Tourmaline

by Paul Park

  The guard beckoned. Squaring his shoulders, Peter crossed to the middle of the three rooms. Under his breath he was reciting:

  Half their ships to the right and half to the left were seen,

  And the little Revenge ran on down the long sea lane in between.

  His hands were tied behind him with three strands of chafing twine. Peter imagined he could break them or twist his wrists so that they fell away. He stood now at the door to the cubicle and looked in.

  Thousands of their sailors looked down from their decks and laughed,

  Thousands of their soldiers made mock at the mad little craft,

  Running on and on till delayed,

  By the mountain-like San Philip of fifteen-hundred tons,

  Up towering above us with her yawning tiers of guns . . .

  There was a big man sitting at a large carved wooden desk. The room was lined with bookcases and leather-bound books. In one corner on a table stood a statue of Moses carrying the tablets of the law.

  The big man looked up. He had enormous, powerful, sloping shoulders, on which his bald round head seemed to perch without the disadvantage of a neck. He wore thick, wire-rimmed spectacles that made his eyes seem huge. In spite of this, and in spite of his fatness, he gave an impression of energy and power. He leaned forward in his chair, his pencil like a toothpick in his huge fist. There were no books or files on his desk, but just a folded newspaper on the blotter, held down by a brass paperweight. A small current of air disturbed the pages. Peter looked up and saw a fan, previously unnoticed, hanging from the faraway vault. It turned slowly, whether by hand or by machine, Peter couldn't guess.

  The cadi stared at him for a long time. "Why is it that I recognize your face?" he said finally, in English. "Do you know me? I am Aristophanes Turkkan."

  "No, sir."

  "I could swear," murmured the cadi, and he stood up so suddenly his chair almost fell over backward. He came out from behind his desk to peer into Peter's face. He had big arms and a big chest.

  "Peter Gross—you are Roumanian, no?"

  The cadi was dressed in a loose red jacket and military pants, brown with a red stripe. A red tarbush stood upon a stool in the corner. "I was just reading what has happened in your country. Now you come back with a face out of my dreams—where is it? Here, look, let me read it—do you know my language?"

  "No, sir."

  "Yes—let me read it. It is from this morning, see!" He snatched up the newspaper and shook it open with one hand. "Now let me tell you what this says. It is a story from Braila on the coast—two days old already. No one cares about it here. No one cares about Roumania since our German friends are there. But that is a mistake. These people are not beaten yet, I tell you."

  He kept his pencil in one hand, brandishing it like a tiny weapon. He shook out the paper and folded it back, creasing it against his chest while at the same time standing close to Peter, who could smell liquor on his breath.

  The newsprint was so thin it was almost transparent. The paper was called The English World Tribune, and its pages were ornamented with black woodblock illustrations set slightly askew. On the top of every page was a portrait of a Roman orator in a toga.

  For a long time since Miranda's disappearance and especially since his arrest, Peter had felt vacant and unoccupied except for small, scurrying presences: loneliness or worry, vermin in an empty room. Except when taken with the small tasks of survival he would sit by himself, clasping and unclasping his hands.

  Waiting for what? For this newspaper article? Waile Bizunesh had mentioned a story in a newspaper or a magazine. Certainly as Peter stood listening, arms tied, he felt a door open and slam. He imagined himself grabbing hold of the newspaper and snatching it away. And if the cadi objected he would shake him till his teeth chattered.

  "Let me see now—here it is. Here it is. Braila—you know that is headquarters of the fleet. 'A legend came to life in these past weeks, and now this picturesque little town is all abuzz.'—what does that mean? 'From the waterfront to the pagan statue in the square, people are talking about events that have left a policeman dead. Dressed in Gypsy clothes she rode her horse into the town, and went immediately to the house of the Russian consul, where she gave her name as Miranda Popescu. The office of the governor has issued this description that has spread throughout the province. Everyone is looking, whether to arrest her for murder or to crown her queen, for there are feelings on both sides. The Baroness Ceausescu has dispatched an investigator who arrived in Braila last night. . . .' I tell you it is all the same with these people. Always the same. It was like this in Kara Suliman's time, when Miranda Brancoveanu came out of the hills. God willing, they will find her. Look, there she is!"

  The cadi pushed the folded newspaper in front of Peter's nose. He could see the illustration—the black hair and protruding ears, the straight nose and heavy eyebrows. The artist had made her more beautiful than she was, which irritated Peter. "Let me see," he said.

  "No. There is nothing more of substance. Innuendoes and rumors—it is always violence with these people—"

  "Please."

  The cadi stared at him. Under his spectacles his big, distorted eyes were oddly penetrating. "It is not your place to give me orders. You will not give your orders to Aristophanes Turkkan. It is the same with you as well—I know your case. It is because you have no law to guide you. You pray to false gods and they give you violence—what are the details? You killed a man under the Kanuni bridge."

  When Peter was arrested, the officers had spoken Turkish, which was no help. Until this present moment he'd assumed that they'd been looking for Andromeda. She was the one who'd robbed the market stalls, cheated at cards, raided the hencoops. He'd been prepared to answer the judge's questions, pay for the dead capon.

  Now, excited by the newspaper story, his mind moved quickly—he was innocent. The man under the bridge was not dead—how could he have died? Peter had not harmed him. There'd been a struggle, and a gun had misfired, and everyone had run away. That's the way it was; Miranda also couldn't have killed anyone. She was also innocent, falsely charged.

  All this time he had been testing the knots of twine behind his back. "Please let me see the paper," he said, but the judge held it up. Again he had come close, and there was sweet wine on his breath. He was a tall man, taller than Peter—"Who are you?" he murmured. "I have seen your face."

  Then he continued in a different tone. "You're accused of shooting Jacob Golcuk to his death. I saw the report of seven witnesses who all agree. You tried to rob this man. So let me ask—are you a race of devils? They say it was this woman who shot this policeman in Braila. And do you know who her father was? The devil himself—General Frederick Schenck von Schenck."

  Peter tried to pull his hands apart. "I'm not a thief," he said. "I was looking for my dog under the bridge."

  "Your dog!" The judge was in high fury now. "And that makes it all good, to shoot a Turkish citizen in cold blood? 'Yes, certainly,' says Domnul Gross, if he was searching for his dog! But let me ask, where did you dispose your gun? We searched your room."

  "I didn't have a gun. I tell you the man was still alive." Peter raised his head, shook his shoulders, and the judge stepped back. "It was his gun and he fired it."

  For a moment the judge seemed disoriented. He stood against his desk, his eyes wide under his spectacles. Peter seized the time to tell his story of that night. When the men came to attack him he took hold of one of them—he had a leather coat with patches of rabbit fur. And when the watch had come the men had scattered, leaving their friend still groaning when Peter ran away.

  He tried to tell this story as convincingly as possible, as if to a reasonable man. "Why would I attack eight men under a bridge in the middle of the night? Jacob Golcuk—was he rich?" But the cadi stared at him, shaking his head as if distracted, though he did not interrupt. Peter wondered if he was listening. Above their heads the fan turned slowly. Surely he could get his hands free from this stupid t
wine. What then?

  But as the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud,

  Whence the thunderbolt would fall, long and loud,

  Four galleons drew away from the Spanish fleet that day . . .

  "Tell me where I've seen you," murmured Aristophanes Turkkan. "Is it on the wrestling ground?"

  Then he continued in a different voice. "You say you're not a thief, yet you share a room with a known pickpocket. You are here with forged papers, and this name Peter Gross is evidently false. It is true what you say about Golcuk, but I think maybe this is a disagreement between criminals, which does not excuse you. I have spoken to the governor of the Eski Seray, and he says you are fighting all the time these past two days over money and illegal contraband."

  This was unfair. Tired of being beaten, he had tried to defend himself, that's all. He'd let Pieter de Graz out of his cage for a few minutes, that was all. With Andromeda's piastres he'd attracted a new class of tormentors.

  Behind his back, now he yanked at the twine and felt it give. "I swear the man was breathing when I left. Isn't it more likely that these other men attacked him and then blamed me when the guard arrived—a penniless Roumanian? Show me the witnesses' reports. I have a right to see them—"

  But the cadi shook his head. His eyes were huge. "It is not for you to bully Aristophanes Turkkan, as you bullied these poor prisoners in the Eski Seray. It is up to me to judge the credibility of these accounts, and I have done so. Penniless, you say. But in prison you've been drinking liquor and eating chocolates. As for your dog, where is your dog? No one has seen this dog—where is it now? What kind of dog is it?"

  He had stood up again, approached Peter again. But now abruptly he turned away behind his desk. As he was sitting down, as he was pulling out a wooden drawer and rummaging through the papers, Peter found himself staring at a brass cup on the bookshelf behind him, carefully polished, and engraved with the outline of two struggling, naked men.

  "You are barbarians," muttered Aristophanes Turkkan. "What do you know of justice? It is obvious we do our job here, and we decide both sides. 'Where is your dog?' I ask him and he says nothing. What can he say? He knows this case is finished, yet still he wants to argue."

  The cadi lapsed into another language as he pulled out a slip of parchment filled with calligraphy and carrying an impressive wax seal. Still muttering, he pulled out a pen, a brush, a jar of ink. He was asking himself questions in Turkish. Peter didn't try to understand. He had an idea. The man had laid out his paint pot, and was beginning to sketch out an ornate signature. "For your official document," said Peter, "maybe you'd be interested in my real name."

  The cadi looked up, goggling at him with his huge, blinking eyes. "It's true I offered you an English version of my name. Perhaps you would be interested. . . ."

  More goggling. Then, "No, no. This is sufficient. The place is already filled in."

  The cadi bent once more over his signature. Peter noticed there was sweat on his bald head. It gathered in the V-shaped creases on his forehead. "Pieter de Graz. The Chevalier de Graz."

  The scratching of the pen nib on the parchment slowed and stopped. The cadi glanced at him and Peter imagined that he saw a look of fury cross his broad face, before it crinkled up and he began to laugh. This also was shortlived, and changed almost immediately into scowls. "De Graz! Another lunatic! And now I am an old man. Do not trouble to lie. De Graz died long ago."

  After a moment he replaced his pen on the pink blotter. "The resemblance is true," he said. "What of it? If you are the son of such a father, you have shamed him."

  He shouted out in Turkish and a guard looked in the door. It was the bristling man with the gray moustache, the double-barreled gun, and the white undershirt.

  But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went,

  Having that within her womb that had left her ill content.

  But the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand. . . .

  The words came unbidden into Peter's thoughts. Aristophanes Turkkan was still muttering as he folded up his papers. "Who should know this better than I do? The Chevalier de Graz had a birthmark on his hand. All the world knows—do you have a birthmark on your hand? Hah, I did not think so."

  Peter yanked and twisted at the twine behind his back. He turned his wrists into the knot and the twine parted. The cadi kicked over his chair and came out from behind his desk. He was eager to fight. The guard raised his gun up by the barrel like a club, but Peter's hands were free. He reached out his right hand, and shoved it in the cadi's face so that he could not help but see the discolored birthmark in the shape of a bull's head, in the lap of muscle between his thumb and forefinger.

  For a dozen times they came, with their pikes and musketeers,

  And a dozen times we shook 'em off, as a dog that shakes his ears . . .

  Other guards, other men now came into the open door. Peter felt a blow on the back of his neck, just at the moment when the cadi seized hold of his hand and bit him on the thumb.

  IN ROUMANIA, IN THE MOUNTAINS north of Bucharest, the Baroness Ceausescu sat reading in her summer pavilion. She had come up from the city to escape from the hot weather in her favorite provincial residence, built by the former empress near the village of Vadu Oii. Above her rose the forested slopes of Penteleu, still with a cap of snow upon its crest.

  The pavilion was a simple, rustic, wooden structure, which suited the white tyger's present tastes. The roof was thatched, the walls were unpainted cedar boards. On the three sides away from the sun, the glassless windows were unshuttered, covered only with copper screens that let the breezes in.

  The furniture was also simple: wooden couches and chairs, softened with embroidered pillows. The tyger perched diminutively in the corner of the largest armchair, her high-arched, naked feet curled up beneath her. Though in her previous life she had often affected men's clothing and military uniforms, now she only used them for purposes of disguise when she walked the streets at night. At home, at her leisure, she dressed in delicate and girlish clothes, made by expensive dressmakers in Paris and Berlin. Today especially, in a flimsy elegant frock of flowered silk, she shone like a jewel in a rough wooden box. And the simile was completed by the stone she held in her left hand, which as she read she rubbed and stroked over her long neck and uncovered shoulders. It was a large and perfect tourmaline, rough-cut in the rondelle style, gleaming as if it were itself a source of light. The purple color served to emphasize her violet eyes. She was reading a book of plays.

  Annoyed now by a stupidity in the text, she knotted her dark brows. In her own opera she would avoid these mistakes. Raising her eyes, she looked out over the garden that led downhill toward the shore of a small artificial lake. Then she threw down the book. Leaving the jewel in her lap, she reached instead toward a bundle of dirty clothes on the table beside her, stiff black trousers and a woolen shirt. But she was interested especially in the underclothes, which she now held up and examined not for the first time. She plucked at the elastic and the acetate, then brought the whole mess up to her nose to sniff.

  Jean-Baptiste came into the room without knocking and gave her a tired look. He stepped disdainfully over the wide planks of the floor as she threw down the clothes. He carried a brass teapot on a brass tray. "Domnul Luckacz is here."

  The baroness picked up the book again so she could snap it shut. She said, nothing to the steward as he came and went, but smiled as Luckacz entered— "My dear friend. You'll like some tea?"

  She didn't get up. She didn't move her right arm, languidly posed over the top of the chair. With her left hand she hid the jewel under the cushions and sat against it, comforted by its hardness in the small of her back.

  Radu Luckacz came forward until he stood in the middle of the rug. As always, he tried to hide his awkwardness by immediate and officious talk. He stood in his drab suit, holding his hat and a brown envelope, and at first the baroness couldn't bring herself to listen, because she wa
s examining his hair. Always before she had imagined his moustache to be grotesquely dyed, glossy black while his hair was gray. But now she noticed some new streaks of black over his ears. Though for her benefit, she was sure, they could only enhance his drab and crowlike appearance—these last few years had been hard on him. As his responsibilities had increased, he had become more frail and diminished.

  And as she looked at him, the baroness felt herself suffused with tender feelings that impeded her from listening to what he said. So she turned away and reached for her glass of tea on the low table. Then his harsh, accented voice came clear.

  ". . . As you know, I was in Braila until two days ago. This was during the investigation of events to which I will return. But first of all I wanted to protest to you and tell you something that might serve to explain the extraordinary reaction of the rural population in that area. Everywhere our policemen and inquisitors have been met with noncooperation when they attempt to carry out their normal duties. The simplest questions are met with noncompliance. It is a poisonous atmosphere, and it is the commissioner of the region who is responsible—I am referring to Domnul Codreanu, whom I have not liked or trusted. In interview after interview I heard complaints about him, accusations of corruption and bloodthirstiness, most of which I was not able to believe. It is clear that people suffer from the lack of rainfall in that area. In my estimate they have received not more than twenty percent of the drought relief that we have solicited from Berlin. This is the result: Whole sections of the coast have been depopulated. And even if one tenth of what I learned is justified, still this man Codreanu is culpable of terrible crimes. The chief of the German water board—you know they are drilling for oil in that area—also made high-handed and arrogant complaints, and if the Germans make these accusations, as you know it is like wolves complaining about lions. I tell you these things because of your soft heart when ordinary people are suffering for no reason. Nevertheless, the chief of the water board made the most blatant allegation of sorcery, conjuring, and prestidigitation, none of which conflicts with what the others have said, though that area is full of superstition."