The Gendarme

by Mark T. Mustian

  My money dissipated, drained by the larcenous landlady and the thieving villagers at the bazaar. Only the day before, I had decided we must move out, take shelter in the tent and blankets I had expropriated from a deceased deportee, wait out the orders on the fringe of the dirty town. I spent the last of my gurûş on an overpriced haircut. I swung by the command center as I always did, expecting no movement and backpedaling when it came. We were to depart for Aleppo the next day. I did not report this to Araxie, preferring to show her by action how I had made something happen. Perhaps she had sensed it anyway, as this morning when we are to leave, she is gone.

  I squint into the morning mist, listening to the creak of wagons and oxen, the snap of the herders’ switches, the clang of merchants setting up for the day. The wind shifts, bringing with it a foul plume, the distant stench of the pit. The wail of the muezzin rises, dipping and wavering, bending those standing like wheat blown by a wind. I bow, immersing myself in the rhythm of the prayers, the words repeated to a point past familiarity: “. . . In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful: Praise be to Allah, Creator of the worlds . . .” I scratch my head, fingering the shortness of my newly shorn locks.

  I stand when the prayers end, stretch, urinate against the side of the building. It is then that I see her. She sits astride the building’s roof, one leg hooked over its edge. Her hair glistens with water, as if she has just bathed, and she glances not at me but across the town, across the dust and cook fires and scabs of habitation. Her stillness makes her part of the building, an ornament affixed to its top. I am unsure how she has climbed there, or even how one accesses the building’s second story. I see no steps, no doors or ladder.

  “We are leaving,” she says, part question and statement, her gaze still directed out above the far rooftops.

  “Yes.”

  I wait for her to say more, but she does not.

  “What are you doing?” I ask finally. Given that she has spoken perhaps four words in four days, I hardly expect a response.

  She glances in my direction. “I had thought to kill myself,” she says calmly. She smiles, a sort of sad half-grimace I have not seen since the night at the hilltop. “But I cannot.” She twists a strand of hair in her fingers. “The will to live is strong. No matter the pain.”

  She looks older, thinner, a woman, not a girl. I imagine her scolding a young child, instructing a group of pupils, sweeping the floor of a stone house. So different from my own mother and her crouching presence, but in a way so similar—strong and measured, unafraid. I want to hold her, help her, climb up the side of the building and carry her, smother her, feed her, warm her, comfort her. I want to put my head against her chest and listen to the sound of her breathing. But I watch her instead, watch as she unwinds herself from her perch and slides along the edge of the building, as she drops down its opposite side, her legs dangling and twisting, her arms wide, then thin—a kelebek on a branch. A butterfly.

  I offer my hand in assistance, but she leaps the last few feet. Her hair is wet, her face newly scrubbed, the smell of soap stretched around her. She glances at me, without malice or affection or sorrow or anything, the light eye on me now, then the dark.

  I gesture toward the oda.

  She leads the way.

  Brainsetta drives us to Jacksonville. This is not her true name, of course, but the name by which others refer to her, though not to her face. Her given name is Josephine; she is married to Violet’s first cousin, Peter “Brains” Melville. A large, simple-faced woman, she has hair that looks like a wig but is not and breasts that angle forward like the prow of a battleship. She drives a huge Buick with a trunk big enough, she says, to “sleep six.” Violet has to work, Ted is not insured for driving, and I am not capable of such, so Josephine (having nothing else to do) has been drafted. She picks Ted and me up at eight.

  Josephine talks the way others breathe—without ceasing. She begins with a history of her dog Mule’s health issues, followed by her sister Lula’s fight with her boss. By the time we reach Monticello she is deep into a description of the unfounded sexual allegations against her uncle Silas, in which a pet pig plays an unclarified part. Ted asks pertinent questions and feigns great interest while I remain silent, thinking I may have to strangle Josephine or myself if this keeps up all the way to Jacksonville. But it continues. The horse that got loose and kicked in her back door. The illness she contracted by eating bad tacos. I stare out the window and pretend to fall asleep. Josephine moves on to baseball, cursing the Braves and the designated hitter, maintaining that the player Dale Murphy has “developed a fat ass.”

  Her husband, Brains, is himself a strange fellow, having earned his own nickname in legitimate fashion, falling off the roof at the apartments he maintained, ingesting women’s birth control pills as a poor man’s prophylactic device. I was once told that, due to his southern drawl, the people at his job thought for some time his name was Tater, and still referred to him so. His reputation is as a nice guy, the kind who would give you the shirt off his back. A stupid nice guy. Stupid enough to marry Josephine. Brainsetta.

  “Uncle Emmett, how’s your headache?”

  She motors on before I can answer. More monologue: an incident with a woman at the beauty parlor, a tame squirrel named Mud. But I am thinking of Carol, of how she came from this place, these people. Of how we came to connect. She had trained as a nurse. When the war started she was determined to be involved, even before the United States entered. This led her to London—the British needed nurses—and so to Fulham Military Hospital, second floor, head-injury ward. To the patient deprived of a past.

  My earliest memory of Carol is of her hair. She was blond, like the sun, a white angel. She spoke an angel’s strange tongue. She was kind to me when others were not. I was there for so long we grew to know each other well, even though we spoke different languages and I remembered so little. Again, perhaps simple pity waylaid her, perhaps my exoticness, my smooth, darker skin. I thought of it then as my destiny, as payment for pain and for service. Only later would I learn of my penance, as her limbs became thin and palsied, her voice stringy with need. She was forced to quit working before we left New York for Georgia. The sudden tremors, the rigidity, the long heartache that is Parkinson’s. Her medicines made things almost worse. I do not complain of this now—I have lived the life given. And yet I find it so strange. Seventy years together and she is a ghost to me now.

  Josephine has gone silent. We near Jacksonville, the car slowing in traffic. She shifts position, adjusting her seat belt. Her breasts reach almost to the steering wheel.

  “Now where are we going?”

  “To the Shady Rest Nursing Home.” It is Ted speaking. “I’ve got the address.” Ted has been most helpful in locating Recep. In the end he called every nursing home in Jacksonville until he found him.

  “Oh. Is this a relative?”

  “No.” I clear my throat. “He is someone I knew long ago.”

  “Where? Back in Eye-stan-bul?”

  I shake my head. I was never in Istanbul—Kostantiniyye. At least not that I remember.

  “From my childhood.” I fold my arms. I do not wish to go further.

  She presses on. “I thought you couldn’t remember anything from your childhood.”

  “I remember some things.”

  I remember snow, and muddy streets. I remember fire in a little hearth. I remember Burak, and a neighbor boy, Emre. But there is more, somewhere. Somewhere just past my reach.

  The dream plays back through me. The girl. I think of Burak. I want my dream to be his, to absolve myself. It must be! And yet I think I know it is not. I rub my face, focus again on my purpose here, on what to say to this person, Recep. I try to remember his appearance: a slender man, a small mustache. He has to be in his nineties as well. He is in a nursing facility. Perhaps his mind has gone, too.

  I exit the car and ask the others to wait. The building before me is low-slung and gray. Inside, a broad counter stands bef
ore a long vestibule, the first of many such gateposts. The floors are shiny-polished, stark, a feel of something once modern. Several residents in wheelchairs perch at odd angles, heads lolling, mouths open. An elderly-looking visitor dips and tugs with metal needles. The receptionist at the desk, a young man with long fingernails, looks up as I approach.

  “I am here to see Recep Gencay. I called yesterday.”

  The attendant grunts as if this is something new. I have no idea why Recep lives in Jacksonville, or what family he has. The man flicks his nails, shifts in a worn chair, reaches to punch an intercom button.

  “Bring Recep up front, please.”

  He motions across the lobby with a slender-fingered wave. “He’ll meet you in the visiting room. Over there.”

  I cross to the room indicated, circling a disheveled man who mutters “Johnny, Johnny” from behind a thick lip. The room is small and stale, with a hard-looking sofa and dirty chairs fronting an ancient TV. A shelf holds collapsed puzzles, a faded board game in a creased cardboard box. Shaded windows emit little light. I am reminded of why I hate these places, why I insisted Carol never be put in one. The floor near the window is stained with bloodlike orange spots. The place smells of urine and sweat, and disuse.

  An enormously tall nurse wheels in a gray figure. I stare at the man in the wheelchair, his face slackened with time, his hair matted like cobwebs. His skin bunches and pulls, tight on his cheeks but full at his neckline, like a doll twisted out of its shape. I recognize him from his visit—was it only twelve, fifteen years earlier? But nothing from times before.

  “I’m not sure he’s gonna know you,” the giantess nurse says. “He hasn’t said nothing this morning.” She shakes her head at Recep, as if scolding a child. “I told him you were coming.”

  Another man enters behind her, a younger man, dark-complected. He kisses Recep on the cheek, introduces himself as Recep’s nephew. I do not catch his name. Perhaps he is a great-nephew, for he looks very young. He shakes my hand. He speaks in Turkish, but I respond only in English. I tell him the language has changed so much that I am more comfortable in English. He smiles and is pleasant. He states that he has been in the United States only a few years. His English is accented. I feel less of an immigrant than he—this is pleasing.

  The nurse shifts behind Recep. “I’ll be out here at the nurses’ station if you need me.”

  “Thank you.”

  Recep stares vacantly, in the direction of the blank TV. There is silence, an awkwardness. I wish now that this nephew were not present. I smile, I tell him there are things I do not remember. He says we can be so forgetful.

  I knead my hands. “I keep dreaming that I was part of a trek,” I explain to Recep’s nephew. “In 1915—the Armenians. Do you know of this?”

  His neck twists as if I have slapped him. “Yes, of course,” he responds. He purses his lips. His eyes flutter. “It was during the war. It was a difficult thing.”

  I nod my head. “I have read articles. I am trying to know more, to understand this.”

  The nephew shifts his legs, his mouth open to reveal small, even teeth. “There is so much misinformation about this in the West,” he says suddenly. He leans forward, his hair falling into his eyes. He wipes his face with one hand. “There was a war. There were signs of subversion. The Turks had to react in some fashion, do something. Almost all countries under attack would have done the same, if not something worse. Would those that criticize now prefer a result like the Balkans—a patchwork of tiny countries, divided, always in conflict? I want to tell Americans to look first at themselves—at their Trail of Tears, the march of Native Americans from Florida to Oklahoma, their slavery. Even the internment camps where those were sent who looked Japanese.” He grips his elbows with his hands. His face is flushed now. “There is so much hypocrisy.”

  I start to say something but he waves me to silence. “Please,” he says. “I do not wish to berate you.” He shrugs. His face takes on a sheepish look, like that of a small boy who has spoken out of turn. His hand flips his hair. “It’s just that this issue . . . It is behind us now. The Turks have moved on.”

  I nod again. I try to make my face look sympathetic, appreciative. I wish once more to be alone with Recep—to remember. To provide form to things. I turn, to see if Recep has been following this exchange, but his gaze still drifts away from us, off toward the window.

  “Recep,” I say. “It is me, Ahmet. Ahmet Khan. You came to visit me, remember? I am from Mezre.”

  The cloudy eyes brighten. His mouth forms a word, which seconds later I conclude is my name.

  “How are you?” I ask. “Are they treating you well? Are you getting enough to eat?”

  He stares at me quizzically, as if I have inquired of odd things. An arm jerks out, stops. Slowly, painfully, he brings his head forward. “Yes.” He smiles. His teeth form a rampart. “Ahmet.”

  The word is strange in his voice, foreign. Americanized as I have become, my name changed on entry. Emmett Conn. I have become Emmett Conn.

  “You remember me, then?”

  Softly, “Evet.” Yes.

  “You may remember—I told you when you visited—I was injured in the war. I lost much of my memory, from before, from my childhood. Lately, I have been . . . these dreams have come to me.” I glance at Recep’s nephew but then back at Recep, and launch into descriptions, of Burak, the trek, the girl, the deportees. I find it relaxing, even therapeutic, an unburdening of images I have kept to myself. I watch Recep as I speak. His eyes are like apricots, too large for the sockets. He has few lashes. He does not blink.

  “These Armenians, Recep, this journey. Do you know anything of this?”

  He shakes his head quickly, as if I’ve said something to offend him. For a time he says nothing, leading me to think that perhaps he has not understood, that he is like Carol, alone in her twilight. His head shifts the way hers did, the eyes never quite aligned.

  “I know the Armenians,” he says in clear Turkish. His eyes remain trained away. “There were deportations. It was war. It was a bad time.”

  “Do you remember any girl with mismatched eyes?”

  He looks down. The top of his head is scraped like a rock. Then up. “No.”

  “And Burak, what of him? Do you remember, when he went into the army? I . . . I cannot remember.”

  I am surprised, suddenly, by the tears in his eyes. He pulls at his face. His eyebrows spring back.

  “You do not remember?” he asks in his strangled voice.

  I shake my head. “No.”

  He stares, as if he does not believe me.

  “Why?”

  “What?”

  “Why did you come?”

  “To see you! To understand.”

  “I came to see you, in Georgia.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Burak . . .” His voice halts. “Burak was killed before the war. An accident.”

  “An accident? Before the war?” Something roils in my stomach.

  Recep nods. “A rock from a slingshot hit the side of his head.”

  Something clicks in my mind, to the point of almost hearing it. I remember the wailing, the robes. My father’s face. An accident.

  “Are you sure?”

  Recep’s hands cover his face. After a time he lifts them. “Evet,” he says. He stands, begins a trembling step, falls back in his wheelchair. His face is the texture of paper. “It was my slingshot.”

  I sit back in my chair.

  I do not know what to do, or say. I cannot think. Recep’s nephew stares at me.

  “Your father died soon after,” Recep says again. “And then you left. You joined . . . the gendarmerie. They would accept you, even if you were not yet of age for the army.” He stops, his eyes alight. A guilt shines in his face, and for an instant I see myself in it. “You . . . you do not remember?”

  I shake my head. But I know. I know he is right.

  6

  The sand whips and whirls, the sting of
thousands of wasps. A kumaş clings to my face, leaving a slit for my eyes, but still the tiny grains penetrate, shifting in unpredictable slants, burrowing in crevices, caking my nose and eyelids. I instruct the group to stop, as it makes little sense to advance under such conditions, bent and blinded by clouds of sand. We find a small ravine and bivouac, seeking what shelter the topography affords. We bury ourselves like rodents and wait, the sound of the wind all around.

  The original two thousand deportees have dwindled now to three hundred, many of these suffering from dysentery. A number of the guards are gone, too, leaving only three gendarmes, including myself, to prod our group on its way. Our progress has been slow, slower than before, maybe six or seven miles per day. At this pace it will take four or five days to reach our destination. Food is scarce, water even scarcer. The dead and dying increase daily. At the current rate of loss, only fifty or so of the deportees might actually make it to Aleppo.

  I am not sure why I remain with the group—I almost had to beg the area governor, the vali, to be allowed to continue. It would have been easy enough to leave the deportees in Katma, to transfer back to fight in the war. Most gendarmes do not complete the entire journey with their original caravan. I tell myself a three-week delay will not hinder my advancement. I rationalize it as a duty, broadened by the abandoned deportees we encounter, the bands of unsupervised, starving packs of women and children that merge with our group, some almost naked, their bodies blackened by the sun. I ponder the need for closure, the delivery of these pathetic, stumbling creatures—her people—to their destination. Neither the war nor their complicity nor the inevitability of this journey has changed. But they are dying—children with tongues swollen large as fists, mothers with dead infants still clutched in their arms. I offer what assistance I can. I call for rest breaks, for water. I urge the group on. I listen to the requests she makes of me. I wonder if I, too, might falter and perish.

  The other guards keep their distance. The one, Karim, is as sick as the deportees, necessitating his transport in one of the two ox-drawn carts still accompanying the group. The other, Mustafa, has grown mean and bitter, lashing out at stragglers, railing at small matters. He insisted on continuing to the journey’s conclusion, even though I secured specific orders otherwise. In the end I was desperate for any assistance. Now I regret it. His demeanor distracts me, disturbs me. An incident on our second day out exhibited the decline in our relationship.