Tourmaline

by Paul Park

  "You are quite insane." But he was still squeezing her shoulder.

  Now there were some more muffled announcements as a new match started. The Chevalier de Graz was walking among the scaffolding, looking for them. They saw him moving among the long corridors of supporting struts. Aristophanes Turkkan murmured in her ear. "Am I right in thinking you would take this motorcar and disappear in the dark night? That there is nothing real or sane about all this? I think we have been flying among ghosts and shadows, and so now we must come back to the ground. Does he look like a man of forty-five and more?"

  De Graz had not reassumed his jailbird overalls. Instead he'd found some new clothes from somewhere—perhaps from the umpires or his fellow wrestlers. He was dressed in pale tight trousers that left his shins bare, and he wasn't wearing any shoes. His shirt was loose around his neck. Now he turned and saw them. He came striding down the tallest corridor under the scaffold, spattered and striped by the light that filtered through the planks. He stepped through the empty bottles and detritus until he stood beside them. Turkkan let go of Andromeda's shoulder.

  She said, "You'd come with us. I am asking you to take us to the border."

  Then came de Graz's light, irritating, well-remembered voice, joining in as if he'd overheard. "You must have no concerns about the safety of your property. I give my word of honor in return for your generosity."

  This kind of idiotic nonsense had always been typical of de Graz. But because he spoke without a trace of irony or self-consciousness, it had an authenticity that was effective sometimes, though not at that moment. Turkkan stared at him.

  "My friend, you will not come to be my guest, me and my daughters?"

  "Sir, I long for my own country."

  "Bah!" Turkkan was immediately angry. He made a theatrical gesture with his arm, which had the effect of throwing him off balance. Staggering forward, he smacked his forehead on a protruding wooden strut under the grandstand. "Cowards!" he shouted. "Assassins—great Jehovah!" and fell heavily on his back.

  Andromeda and de Graz knelt down. The old man wasn't hurt. He was just stunned and drunk. He groaned as Andromeda slipped her hand between the buttons of his coat, searching for his pocketbook among the folds of his damp undershirt. But de Graz caught her wrist in his right hand. He squeezed until her muscles failed. At the same time he was staring at her, smiling. His eyes had always been a little dilated, she now remembered. And as always he'd forgotten the task at hand. It was going to be up to her to drag his stubborn carcass to Roumania.

  "Laissez-le," he whispered.

  "What about the gun?"

  "Laissez-le."

  But someone had already heard the old man's cries. Around the corner of the grandstand came the chauffeur and the soldier and two other men. Andromeda recognized one of them, a tall, emaciated man. He'd taken charge of her last bet—fifty piastres on Roderick de Burgos.

  "Crud," she murmured, a word her mother had been fond of in the house on Syndicate Road. The soldier had a gun in his hands, a strange, short, modern-looking rifle with a barrel of black steel.

  "Double-crud," she murmured. She stood up, forced herself to smile. She spoke in Turkish, "Oh, I'm glad you've come. The cadi has hurt himself."

  But the soldier wasn't having any of that. The men behind him were jabbering and swearing, but he said nothing. Andromeda showed her empty hands, then clasped them together. "Bey efendiler—gentlemen, where is the hospital? Look what has happened! He was drinking, I suppose."

  The idea was to get all of them inside a car. If de Graz would just get up and show himself also to be harmless, then . . . But it was not to be wished. He was still squatting over the body of Aristophanes Turkkan. She had scarcely finished speaking when he lifted the old man's revolver and fired.

  No doubt if he had gotten a clear shot, he would have pierced the soldier through the brain. He was quite a marksman. But two things happened as he pulled the trigger. First, the old man started to bellow and seized him by the wrist. Second, the gun misfired when the hammer came down, and there was a flash of light. De Graz cuffed Turkkan with the ruined gun, then threw himself at the soldier as he now stood uncertain. In just a few seconds he had seized the rifle by its barrel and twisted it away, and slapped the soldier down with it as well as one of the other men—not the bookmaker, Andromeda saw, which was a pity. Tall, with a long neck and big Adam's apple, he backed up beside the grand stand while de Graz took a few steps toward him.

  "Don't be such an asshole," Andromeda suggested uselessly. She ducked under the grandstand and started running down the corridor of scaffolding. De Graz came after her, and it wasn't until they had come out the other side into the crowd at the entrance to the pit that they realized the bookmaker had followed them. De Graz had dropped the gun.

  One part of the crowd was now discovering the three unconscious men and raising the alarm. But this part on the other side of the main grandstand had not yet heard anything about it. The distance was not long, however, and Andromeda strode quickly toward the gate. Beyond the barricade she could see black-coated janissaries—the next obstacle. But the way was now blocked by people in the crowd who came forward to meet de Graz and shake his hands. Roderick de Burgois was there, all smiles. And leaning on his arm was Mehmet the Conqueror.

  "Friends!" he cried. And de Graz was such a preening fool, he actually stopped. "Thank you for the lending of your trousers," he said in English.

  Another smaller wrestler now came forward to grasp his hand. And soon he was surrounded by a gang of men. Some were greased and oiled, naked from the waist up.

  "Please," said Andromeda, "will you help us?" She gestured toward the uniformed policemen. There also, where the crowd was less, stood the sleek and shiny motorcar of Aristophanes Turkkan. Its long bonnet was silver, and its wheel guards were gold. There were several others cars beside it.

  But no one was paying any attention to her. They thronged around the Chevalier de Graz, slapping him on the back. And when they pushed all together through the gate, it was less out of a plan to hinder the police than out of the natural carelessness of crowds. Perhaps a hundred people swelled through the barricade.

  But no doubt Mejid Pasha was a cautious man, Andromeda thought, unwilling to risk a riot. He would stop them at the city gates, or on the road, or at the Roumanian frontier. Doubtless he'd sent messages by telegraph.

  With the others she came to Turkkan's car. The chauffeur was standing beside the running board. Andromeda walked ahead of the crowd toward him. "Liitfen—please, your master sends his greetings. He asks if you can make two trips. First the Chevalier de Graz and me, along with one other. Next you will return for him."

  "Benim emirlerim Eristofanis Bey'dan aliyorum—I take my orders from Mr. Turkkan."

  He was no dope, Andromeda thought wistfully. And Mehmet the Conqueror now looked around. "Eee—so where is Turkkan? I thought he was going for a piss."

  Shouts came from behind them. With obvious reluctance, the chauffeur left the car and walked back toward the wrestling pitch. The wrestlers moved to the next car in the line, a larger and shabbier vehicle that belonged to Mehmet the Conqueror. Andromeda thanked some dual version of God for this piece of luck, and because the passenger compartment was closed. What to do? The janissaries were sure to stop the first car on the road.

  The bookmaker was still with them, the tall man with the Adam's apple who had followed them. "Vreau sa te ajut—Please, I want to help," he murmured in her ear, reaching for her elbow as she pulled angrily away. It took her a moment to realize he was speaking in Roumanian. He made a quick, possessive gesture down the line of automobiles. "Acesta e al meu—This one's mine."

  "You go on ahead to the cadi's house," she said to Mehmet the Conqueror. "We'll wait for him and follow."

  The old wrestler shrugged, then sat down heavily in the front seat of his motorcar. Roderick de Burgos worked the crank and slid behind the wheel as the engine came to life. Three other men squeezed into the back compartmen
t; through its small rear windows, the space seemed full of anonymous biceps and torsos, which was the effect Andromeda wanted. She hoped the police would let it run at least out of sight of the fairground before they forced it off the road.

  The car honked its horn and turned in a wide circle. Peter and Andromeda, still hidden in a crowd, came to the next conveyance in the line. This was even better, a windowless, closed van. Andromeda looked for the bookmaker. His dark hair was clipped close, and he wore wire-rimmed spectacles on his beak of a nose.

  "Daca vrei banii—If you want the money I owe you," she murmured, "you'll get us out of here." They didn't have more than a minute or so. She didn't look back to the cadi's motorcar. Every moment she expected to hear his strident voice.

  The van's rear compartment opened from the back with double doors. Peter, uncomprehending, got in while the bookmaker started the machine. It made a weak, nasty noise, then caught and held.

  The way to Turkkan's house led down Talat Pasa Caddesi to the gate, east along the main road of the town. Andromeda pointed south over the cobblestones into the warren of small lanes behind the Ucserefeli synagogue. "Is it true he is the Chevalier de Graz?" the bookmaker asked. "My father was with him at Nova Zagora. These Turkish infidels, they never understand."

  Confused now, the crowd had changed directions and was pulling back from them. Andromeda didn't turn around. "You are a patriot. Take this as payment, and when you get to the bottom of the Eski Carsisi, then you must stop for one moment. Then go on to the Dobric road as quickly as you can. Then you drive straight north toward the border, far as you can manage. If they stop you, you've done nothing wrong."

  She pressed into his palm the ring she'd bought in Alexandria, her last stake on this gamble. Then she got into the back of the van and held the doors closed as it bumped away toward the domed mass of the temple.

  Soon they were beyond the range of lanterns and torchlight. After only a few minutes the van stopped. Andromeda pulled Peter out, then rapped on the doors. The van turned at the corner.

  She pulled de Graz along the wall beside the garbage ditch. The lanes here were deserted, and it was filthy dark. This was a commercial district. In time they could see the lights of the railway yard. The old city wall had been torn down along this side. The station was a few miles out of town.

  They walked across the wide deserted yard among the boxcars on their sidings and the piles of lumber under canvas. They looked for the night watchman but saw no one. They crossed an embankment of crushed stone. The land was arid on the other side of the river. There were few trees, and they could see the moon. The air had lost the perfume of the town, and as Andromeda walked along the track, she was aware for the first time of a gunpowder smell from de Graz's hands, burned from the misfire.

  "We've got to move," she said. The stones and splintered ties were hard under her boots. De Graz was barefoot, but he didn't complain.

  She spoke in English, and he answered in French: "C'est loin?"

  "Not far."

  They walked on south. In time they saw the station on ahead, the four long platforms and the high gas lampposts, under whose light they could see black-coated janissaries and dogs.

  But the train was there too, halted for the late dinner hour, taking on coal for the trip north. The long black steam engine led a row of silver passenger cars. Beside them men and women smoked and talked, while the guards walked back and forth.

  "Mejid Pasha," whispered Andromeda.

  "Vous ètes fou."

  Folle, Andromeda corrected in her own mind. But she said nothing. It didn't matter. They stood in the cinders of the track, in the darkness under the half moon.

  The engine was the second in the line. In front of it there stood a gray, closed, metal car without windows or markings. Sometimes, Andromeda knew, the trains from Constantinople would push empty freight cars in front of them in case Bulgar bandits had mined the track near the frontier. But this was different.

  The track went round a curve north of the station. On the outside of the curve it ran along a raised embankment. De Graz and Andromeda now descended part of this steep small hill, so they could approach the station out of sight. The gray car protruded beyond the station platform, outside the circle of gaslight into the dark.

  Now on their hands and knees, pulling themselves along the dry bushes, they came along the outside of the curve. Gouts of steam rose to the sky, and they were spattered in the hot spray. Presently they heard the long hiss. The platform was hidden by the arc of the train as they approached the mysterious gray car. Now in this one place they could stand upright, hidden even from the headlights of the engine, which shined through the struts of the Car. They could see the driver's compartment, still empty. And it was impossible to imagine they could climb upon the car itself, under the driver's nose. And it was impossible to think they could find their way among the brightly-lit passenger cars. Surely the dogs would smell her, Andromeda thought, would smell her scent.

  She put her hand to the smooth gray metal. Above her was a curved, padlocked door. Squatting down, she looked into the carriage's underside. Once she'd seen a movie about people escaping from the Nazis—yes, it was just possible. Between the track and the recessed bottom of the car there was a distance of about three feet. Above the system of axles and struts there were steel spreaders at intervals, and between them a woven metal grille. These spreaders were not structural to the car, but they supported five oblong blocks of cork. Lying on her back, Andromeda dug her fingers into them. They were saturated with cold water.

  "Help me," she whispered. But de Graz did nothing. He squatted on his heels on the railroad tie, peering into the greasy dirty belly of the carriage as she worked at the cork blocks.

  "Get underneath here," she whispered, afraid that the engine driver would soon take his seat. The headlamps of the train shed a harsh, indirect light, which shone on both sides of the track. The cork blocks were made to be removed; you could slide them inch by inch off the edge of the grille until they fell—greasy, sodden, heavy—to the cinders.

  "Slide them down," she whispered. But de Graz did nothing, and so she pushed them off herself. Instead of rolling down the embankment, they lay in the debris that lined the outside of the curving track. Now there was a space between the spreaders and the cold roof, and the grille would hold them. Above, a steel grating was set into the bottom of the car. Water leaked from it.

  She and de Graz climbed into that space and lay on their stomachs end to end, peering down at the track two feet below them. They lay there a long time. Once they saw a man's boots as he walked around the car. Andromeda thought he'd have to notice the discarded blocks. But there was enough anonymous junk along the track to hide them.

  Toward midnight, with much screeching and hooting, the train started to move. Then, and in the next hours, Andromeda realized that the movie she had seen had not in any way tried to reproduce the experience of riding on the underside of a railway train. Thrown up from the track, chunks of cinder pelted them. And they were soaked with the cold water from the grate. Nor was it quiet under there. Nor was her position a comfortable one. She listened to the pounding shudder of the track for several hours, the screech of the bare wheels as they went around a turn. The ties were like a ladder below her, and she was clattering up the ladder to Roumania, Roumania, Roumania.

  Finally they slowed and stopped. Andromeda expected they had reached a station, but there were no lights and no sign of a platform. Even the headlamps of the train for a moment were extinguished. Andromeda was in the throbbing, quiet darkness. "This really sucks," she whispered.

  But when she turned her head she saw de Graz was gone. Above where he had been, the drainage grate into the car had been removed. Maybe this whole way he'd been working on it, and now she saw he'd managed to pry it from its bracket. It lay on the metal grille, a rectangle maybe eighteen inches square— enough to climb through.

  She slid backward and then poked herself up through the hole just as
the train started to move again. It lurched forward as she pulled herself up into a cold black space. "Are you there?' she whispered.

  "Oui."

  She sat down on the wet metal floor. Now the headlamps were lit again, and the only light came from the square hole. After a moment her eyes adjusted, and she saw de Graz standing near her, holding onto a bracket as the train went around a curve, examining a kerosene lantern that was set into the wall.

  "I've got a match," she said.

  There was a box of phaetons in her pocket, which she gave to him. And when he lit a match, she reached back to cool her hand against one of several refrigerator-sized blocks of ice, tied together in the center of the car.

  The metal floor was wet, but she didn't stand up. She sat next to the square hole and watched the track go by. There was a small open space around the blocks of ice, illuminated by the kerosene lantern. But most of their car was taken up with freight: boxes of fruit, wooden crates of jars and bottles.

  The light shuddered to the rhythm of the train. It fell on Pieter de Graz in his wrestler's clothes. She found himself staring up at him and he stared back. There was nothing else to do.

  She cleared her throat. "Hey, you looked really cute out there without your pants."

  She was talking about him in the wrestler's pitch, grappling naked with the Spanish fighter. She said it to goad him, but was not prepared for the ferocious look he gave her. His face, contorted with disgust, bore no resemblance to the face he'd had that evening when she'd first seen him at the pitch. Every feature was the same, but she saw no trace of Peter Gross.

  "So are you still in there at all?" she asked, but he said nothing.

  She persevered. "Do you still remember how Cardillo kicked you out of music class? I thought that was so cool. You just sat there with your eyes closed, humming that song, and you wouldn't look at him. Or what about the next time when you had that fight with Kevin Markasev?"

  "Je me souviens—I remember."

  "And Nova Zagora?"