Messenger from Mystery

by Deno Trakas

  She didn’t laugh. “Who is Woody Allen?”

  “A comedian. And film-maker.”

  “Who is Warren Beatty?”

  “A very handsome movie star who has the reputation of having slept with hundreds of beautiful women.”

  She laughed, but I didn’t think she got it, and I was reminded of something I’d learned from my ESL class—humor was culture specific. I wondered what else was. Not sex—I knew that much.

  The human heart in conflict with itself, Faulkner said, is the stuff of good literature. And it was the stuff of my life. Another letter from Azi:

  Dear Jay,

  How are you my friend? I am fine.

  I like to talk to you on phone. I like to hear you. I want to call to you again, but difficult.

  I work now in bank for three days of week. One day hezbollahi come in bank and xxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx.

  Everything change but no change now with Islam Republic Party Control of Majlis. We have new Prime Minister and many new Ministers xxx xxxxxxxxxxx. Bani-Sadr xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Sadegh is Foreign Minister. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. Students and mullahs say Down with Ghotbzadeh but Imam Khomeini say everyone in revolution must to speak free. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx. I no think solution of problem is soon. I live very here now with mother and to visit sisters, my time in United States is far, I no believe I live there, but I remember you and I believe.

  I have letter from Nadia. She say you are good friend. I am glad.

  I read Poetry of Robert Frost. Many I no understand but I like poem Reluctance. Here is end.

  Ah, when to the heart of man

  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  To go with the drift of things,

  To yield with a grace to reason,

  And bow and accept the end

  Of a love or a season?

  I only no understand “To go with the drift of things.”

  I hope you are fine.

  Love,

  Azi

  I couldn’t believe they’d redacted Robert Frost. I looked up the line, “Was it ever less than a treason,” and figured the word treason was the issue.

  Her letter made my treasonous heart pound with yearning and guilt. I didn’t tell Nadia that, but the next afternoon, when she dropped into my office, I did tell her I got another letter.

  She brushed ashes off the chair we had for students. She sat down and looked pleased. “Good, Jay. How she is?”

  “Fine.” I considered for a moment, trying to recall the details. “Actually she seems sad. You probably know as much as I, but she said she lives with her unhappy mother and visits her sisters and works three days a week in a bank. That’s all. Her life seems so limited. And politically the country is in chaos. There were a lot of censored sentences, but I could tell that she and Sadegh are more and more frustrated with the mullahs and the militants.”

  “Is terrible. They have boys like Saad control the government. Maybe U.S. government need to send you and football players to Iran.”

  I laughed distractedly because I was thinking of something else—I was trying to decide if I could tell Nadia about the CIA plan because, well, if they called, how could I leave for three days without telling her. . . . “I’d like that.”

  “Those big boys would kick some ass,” she said proudly.

  “Yeah, I’d like that a lot,” I agreed, but I was thinking of seeing Azi. And I decided I couldn’t tell Nadia, mainly because of the need for secrecy, but also because she would worry about how the trip would affect our relationship.

  “Hey, I just remember, you have play called ‘Streetcar of Desire’?”

  “Streetcar Named Desire. Yeah, I think it’s in one of my anthologies. Why?”

  “My teacher talk about it in the class, he say it is best American play, so I want to read it.”

  I got up and found my Norton Anthology of American Literature on a shelf, checked the table of contents, flipped to it, and handed it over. “It’s one of my favorites too,” I said.

  She took the book and almost let it drop as if it were too heavy to hold. “This book full of plays?”

  “No. Poetry and fiction too.”

  “And you read it all?”

  “No. I’ve read a lot of it, but not all.”

  “You are good man, Jay. You are smart, and handsome, and you kick some ass.”

  “Thanks, Nadia. I’m not any of those, but I appreciate your prejudice in my favor.”

  “You are, Jay.”

  “We’ll see if I’m smart when I take my comps. But I haven’t kicked any ass—I hit Saad in the head with a tennis racket when he wasn’t looking, and I had the guts to do that only because I was backed up by the USC football team.”

  “For Saad, head, ass, same thing.”

  CHAPTER 9

  I’d never believed that April was the cruelest month as Eliot claimed. In South Carolina, April meant blooming azaleas and dogwoods, warm days and cool nights, young women shucking their coats, the Masters and the early baseball season, hope for the Braves. But it had its demons—pine and oak pollen often filled the air and coated every surface with funky, yellow haze and made my sinuses explode. The beauty of the season usually prevailed, and spring tended to pull me into optimism, but some human squall always hovered on the horizon. The hostages were still hostages—every day was still counted by ABC’s Nightline: 149, 150, 151. The CIA never called, and the options for solving the crisis seemed ever more limited.

  One morning when my bedside radio came on at 6:45, I was in a Benadryl haze and thought I must be misunderstanding the DJ who was reading an Associated Press release stating that a special forces rescue mission to free the hostages had been aborted due to equipment failure. According to Pentagon sources, our helicopters had been incapacitated by a sand storm in the desert of eastern Iran where they had gathered before their flight into Tehran. To make matters worse, much worse, eight of our men had died in a crash of the rescue vehicles. I turned on the TV, and the morning news confirmed the story.

  The American people hadn’t been told that a military option was being considered, and we were torn by our grief over the dead soldiers, our anger that we had tried anything so foolish, and our disappointment that it had failed. This would be the last nail in Carter’s coffin, I thought—he’d never get re-elected now. And would it also mean the end of the CIA’s efforts to solve the crisis through backdoor negotiations? Or would such efforts increase out of desperation? Would I ever get my call? I wanted it badly because I thought it would bring resolution of some kind in some way for me and Azi.

  But it was April, and the sun went down, but it also rose, but then it would go down again. That complex wisdom came to me from Ecclesiastes in the epigraph of Hemingway’s Sun Also Rises, which I was teaching in English 102, and his story ended with Jake and Brett snuggled together miserably in their impossible love.

  I withdrew from Nadia a bit—not by conscious effort, it just sort of happened—but although she noticed, she didn’t say anything, she didn’t say what’s going on with us, Jay, what are you thinking, what are we doing, and I was grateful because I wouldn’t have known how to answer. So we just went with what we had and continued with most of our routines. We rarely had sex, but sometimes we fell asleep together, and we were asleep in my bed in my apartment when I heard the crash of breaking glass. I sat up with a jolt, fast enough to see drops of fire raining into the room and landing on the carpet and the bed, where they danced as if to a flickering, threatening music. Amazed by the surreal sight, wondering if I was having one of my weird anxiety dreams, I watched.

  Nadia stirred and said groggily, “What, Jay?” I shook her arm so she would open her eyes and watch with me. “What?” she said again as she lifted her head and took in the scene. She screamed, pushed and kicked the sheet and blanket off of us with her hands and feet, and the flames subsided for a moment. Then she pushed me out of bed and scrambled out
behind me and kept screaming.

  I tried to finish stripping the top sheet and blanket, hoping to wad them up to snuff the flames, but as soon as I lifted the blanket, air got under it and the flames doubled in size, enveloped my hand. I jerked it back, then felt the pain and tucked it under my arm. Nadia screamed louder. “Go,” I said, “call the operator, say there’s a fire, and tell her the address.”

  She couldn’t move—she just stood behind me, holding me around the waist, looking with horror at the fire, and continued to scream. I pushed her out of the room, through the living room, and into the kitchen, put the phone in her hand. “What is number?” she asked, trembling.

  “Zero.”

  “No, number of apartment.”

  “146 Woodrow Street.”

  While she dialed I ran back into the bedroom and saw that there was no hope of putting out the fire, which was everywhere—the mattress, the bedclothes, the carpet, the curtains—I was amazed by how fast the flames had spread. The smell of gasoline and choking smoke filled the room. I hurried back to the kitchen, where Nadia was talking on the phone and having trouble making herself understood. I took the receiver from her, told her to find a pot and fill it with water, pointed to the cabinet beside the stove. I told the operator what had happened and where to send the fire department. I hung up, joined Nadia, put an arm around her, and put my burned hand under the water as it slowly filled the pot—the water felt good on my hand, but filling pots of water in the kitchen was not going to put out the fire.

  “Can you go into the bathroom and grab whatever medicines you see in the cabinet?”

  “No, I am afraid, I am sorry, I—” She began to cry.

  “It’s okay, Nadia.” For a moment, her fear and need broke through to me—I squeezed her shoulders and she hugged me tight around the waist. “Just take my bike or whatever and go outside, sit in the car.” She didn’t move, so I pulled her to the front door, grabbed my jacket from the hook, wrapped it around her and urged her outside.

  “You come too,” she said.

  “No, I’ve got to try to get some of my stuff. I’ll be right back.”

  “What if he is here?”

  “Who?”

  “Man who start fire.”

  I hadn’t thought of it, but as soon as she said it, I said “Saad.”

  “Saad? You are sure?”

  “No, but who else? I’ve got to get my stuff.”

  “I kill him,” she said as she rushed outside, no longer afraid.

  I didn’t think Saad would be hanging around, so I let her go as I went back inside to see if I could salvage anything. I got the pot of water from the sink and carried it into the burning bedroom and tried to throw the water onto the dresser where my keys and wallet were. It splashed out some of the fire, but I would’ve had to take several steps through flames to get to it. I began to choke on the smoke, so I left the room and closed the door behind me.

  I wheeled my bike out of the living room and into the yard. Nadia had circled the house and was coming up by the tulip poplar. “I don’t find him, sonofbitch. I swear, Jay, I go to K-Mart tomorrow and buy gun.” But I didn’t answer—I was in salvage mode now and rushed back inside, scooped up my typewriter and an armload of books, and dumped them under the tree. Nadia grabbed my arm to keep me from going back and said, “No more, Jay, is too dangerous.” As I looked at the duplex—the only visible sign of the disaster was smoke coming out of my front door and rising from the back of the house—I thought of my neighbor, Hitchmough, a 40-year-old British cyclist, computer programmer, and drummer in a local band. I ran to his front door and banged on it. No answer. I tried the handle—locked. I banged some more, then went around back, banged on his bedroom window, and shouted “Hitch!”

  I barely heard him moan, “What the bloody hell?”

  “It’s Jay. The house is on fire. Get your stuff and get out now.”

  Then I ran back to the front and ignored Nadia again, screaming at me to stay out, and tried to dash in for another load. But that’s when the fire burned through the flimsy bedroom door and the heat and smoke pummeled me out. As I took a moment to suck in some fresh, cool air, I realized Hitchmough hadn’t emerged yet, so I went back to his door and slapped my palm on it again and again. Nothing. I looked through his front window—nothing. “Hitch!” I screamed. Nothing. I lifted an empty cement planter at the base of the front steps and threw it through the front window. Then I crawled in, cutting my hands and feet on the shards. There was no sign of the fire here, except the room was warmer than usual, and Hitch was sound asleep, so I shook him and yanked him out of bed, threw his blanket over him, and led him outside.

  When he saw the smoke and flames through my open door, he shook his head violently and said, “Whoa, it’s a freakin Inferno!” He scurried inside, dropping his blanket, and wheeled out his new racing bike. I picked up the blanket, gave it to him as he came out, and pushed his bike to Nadia, who was still standing by the tree, trembling, protesting. Then I followed him back in.

  “What do you want me to get?” I asked as he crossed the porch.

  “My records,” he said. “Or my computer.” His Apple computer was the possession I coveted most, so I grabbed that. We’d each made a trip when the fire truck roared up and the firemen ordered us out of the way and into the street where neighbors had started to gather to enjoy the show.

  Nadia and I sat on the hood of her car, cuddled under a fireman’s heavy rubber coat, and Hitch hunkered in his blanket as the flames were doused and the cool night air chilled our skin. The fireman who gave us the coat also treated my burned hand with ointment and a few thin layers of gauze, and gave me some Band-Aids for my cuts. By the time the crew had put out the fire, my apartment was a charred husk, and Hitch’s side was damaged by smoke and water. Neither of us had renter’s insurance—we commiserated as we watched from the street. I’d managed to save my bike, some books, and my typewriter, but not my stereo, records or TV—why hadn’t I gone for them first? Later people would remark about that, my decision to save books first, but it wasn’t a decision, it was a reaction, and a stupid one. Of course I’d also left everything in my bedroom closet—my clothes, coats, shoes, tennis racket, a box of photographs and letters—what else was I forgetting? Hitch had his bike, computer, and some of his records and didn’t seem concerned about the rest. “It was mostly shit,” he said. “Sometimes it pays to be poor.” But all I could think of was, How will I replace anything?

  The chief fireman, a stout, red-faced, fiftyish man who was still wearing all his gear and seemed to be enjoying this death-defying adventure in the middle of the night, jostled over to talk to us as soon as his men had the fire under control. He was surprised to hear that I thought I knew exactly what had happened and who had done it. “A Molotov cocktail, you say?”

  I nodded. “That’d be my guess.”

  “We don’t see many of those round here. But we’ll have an investigator come by in the morning and check it out. So who is this raghead, and why would he do this?” he asked.

  I backfilled the story of our escalating conflict and he took notes, shaking his head the whole time as if he didn’t believe me.

  “Burning down a house with people inside ain’t the same as beating someone up because he stole your girl.” He looked at Nadia as if it were her fault.

  “I know,” I said, “I thought it was all over, but I guess Saad didn’t.”

  “He’s crazy boy, fanatic,” Nadia said.

  “This could be attempted murder.”

  I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, but—“I guess so,” I said.

  “Well, I’m sure the police’ll want to ask you some questions. They should be here already.”

  “I hope they hurry—I want them to catch the little shit before he gets away,” I said, looking at the smoldering, dripping wreck. The roof hadn’t collapsed, so the basic structure was intact, but my side looked hollow and haunted, sort of the way I felt.

  “Y’all got somewh
ere to stay tonight?” he asked.

  “Yes, we go to my place,” Nadia said.

  “What about you, buddy?” he asked Hitch.

  “I dunno. Lemme think. My head’s a bit blotty.” He rubbed his blonde hair that still had a green tint from the last time he’d dyed it.

  “He come to my place too,” Nadia said.

  Hitch looked at me, I nodded, so he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Right, fantastic,” and nodded several times.

  “Okay, well,” the fireman said, “we’ll be here another hour or so to be sure there ain’t no hot spots. Y’all need to stick around until the police get here, and then, if they’ll let you in, you can see if there’s anything inside you want to salvage.” Just then a flashing blue light signaled their arrival.

  I repeated my story, and the police confirmed that they would take it seriously and catch the perp—I’d never heard that term before but figured it out. I gave them Saad’s address, and they said they’d send someone over there soon. They preferred that we not go inside, but Hitch talked them into letting him go into his place since it wasn’t technically where the crime had occurred, and the firemen didn’t think it was in danger of collapsing. He said he needed to get some clothes, but he really wanted to get his marijuana before the police found it. He came out in five minutes carrying what looked like a heavy load of wet laundry wrapped in a sheet and dumped it in the trunk of Nadia’s car.

  After several trips using Nadia’s car—Hitch didn’t have one and my keys were covered with melted plastic from a cup I’d left on the dresser—we were safely stowed with all our remaining stuff at Nadia’s. Hitch lounged with a clean sheet and blanket on the sofa while a load of clothes spun in the washer. Nadia and I shared a shower, too exhausted to make it sexual. After she put on pajamas and I put on a pair of her sweatpants, we went in to check on Hitch and found him smoking a joint. “Join me,” he said. “You saved my freakin life, mate, not to mention my weed.”

  I was afraid I’d fall asleep if I sat, and Nadia had never smoked as far as I knew, but Hitch seemed to need to offer us a token toke. We sat and I took the joint he handed me, sucked up a lungful and gave it to Nadia. I held in the smoke and watched her copy me—I thought she’d choke but she didn’t. I let out my breath and said, “The firemen would’ve dragged you out if I hadn’t.”