies of the Russians, who have attacked us. They rebelled in Van, attacking a military garrison and declaring independence. A book distributed by the government details anarchist publications and depots of arms and munitions. The fact that we are allowing these groups to leave the country seems more than fair. Would they have done the same for us? The Turkish people are united. Turkey is for Turks. The mixture of different peoples will lead only to strife, like a dog with two masters. Better to eliminate the issue now, avoid the inevitable subversion. Though I have played with Armenian children, worn shoes stitched by an Armenian cobbler, even been treated once by an Armenian doctor, I do not trust their race or kind. They are devious, all of them, sneaky and cunning, as prone to knife or swindle or trick you as not. Painful as it might be, separation is best for them, for us, for all concerned. And in wartime, people, even innocent people, will die.
The Gendarme Page 4