But my mind is spinning off again, sailing its way back to her, to my shame and frustration at the way we had parted, my clumsiness and inadequacy at the Khan al-Wazir. I want to go back to her, rush to her, try once again; in America, anything is possible. Anything. But I recognize, on some level, the nature of my quest, the finality inherent in the path I have taken. I look back on life now, in America. Where all things are possible, but not guaranteed.
“Medicine!” Lawrence the orange-skinned HST pops into view. We are back in the dayroom, the other patients shifting, queuing up before a Dutch door-like window attached to a wall. There, a nurse consults charts and asks questions, dispenses water and hands out pills. I wait, watching her face as it rises and falls, rises and falls, as those in front of me extend hands and tilt necks. What are they saying? I have been placed here, held here. I have come here to die.
The nurse grasps my arm, examines the wristband I have no memory of receiving, glances from chart to band, lifts her face to expose an expanse of gapped teeth.
“What is your birth date?”
Again, to remember. “The year 1898.”
“Very good, Mr. Conn.” She hands me a small cup containing five pills, another small cup of water, then watches as I gulp them down.
“What happens if you don’t take your medicine?” I ask John Paul as I pass through the line.
He grimaces. “By law they can’t force you, unless you’re classified as violent or a danger to yourself. If that’s the case, they give you an altered form that dissolves on your tongue. Or, failing that, an injection. After one or two experiences with either, most people take the pills.”
I nod. My stomach rumbles. We stand for a while. The drugs slow my heartbeat, then lengthen my tongue. The lights of the room dim and yellow.
“Mr. Conn.” Lawrence, again. “May I call you Emmett?”
I make the slowest of movements.
“We have you set for treatment team at eleven. Right now, you get to go outside.” He pauses, consulting a chart before him. “Let’s see . . . you’re not a smoker, are you?”
The others are queuing again, like schoolchildren bound for recess. HSTs and nurses nudge them along, buzzing and clucking, and suddenly I am back, the association so clear I can almost see it, back on the hilltop overlooking the deportees, examining the sheep and the canines. I search from left to right and back again, across the plain in the direction of our journey, then to the rear, the way we had come. The same sense of disappointment follows, the same loss, before I find myself standing in line again like a tottering old tree, wiping my forehead against the south Georgia heat.
“Hey! Are you all right?” An HST peers back my way.
I nod my head. The line ahead shifts, the tail of a fish held at the mouth. I search for someone I recognize. Violet? Do I know anyone here? I am cantilevered, defined now by absence—Burak’s, Carol’s, Araxie’s, my own. But I am alive still. Breathing and spitting. Like a camel in sand.
The exercise area consists of a concrete pad perhaps one hundred feet long and sixty feet wide. A ten-foot brick wall, angled to create more room at the back, forms the perimeter of the area, with a volleyball net at its midsection and a basketball goal at one end. An overhang closest to the building shields a Ping-Pong table and metal picnic furniture. The patients hobbling before me break off into groups, some taking seats at the picnic tables, others standing together in the sun’s sharpened light. The women join us, HSTs dispense cigarettes, and one by one heads bend toward devices built into the wall that look like braziers, and return in puffs of smoke.
“See those black boxes?” John Paul points to a series of small rectangles at the top of the wall. “They’re motion detectors. The ground is sloped on the other side, so it’s only three or four feet from the top. If you were to climb over the top, they’d detect it.” He steps farther down the wall. “See this?” He points to a recessed light. “They put the plastic covering over so you can’t use it as a foothold.”
I glance up at the wall. “Have many tried to escape?”
“Not that I know of. One guy got up on top of the walkway running between our unit and the open unit and ran around for a while before they pulled him off.”
“The open unit?”
“It’s for more permanent residents. They have their own cafeteria where the food is made, not brought in, like it is here.”
We stand silent a few minutes. The day has begun to heat up; most in the sun edge into the shade.
“Mr. Conn!”
I turn.
“You have a visitor.”
I follow Lawrence back into the building, through the locked doors, into a glass-paneled cubicle off one side of a hall. I am confused again by this place. Am I dreaming? I have no visitors, no one here knows me. I am a foreigner. An enemy. But then a woman turns. Gray-haired, erect, she is familiar, so . . .
“Hello, dear.” Mrs. Fleming rises and offers a perfumed hug. I remain standing, despite my body’s lingering soreness. Dizziness fades her image, shifting her face in and out.
“Violet will be here in a little while. She’s getting her hair done this morning.”
Mrs. Fleming. Violet. I do not know of a relationship between them. She returns to her seat. The magnification of her glasses makes her eyes soft, like a cow’s.
“How are you doing?”
I slide into a seat near the door. I am imprisoned, time draining, while Violet has her hair done.
I look up. Mrs. Fleming’s hair is the scruff of a lioness. I say, “I am surprised you have come to see me.”
She gives a little snort, exposing capped teeth. “Just because you’re in here? I’ve come here before.” She pauses, shifts in her chair. “My Cecil was here once.”
She looks as if she might cry, then crosses her legs, the flap of fabric parted, returned. “I told them I was your sister.” She smiles. She nods her head. “You don’t know what to think of me, do you?”
“I am unsure of most things.” The wall behind her is changing, now speckled, now swathed in black stripes.
“Part of what I do is visit people, when they’re sick, when they’re in the hospital. I know what it’s like there. I’ve had cancer twice, been written off for dead at least once. There’s power in grouping. Some people think it gives me a rush, and maybe it does, but it’s more than that. My mother always says that indifference is the greatest cruelty. I try not to be indifferent.”
I nod again, my mind fluttering to brief images of what Mrs. Fleming’s ancient mother might look like before returning, slack, to its languor. Warm tears come, unbidden and unexpected, leaking as if from an old faucet, the seals dry and worn. What brings this now—compassion? My own pity? The tears slide into crevices, through wrinkled skin, pooling, dripping. They are water, I tell myself, but what of water? My life spent providing it, diverting it. The stream where, at my offer, she first bent to drink. The water I bartered for, rationed. The goatskin I provided when her body expelled everything. The fountain I bathed in as I tried to stay near her. Indifference? I wipe my face and my nose.
“Emmett.”
I jump.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” I have been left behind. “I am sorry. What did you say?”
“I was asking about you. I don’t know that much about you.”
I tell her, or at least I try to. I am from Turkey. I fought in the war. I was injured, then rescued. An immigrant. A father. I cannot tell her, though, of before, of what I know now, of what I remember. That I was a gendarme, a . . . murderer. That this is my shame.
My voice trails away. She is saying something, asking something else. She likes that I still want to live. Others my age want to die. She says something about the future.
But there is no future. I am ninety-two years old. I have a tumor.
I am a monster.
Our eyes lock. No one knows of this past. I hang on a precipice, reaching out for a rope, Mrs. Fleming laughing as if she now holds it
. Did I tell her? This must remain covered. Her head bends back in a new baring of teeth.
“What?” I ask.
“Peter Melville, Violet’s cousin. He was awarded that grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Five million dollars—can you believe it?”
I struggle. Peter. Brains. The ostrich farm, sound-wave pest control. Five million dollars? But I am weighted, deadened. Money is of no use to me now.
A knock sounds at the glass door. Hinges swivel. Dr. Mellon enters, his big frame filling the room and changing the atmosphere, the colors. I glance at the wall behind Mrs. Fleming, returned now to its institutional white.
“It’s time for Mr. Conn’s treatment team,” he says, his voice measured and deep.
Mrs. Fleming rises and picks up her purse. “I need to go.” She pauses at the door and looks back. “Take care,” she says. Her glasses flash. She is strong, her back arched like a dancer’s. “You’ll be okay. Violet will come see you soon.”
The door swings shut. Dr. Mellon helps me to my feet, the smell of cologne on his hands. I am shaky and slow. I follow him from the room like a dim-witted child, a thin, older woman behind us. We enter another cubicle, stand awkwardly, take seats around a similar table.
“How do you feel?” Dr. Mellon folds his large hands. The thin woman produces a tape recorder and notepad, arranges them like homework before her. She leans forward, exposing dark rings that make her eyes seem much larger.
“I am okay.”
The questions follow, the same questions, the questions I answered before. Do I dream? Are these dreams frightening? Are there things I have done in these dreams? What things are these?
I respond, at least to most of them. I want to be respectful, to authority and to Dr. Mellon. My fellow Rotarian. Is it true? Is it fair to all concerned? This is the Rotary motto, or part of it. But the questions become repetitious, so tedious that I soon grow distracted, staring at Dr. Mellon’s smooth skin, which stretches up like a black chess piece. A rook, perhaps? Bishop? I remember how I played chess in London, how the others were amazed, patient and doctor alike, that I could remember how to play but remember nothing about myself. Three of us there had lost memory, head injuries grouped together before the guard came, and I was moved. The man next to me was Harold—a boy, really—with yellowish hair and a caul-like red scar that crossed his face and one eye, leaving that eye puffed and large, as though he only squinted through the other. He was fascinated by the chess games, periodically shouting out “I remember now!” but quickly growing despondent when it became clear he remembered little, about anything. He would then shake his head, lifting the heavy metal bed with creaking springs and great thumps until the nurses came, the interrupted game could be resumed. I did not see him again after they moved me, but I wonder now: Did memory return for him? Did he regain some former life? Perhaps he was placed somewhere, housed forever in an institution like this. His mind darkened and aged and bent beyond all recovery.
“Do you know your name?”
I sigh. “Emmett Conn.”
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“You put me here, you and Violet. I have a brain tumor. It has produced vivid dreams.”
Dr. Mellon leans back in his chair, a hint of a smile on his face. I gaze at the thin woman, noting how her left biceps resembles a chicken’s wing.
“Do you know who I am?”
“You are Dr. Mellon. The Rotarian.”
He laughs, the big, booming laugh. He looks around, as if searching for someone to backslap.
“You seem to be doing okay.” He pulls out half-glasses, adjusts them on the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to ask you a few more questions, okay?”
“Okay.” But my mind swoops away again, a bee buzzing off to a flower. Great rows of pumpkins line the far wall, their stems twisted to arm shapes, to hands and black feet. Flies swarm. And then the vultures, pecking and pulling. I hear Dr. Mellon’s voice, see the thin woman’s eyes, take in the room, the table, the chairs, but other sharp things as well: oxen bellowing, rats shedding water, soldiers beckoning, a dark man on horseback. Hands reach out for me. Voices sigh. I come back for a moment, thinking that I deserve this, to die alone as their prisoner . . . then dance away, a dog dodging a stick, listening but not hearing, watching but not seeing. Wind whistles somewhere, its sound in my ears. The impact, when it comes, knocks me off my feet, slamming my head to the ground as I fall.
“Hey! ”
I fight to get clear. Breath hisses as my foot meets a groin. I bend back fingers from a strange, prying hand. Only the voice pulls me out of it, the booming, non-laughing utterance that sounds oddly familiar, that makes itself clear across a roomful of people. The cadence of a distant island. Dr. Mellon’s voice.
“Emmett! What are you doing?”
I find myself on the floor, Lawrence’s acne-scarred face near mine. Dr. Mellon stands behind him. The thin woman peers from the wall like a raccoon.
I release Lawrence’s fingers. He retreats, rubbing his hand.
There are questions, but my answers seem muddled. I am confused. Time again has been lost. My release . . .
I am returned to the dayroom. John Paul hovers near.
“How did it go?”
I shake my head. “I began seeing things. Then I found myself on the floor, with Lawrence trying to pin my arms.” I glance over at Lawrence, busy adjusting an ice pack.
“I hope you bit him.” John Paul scratches the tip of his nose. “You know, it’s all about dopamine,” he continues, “dopamine and receptors. Some of us have too much, some not enough. In diseases like—”
“Lunchtime!” a voice proclaims. Andre appears, arms about his head. John Paul rises. I follow, fighting light-headedness, the dots and curlicues that form and dissolve. I merge into line behind John Paul and his pink nose, the stooped black man Puff, Leo and his steepled hands, and then a new figure, broad-shouldered, close-cropped, a head with ridges so prominent as to be lobes of his brain. I stare, remembering Araxie’s description, chills at work on my spine, chills that strengthen to near-paralysis as the figure turns and exhibits his face, his familiar masculine jaw, his wide-set eyes and protruding lips. It is Sasha’s face. I reel, grasping the couch for support, staring at this intrusion from another time and place, shorn and re-clothed and perhaps re-gendered, but otherwise one and the same. His gaze meets mine as he passes, a glazed and medicated glance that bespeaks no recognition but collapses me nonetheless, and then I am fine, stolid and resolute and surprisingly hungry. I straighten my shoulders and pull at my trousers. I follow the others on the slow march to the dining area. Lawrence stands at the doorway, still kneading his hand.
I sit at a table with Elmo and this new person, the man Lawrence introduces as Victor. My questions as to his background produce no response, save for the dull smacks of his eating, his swallows of sweetened iced tea. I content myself with just looking at him, remembering my conversations with Sasha, his double, calculating the improbability of this strength of resemblance. Perhaps we have met elsewhere, perhaps as client or employee or friend, but I can visualize him only in a tentlike jilbab, cutting his deals with his customers, haranguing or praising or pleading or sweeping, anger or avarice at play on his face.
“Medicine!” The queue forms. Heads bend to charts, necks tilt, practiced hands toss tablets down throats. I eye my pills, the two yellow tablets and three red-and-white capsules. I empty the cup into my mouth, add water, swish it down, open my mouth to meet Andre’s inspection. We disperse afterward. Lawrence strides ahead, unlocking doors to the rooms along the dayroom’s one side. Some of the group shuffle inside, yawning and stretching, while others stare at the doors or the TV. Elmo hurls a pitch at a far wall, Leo bows in prayer. Puff speaks to Lawrence, laughing, rubbing his hands along the sides of his face. I stop near the couch, dry-mouthed now and weary. John Paul pulls up alongside me.
“They let us nap if we want to.” He dabs a napkin at his nose, which is bleeding. “A
re you tired?”
I silence a yawn. “Yes. And you?”
“I usually don’t nap. You can lie down if you want to.”
John Paul continues talking, about steroids, transfiguration. He will not quiet. I envision my hands on his head, shaking. Finally, he leaves.
I enter the bare room, sit on the bed, remove my shoes, stare at my feet. Glancing out the doorway, to where a baseball announcer’s voice echoes from the dayroom, I look for him, for Victor/Sasha, but he is not there. I close my eyes, searching again for patterns in nothingness, noting the shapes floating past, the mutant half-bodies, the dragons that become griffins that become vultures that become—what? Jesus? The Prophet? I am renewed. Canlı. And then I sleep.
16
I awake to darkness, to the pressure of a hand at my throat. I struggle, but the hand holds me back. I kick. I flail my arms at the body beyond but strike nothing, as if the hand is a ghost’s yet retains all its power. My breathing grows short. Lights glow in the darkness. And then, just as my abdomen convulses and my hands make contact with the assailant’s thick arm, his voice appears in my ear, instantly recognizable.
“I want you to see something.” The hand releases its pressure, the figure backing away. I sit up, coughing, as a candle springs to light.
“Do you see this?” Mustafa points to his right arm, or where his arm should have been. It is gone, sheared off at the shoulder, leaving his torso strangely oblong, like a chicken cut for the market. “It became infected, after our battle. The doctors cut it off.”
I cough some more, to recover my breath. A knife gleams now in Mustafa’s one hand.
“It is difficult with one arm. Everything in life becomes harder. Every time I eat, or piss, or button my shirt, I think of you, of this moment.” He pauses, lifts something off the divan with the blade of his knife, holds it up in the air. “I have followed you, my friend. I lost you, but with the help of a kind man, I found you again. I know what you do each day, where you go. Even when you were at the knife maker’s shop, I was there. I was recovering, regaining my strength. And now I am strong again. If not whole.”
The Gendarme Page 18