“Eat,” he whispered.
Paul sat alone as the others ate, his head in his hands. Storms raged in his brain. To live off the dead! It was appalling, immoral, bestial.
But what frightened him most was the sure knowledge that the day was coming when he too would take his share.
* * *
The Shamba was beside himself with excitement. “I think we are near the camp of one of our early guides,” he insisted. “I can find it. Allah himself will guide me. There, you see? That dune with a stone near the top, in the shape of a sword. I remember it clearly. If I am right, there will be a wadi just beyond with a bed of green stone. There, just there.” He pointed eagerly. He spoke in a ragged whisper. He was sure of himself. “If it is true I will come back immediately. I will not be gone long.”
Paul thought about it. “All right.” The Shamba wobbled off, hurrying as much as he could.
Pobeguin fell. Paul went to help him. The Shamba disappeared behind a hill when suddenly Belkasem and another tirailleur broke away from the group and followed him. Paul might not have seen, but caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. None of the other men appeared to have noticed. A few moments later he heard a shot.
Now he looked wildly at the others. They shrugged and shook their heads. No one seemed to know what was going on.
For once, Paul did.
It had gone to murder then.
It had gone too far.
If they all turned on him now, if they killed him, it didn’t matter. He drew his pistol. “No!” he shouted. “This will not be!” As quickly as he could he raced after them, his body straining with the extra effort, his motions exaggerated as his muscles alternately cramped and failed. He fell twice on his way up the hill, his strength gone. At the top he saw only rocks and more hills. He walked farther and saw the tirailleur, who hadn’t seen him. Then he saw Belkasem, bending over the Shamba’s body.
“Arretez!” Paul shouted. Surprised, the tirailleur lunged and clubbed him hard. Paul fell to the ground. The tirailleur stepped over him. He looked at Belkasem, questioning. The butcher nodded. If the rest of them were to live, the lieutenant had to die.
“Kill him.”
The tirailleur raised his gun casually, not needing to aim. At the instant he fired he was jarred by an impact that shook his entire body. It took his breath away. Dumbly, he looked down at the stain spreading on his shirt, around the shaft of the lance that had been driven through his chest. He had no idea what had happened. He fell backward, dead.
Belkasem looked up in terror at the towering apparition. The Targui stood above him, a vision from hell. He had made no sound at all. His eyes held Belkasem’s through the slit of his veil. They were blue and quite cold with purpose. Behind the devil, atop the pommel of his mehari’s saddle, a hawk watched too, a white one with a patch of gray on the chest. The Targui drew his great sword and stepped forward. As surely as Belkasem had ever known anything, he knew the specter of death. He was a butcher, not a fighter. He backed away and dropped the colonel’s sword. He turned and fled, stumbling over the rocks and bellowing the alarm at the new Tuareg raid.
CHAPTER 29
Farher Jean Moreau ran the mission of the White Fathers near Wargla. He had snow white hair and kindly eyes and weighed little more than a leaf. His mission consisted of an orphanage, an infirmary, and a chapel, all in a compound nestled in the shade of a large grove of palms outside the oasis. The mission was poor. The chapel had a single crucifix on the wall above an altar made of mud bricks. The orphanage had a straw mat for each child and woolen blankets for cold nights. The infirmary was a small room with two cots and a table, and a chest where Father Jean kept medicine. The mission was surrounded by an earthen wall with a large wooden gate that never closed. On one side of the compound there were vegetable gardens and pens for sheep and goats and chickens.
Father Jean pleaded regularly for supplies from Cardinal Lavigerie, the archbishop of Algiers and the founder of the White Fathers. The cardinal invariably responded with abundant blessings and no supplies. Father Jean pestered old friends in France, who sent medicines and tins of food.
The orphanage and infirmary were always filled to overflowing. The chapel was always empty. The people of Wargla were glad to have the White Father’s goodwill and medicine, but not his religion. In twenty years in Africa he counted just one convert. But Father Jean was a patient man. “The souls will follow if we tend their bodies and minds,” he said. He worked tirelessly from sunup to well after dark. The people of Wargla trusted him.
His one convert was Melika, a young woman who had been abandoned as an infant. Children normally left the orphanage as soon as they were eight, to make room for younger ones, but Melika stayed. She was a quick study. By the time she was ten she was helping teach the other children. At eighteen she knew almost as much about medicine as Father Jean. She had a wonderful manner with the patients. She was indispensable, looking after the animals and tending to the children. She taught them French and geography and sums. She cooked for them and tended to their lumps and bumps and infected eyes.
Melika worshiped Father Jean. She wasn’t a convert, really, for she had been raised by the priest. She didn’t believe in the White Father’s God nearly as much as she believed in him.
* * *
It was to this mission that Moussa brought Paul in the middle of the night. Paul was unconscious, tied atop the mehari. Father Jean had called for Melika and the three of them got Paul settled into Melika’s room. The infirmary was full and there was nowhere else to put him. Melika didn’t mind. It happened often. She could sleep in the orphanage on one of the mats.
Father Jean worked through the night. In his first life, before his vows, he had been a doctor. War in Europe had killed his wife and children and had turned his hair white before he was twenty-five. He had treated every injury imaginable. He had amputated limbs and patched mangled bodies. He knew as much about medicine as any man in the south of Algeria. So it was with some certainty that he was able to give the prognosis to the Targui waiting in the courtyard.
“The Frenchman will die. He is too far gone. Even without the bullet, I think the desert has killed him.” “He will not die, Father. He is strong and a good man. The desert didn’t kill him when it had the best chance. He is one of your God’s miracles.”
Father Jean smiled. “I forget myself. I have been a doctor too long. You say the words to me I should be saying to you. Of course I pray that you are right. I will do everything I can.”
Melika settled in to take the first turn with the patient. Near dawn the Targui left.
* * *
The wound festered and rotted around the edges. It smelled horrible. Father Jean shook his head.
“If he’d been shot in the arm or leg I could cut it off and stop the poison,” he told Melika. “But there’s nothing to do when it’s in his shoulder.”
He clipped away the skin and washed the wound with carbolic acid. He prayed. She cleaned it every few hours and changed the bandages. Sometimes Paul cried out when she did it. The skin came away in bits. There was a big hole where the bullet had gone in, and a bigger one where it had come out. When she turned him over he bled. She shooed away the flies.
In his delirium he talked a lot, mumbling of Moussa and St. Paul’s, of Flatters and Floop and Remy. She came to know that name well. Remy, Remy. An arm. His arm. Once the soldier jumped up, clutching his arm, shrieking that it had been cut off. She had said it, over and over. “Your arm is all right. Your arm is still there. Shhhh…”
She wiped his head and bathed him with a sponge to cool the fevers. She put goat’s butter on his swollen lips and rubbed it into his feet where they had cracked and bled. She read to him even though she didn’t think he could hear. She read from Father Jean’s Bible, and from a medical text he had. She read him names of places off the maps they used to teach the children, and from anything else she could find.
She was fascinated by him. She had never seen s
uch a handsome man. His hair was thick and nearly white and ran to his shoulders, while his beard was full and the color of honey. As she took care of him she imagined who he was, imagined things about him. She knew he was a soldier, that his name was Paul. The Targui who brought him had said it. But she knew little else.
He shrieked at night, his forehead drenched with sweat. She held him and rocked him back and forth, whispering softly to calm him. She didn’t know what he’d been through. The Targui hadn’t said.
She fed him goat’s milk, nudging his lips with a spoon. He swallowed it without waking, his mouth moving for more. He was all ribs, and she gave him a lot. She sang to him, hymns she’d learned when she was the only one there for the services in the little mud chapel. She knew some Shamba legends and put them to verse, and put the verse to music, just for something to do. It was awful, she was sure, but the soldier was unconscious, after all, and didn’t seem to mind. Sometimes it seemed to her that a smile appeared on his face. Father Jean heard her singing too. He nodded and smiled himself.
She looked at his face and imagined the things he’d seen, the things he’d done. So much trouble there, so much terror in his cries. She couldn’t imagine. Life with the White Father was quite safe. She was glad of it, when she comforted him. She stroked his cheek with the back of her fingers. She touched the hair on his chest. It was as fine as silk and golden. She drew back the cover and looked at his arms, at his muscles, at his hands. She washed him, lifting his arms one after another, bathing them in cool water. Father Jean said it was good to keep him clean. She knew by the way it felt, that it was good.
She also knew that wasn’t what Father Jean meant.
She ran the sponge down his stomach and along his legs. She had never seen a man before, at least not like this one. She felt herself on fire when she did that. She flushed with shame. She was taking extraordinary liberties with an unconscious man. No one had ever taught her about any of this. Certainly not Father Jean.
* * *
On the fifth day he floated up toward the surface. There were voices there, and beauty. Music. A woman’s voice, soft and soothing. Pretty. He wanted to see.
“Who are you?” His eyes were wide and full of fear.
“Melika.”
“Melika… beautiful… welcome,” he said, and he drifted back down to where the mists swirled.
He awoke again the next day.
“Who are you?” His eyes were wide and full of fear.
“Melika,” she said again. She took his hand.
“Melika.” The fear passed. He smiled and squeezed her fingers. He drifted again through the mists.
The next day his eyes were wide but there was no fear. “Melika,” he said. “Have I died? Are you from God?”
She laughed. “You are not dead, Monsieur Paul. Close enough, perhaps, but not dead. You are near Wargla. You are safe.”
“Wargla.” He said it in wonder. Through his fog he saw soft brown eyes and dark hair and a warm smile in a round face. It was a lovely vision, perfect. He slept. His breathing became deeper, more relaxed.
She combed his hair. She trimmed it where it fell into his eyes, snipping at it with Father Jean’s surgical scissors. It hadn’t been cut in months. She hoped he wouldn’t mind.
She left the room only briefly, to pray for him in the chapel.
He drifted in and out. He remembered bits and pieces. He thought of his name. “Paul,” he said to her. “I am Paul.”
“Yes.” She nodded and touched his forehead. It made him cool when she did that, and it made him smile. He learned to smile often, so that she would keep touching him.
A storm came. Rain lashed at her room and ran down the mud walls. He awoke to the flash of lightning and heard the thunder and it took him to some frenzied place. He shouted and cried and she held him to her breast, helpless to offer him anything but her warmth and the comfort of her body. He clung to her desperately. His terrors passed with the storm and once again he drifted off, at peace. She watched him sleep and brushed away the hair from his forehead.
For two weeks he was half-in, half-out of conscious. His fever would not leave, and it troubled Father Jean greatly. For two weeks she sat with him, whispering, singing, talking, telling stories, cleaning his wound, bathing away the heat with cool cloths. Each day she drew closer to him.
One night she leaned over him for a cloth that had fallen from his forehead. Her breast brushed his cheek. She felt a rush inside, a tingling surge of beauty and longing that hardened her nipples and left her breathless and afraid. Embarrassed, she looked to see if he had awakened. He was quite deeply under, in the world between sleep and unconsciousness where he spent so much time.
She looked at the door. It was late at night. The compound slept. No one would be coming.
Heart pounding, she moved to sit close to him on the bed. Impulsively, without knowing exactly what she was doing, yet compelled to yield to her feelings, she raised her blouse, then the shift beneath it. She shivered, the air caressing her breasts. Once more she felt the fire inside, warm, delicious, and forbidden. She couldn’t believe what she was doing, but she was beyond caring, wanting only to follow her need. Trembling, she leaned forward and softly touched the tip of her breast to his lips, closing her eyes and drawing in her breath as the currents of pleasure coursed around her. Paul stirred at her touch, his mouth and tongue instinctively seeking her nipple, gently pulling, circling, exploring, but still he slept. Her nipple tightened and she let out a soft moan of pleasure. She was terrified he would wake up, and yet she wanted him to. She moved against him, and again he responded.
A noise outside the room brought her back. She bolted upright, hurriedly fixing her clothing.
Only a night sound. Nothing at all, but the moment had passed.
She looked at his face, bathed in the light of the candle. He was almost smiling, she thought. She wondered if he knew.
* * *
His consciousness gradually returned. A fever remained, and his shoulder still festered, but each day he gained strength. Each day he ate more, drank more. Each day the color returned to his cheeks. Now she knew he would live.
“Who are you?” he asked, long after he knew the answer. He liked to hear her say it.
“Melika,” she replied patiently every time.
“Melika, Melika, like a poem,” he said. If he remembered what had happened he gave no sign.
He sat up and was awake for an hour. Then two. Then five.
“You are back among the living,” she said as he ate. She gave him pieces of bread soaked in goat’s milk, and bits of fruit cut into little pieces. He couldn’t chew yet. He sucked on them.
“This is a wonderful place to be alive,” he said. He didn’t know for certain how he had come to be in this place, but he knew he was in no rush to change it. It was all coming slowly. He didn’t want to hurry. She was perfect. She was beautiful. He didn’t have to move, didn’t have to do anything. She did it all for him, unbidden, and he wanted it never to stop. She seemed to sense what he needed before he knew it himself. He heard her voice when he slept. He saw her face when he awoke. Saw her in his dreams. It was enough. More than enough. All the rest was behind him now. The others had died. He had lived. Somehow.
“What has happened to the others?” he asked in panic, when he could finally think of the question at all.
“What others?” she said. “You were brought here alone.”
“Brought here? Who brought me?”
“A Targui.”
A shadow passed over his face. It frightened her.
“I must speak to the commandant of the garrison at Wargla.”
“Of course, when you are well enough.”
“Now. There are others. They may still be alive. I have to tell them.”
“All right. I will ask Father Jean.”
The captain of the garrison came with other men. They trooped in on loud rude boots and filled the room. Father Jean made Melika leave. She was afraid they wo
uld take him away. But they only talked, until Father Jean made them leave too. They were quieter when they left. Their faces were grim.
* * *
He slept a great deal. Sometimes when he awoke and felt well he took the book from her, and read to her instead. She loved it. She sat back in the hard wooden chair and closed her eyes. He read to her about Pasteur and general surgery. “Wonderful stuff,” he said wryly, but she loved it.
“When it is you saying it, even anthrax and rabies sound appealing,” she said, and he laughed. She loved the rich sound of his voice. He read until he nodded off. She asked Father Jean for more books.
“More books! Is he the only patient left in the infirmary?” Father Jean grumped, but there was no hardness in him. He had never seen Melika so happy. He watched her and thought of his dead wife. His eyes misted and he busied himself looking after the things she had always tended. He could make his own supper and handle the infirmary alone. Just for a while, he told himself.
Paul got up. She held him while he draped his arm over her shoulder. He made five steps and fell hard to the floor. His shoulder opened and poured dark blood. She cried out and Father Jean ran to help. Together they got him back in bed. When she looked at his face, drained of color, she was sure she’d killed him. “Please live,” she whispered. “Please, please.” The wound got ugly and his body shook with fever. She dared not leave the room. She knelt by the bed and clutched her rosary and prayed.
On the second day his fever broke for good. Melika laughed and cried when he woke up.
“You,” she said happily, tears on her cheeks.
“You.” He smiled back.
His recovery quickened then. He began to eat by himself. He could hold the spoon, but they both pretended he still needed help.
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