The Night Archer

by Michael Oren

  After class, they went to one of those billiards-and-darts bars he’d only seen in movies and sat for hours chugging. Adam, never a talker, did the listening and there was much to hear. Successive fathers, a mother who lived in a converted bus until she was too obese to climb in. Schools she went to, schools she dropped out of, jobs from bartender to apple picker. And lovers. A prodigious number of them, to hear her tell it. Football players, gangsters, a scientist and a saxophonist—Adam lost count. But, strangely, he enjoyed it. He could not imagine a life more different from his, so linear and uneventful. “To Adam, the first man on earth,” Taji toasted him. “And I can be your Eve.”

  Sex with her was more like wrestling than lovemaking and often left him bruised. His ego, too, took a beating, from her suggestions, which were more like demands, for satisfying her. Yet she taught him much, got him drinking and smoking and listening to music that sounded like a prison revolt. And, of course, he loved her, a moth-to-flame thing that he knew would scorch him but left him wanting to burn. He yearned to be like her—defiant, indulgent—and to follow her every order.

  That longing led him to a dimly lit apartment empty except for the crates. It was all so easy, Taji explained. Just load up his car—Adam came with wheels—and drive up north to Akram. “Give him the pills, take his cash, and go. Think you can handle that, Rambo?” she teased him. Adam nodded. He knew better than to ask where the aspirin had come from, better than to ask if this shipment would be the last.

  Instead, he loaded, and he drove, knuckles serrating the wheel. Taji smoked and went on about best-forgotten nights in Kathmandu and somehow the hours passed. Too soon, he felt, they reached the grove that served as their rendezvous and the break in the fence where Akram waited.

  He was nothing like Adam pictured him. No muscle-braided thug with shades and a shaved head but a diminutive farmer of scant teeth and fewer words. Far stronger than he appeared, he hoisted the crates and tossed them into the back of a tractor-hauled cart. Taji received an envelope. That was it—no thank yous, not even a goodbye. They got back into the car and headed, giddy, back south.

  That night there were shots on the house and sex, violent even by Taji’s standards. Still, Adam couldn’t sleep. He lay next her to seemingly unbreathing body and studied the walls. He fought to come to grips with what he’d become—into what he’d let her make him—and to decide whether he liked it. Part of him was thrilled but another part horrified, titillated and scared. Yet all these thoughts converged into the single realization that, yes, this could be him.

  That awareness crystallized with each excursion, each payment and the inebriated evenings squandering it. Adam acquired an earring and, with Taji’s assistance, picked out a death’s head tattoo. She even reserved him a date at the parlor the day after their next delivery. This one would be different, though. Adam understood that the minute she pried open one of the crates. Instead of pink plastic, he saw shimmering in the single bulb something long, gray, and oiled. The mere sight of the guns must have made him gasp because the next second Taji was socking him in the arm and telling him what a man he was. They were ready for this, she assured him. They deserved so much more from life.

  About this time, through a friend of a friend, Adam met Iris. She was the anti-Taji: hardworking, traditional. She wore her strawberry hair in plaits and preferred cargo pants to jeans. Her skin was unadorned, her eyes, earthy. He looked at her suddenly like a castaway spying land. Though accustomed to rescuing others—a cat from a tree, the boy pinned under his tricycle—Adam now admitted that he was in need of saving.

  And Iris saved him. “Can’t you see that she’s using you, Adam?” she railed at him the moment he confessed. “Can’t you see the wreck you’re making of your life?”

  Iris was adamant in her instructions. He was never to see Taji again or even answer her phone calls. Iris invited him to move in with her—a roommate had just left—and lay low for a while. Cut his hair, get a regular job. Saddened, relieved, Adam obeyed.

  The housing arrangement proved permanent. Days passed, weeks, yet Taji never called. Years later, Adam still wondered why. Perhaps she was in prison or overseas or even dead. Or maybe she simply knew. From the beginning she probably sensed that he was not cut out for a life beyond the edge, a life of thrills and hazards unseen. Not cut out for her.

  So, the marriage with Iris. So, the house in the quiet neighborhood with Dina, Naomi, and Tom, and the family evenings around the dinner table. So, Teitelbaum and the aspirins Adam frequently downed. He took two now and settled back in his desk. His headache would pass in a little while. It almost always did.

  Yet this one continued to nag him throughout the afternoon and right up until quitting time. Autumn was segueing into winter and the streets were already dark when Adam put on his coat and began his homeward trek. Spurred by the pain behind his eyes, he strode faster than usual and didn’t even pause at the intersections. Except for the last one, and only because the blind man was there again, his cane like a metronome on the curb.

  Adam stood next to him, so near that he could smell antiseptic—a blind man’s smell, he figured. And the blind man must have felt Adam there was well, for his cane stopped tapping. Instead, without waiting for the beep on green, he stepped off into the traffic.

  Adam began to move. Then he didn’t. Then he did. Back and forth he shimmied on the sidewalk, as the blind man marched into the beams. Clutching his briefcase, he watched. Adam, with horror and anger and awe.

  What’s a Parent to Do?

  Seated at a half-circle wooden table fitted into a kitchen niche, under a faux-Tiffany lamp that turned their faces calico, they fretted. Silent at first, hands folded on a surface scored with nicks, many of which they, themselves, had made with misused forks and horseplay. They stared at knitted fingers, at the walls that had seen so many family dramas, though nothing quite like this, and finally at one another.

  “We could stop her, you know.” Hilary whispered, as if her voice would carry. But the old house was good at compartmentalizing sounds, as they both knew. How many times, as kids, had they fooled around in this kitchen, and as teenagers on the living room sofa, without alerting anyone upstairs?

  “She can’t hear us,” William reminded her. “Especially not with that music.”

  Hilary groaned, “That music…”

  William nodded and sucked in a corner of his mouth, signifying agreement. The gesture might also suggest that he remembered what it was to be wild and devil-may-care, but they both knew that he didn’t. Bug-eyed and butt-jawed, he was never popular in school, never went out on hot dates or got in trouble. Not like Hilary who, with a primal handsomeness, played muse to high school poets. Yet neither of them ever behaved so brazenly, with such scandalous delight, as this.

  “But we can’t stop her,” William continued. “That’s just the point.”

  Hilary glared at him, clasping at strands of conversation. Her fingernail deepened a nick. “Those jeans she wears, those skirts.”

  “Nothing to the imagination.”

  “Eww. Don’t make me think…”

  An antique clock measured their beats of silence. It echoed out of the kitchen and into the living room with its dark, brocaded furniture. There, over a mantel, hung a portrait of an elderly man, his expression as steely as his hair. A memorial candle flickered beneath. This was the altar that Hilary and William passed each night in judgment, and every time they failed.

  “Maybe some outside counseling?” The bug-eyes brightened. “An intervention!”

  Above them, through the kitchen ceiling, music thrumped, a hair dryer wailed. Next, they knew, came the makeup—mascara and rouge over strata of base—enough to please an undertaker. At least that’s what Hilary told her, only to receive that same sucked-in lip—a hereditary expression, but in her mouth it snickered, “so what?”

  “It happened so fast,” Hilary said, but to her knuckles, ignoring William’s ideas.

  Still, he responded, “Too fast.�
�

  They both recalled the retiring person they loved, yet never excessively, simply because she never demanded it. She never demanded much of anything, content to be precisely what she seemed—dutiful, unprepossessing, demure. That is until death intervened. One grave closed and another sprung open, and up she arose—in William and Hilary’s eyes—monstrous.

  “Some limits, then.” William was back to advice. “Otherwise she’ll be out all night.”

  “Drinking. Cavorting. And…Eww!”

  “Eleven o’clock curfew. Okay, twelve. But not a minute more. We’ve got to be responsible.”

  Hilary groaned again, surrendering to a sigh. “Or realistic. She’s too old to be told what to do and we’re too old-fashioned.” Metallic eyes watered as she gazed out of the kitchen and into the living room with its icon. “And after all those years of being good, she only wants to have fun.”

  Another nod, another retracted lip. She was right, of course. William suddenly felt ancient. But not for long. The dryer-wail ceased and was soon replaced by heel-clacks descending the stairs. They looked up from the table and gasped.

  “What do you think?” she said, turning on a spike and showing more flesh than either had seen in years, and even then only in bathing suits. The hair was a color unknown to nature. “It’s called Kinky Pink, in case you were wondering.”

  They weren’t. Their minds, in fact, were as blank as their faces as a headlight blazed through the transom windows, violating the living room and its shrine.

  “Oops, I’ve got to jump,” she giggled in a tone cheerier than any they remembered. “He hates waiting, that Irving.”

  Hilary and William gawked at each other. Their expressions asked, “Irving?” But before they could inquire, in a diaphanous cloud and thunderclap of heels, she was gone. Only her parting remark remained.

  “Go home, you two,” she’d laughed as she hurried through the living room to the foyer. “Go be with your families. Be happy. Live!”

  The slamming door shook the table where the two siblings sat speechless, watching their mother depart. It shivered the light on their faces. Over the mantel, the portrait sagged. The candle nearly blew out.

  Slave to Power

  My ears can scarcely distinguish the thump of waves from the thunder of cannons and the relentless pounding of drums. The sunlight on the water dances with the reflection of helmets and shields. Cheers from the crowd mingle with the prisoners’ howls. Only the smells will diverge. Soon, the tang of sea will shrink from the stench of blood and the other putrescence that dependably gush from the impaled.

  I, Mehmed Pasha, the vali of this entire province, command this ceremony. For this is a festival like any other. A time of gathering, of showing devotion, and even delight, but always within the confines of order. For like the sea and its constant waves, like the sun and all other heavenly spheres, so, too, is our state governed by Allah, blessed be He, who determines our lives from the first drop of sperm to the final exhalation. Who rules with a wise and punishing will through His chosen power on earth.

  I am that power. So says the crop with three horse-hair lanyards I slap into my palm, the curled golden slippers adorning my feet, and the gleaming white turban that, cloud-like, envelops my head. My mouth speaks the fate of countless subjects, the marching of soldiers like the hundred mustered here holding back the crowd, and the sailing of the war-galleys rolling behind the surf. I am the power, and yet I am powerless. With all my jewels and concubines and dominion over life and death, I am lower than any of these filthy peasants pushing for a glimpse of the condemned. I am their slave.

  Another burst of cannon fire, a further rumble of drums. Three infidels, rags barely covering their uncircumcised parts, are hauled into the square. The clink of the chains on their arms and legs echo the gulls’ screeching overhead. The three have been beaten, but not so severely that they will swiftly succumb to the sentence. Blinded in one eye only and their tongues cut in half so that they can still see what is happening to them and vainly babble for mercy.

  Here, in my heart, compassion and cruelty merge. Freedom and bondage as well. Soldiers grip the prisoners’ limbs, lift them and force them onto their backs. At just such moments, strangely, an image recurs to me. Of a village long ago and in a mountainous place, its horizon emblazoned with crosses. Other soldiers grabbing my spindly arms and legs and dragging me, wailing, from a woman whose cries sounded deep and animal-like. I, too, was beaten, but not so ruthlessly as to not survive the journey. Blindfolded and bound but with my ears open to the smack of cartwheels on the palace flagstones and the call to prayer that I instantly mistook for a curse. And for the first word—Devshirme—of the language I would learn for endless hours each day until finally forgetting my own. Devshirme, the Collecting.

  That, too, is part of the order. The tithe of Christian boys gathered each year and consigned to the state. The strong ones designated as soldiers; the bright ones educated as scribes. And the special ones, those as nimble with a sword as they were with numbers, able to command and judge with no sentiment or interests other than the state’s, were destined to be pashas. Trained in the arts, in religion and its sciences, and in all our noblest ways. Instilled with the duty to wage holy war against the Frank and to devote their lives—if ordered, sacrifice them—to our Sultan.

  A slave-run state, a divinely ordained state, in rhythm with the sea and the movement of spheres and the dictates of His will. And that will demands that the pashas never marry, never father male heirs who might threaten the Sultan’s dynasty. Never enter the harem over which the eunuchs keep vigilant guard. Pashas and eunuchs, the first without pasts and the second without futures—on these twin pillars rests our state.

  Our loving and ruthless state, which rewards its subjects’ loyalty with booty in wartime and food during famines; which guards the roads against brigands and elevates believers over infidels. And chastises rebels as only those who revolt against the order must, with the long, whetted stake.

  The soldiers spread each prisoner’s legs and insert a spike between them. At that moment, always, the crowd goes silent. The sea and the gulls, seemingly, as well. The infidels look to their heaven, but there is no hope. No more than when I was torn from that memory village and the crosses scoring its sky. Now, though, I look elsewhere. To the palace and the marble domed window near its tower. There, through the latticework, over the rim of her veil, I can see her eyes studying me. Worshipping me and waiting. Samira, whose name means Cool Summer Breeze but whose eyes flare like stoked coals. Stolen from the Sultan’s harem, after her eunuch guard was first bribed then garroted. And now here she waits. In my palace, in my vali, and bearing my son.

  Another soldier, burly and specially trained for the task, appears with a mallet. He approaches the first prisoner, raises the hammer over the blunt end of the stake, and awaits the signal. Here is the power, the order entrusted to me by Allah, achieved by my inbred skills as by my cunning and brutality. Here is the moment when all—the sea, the spheres, the palace’s turrets and minarets—meld. The white turban rises and falls, almost imperceptibly, and the mallet strikes.

  The crowd erupts, so uproariously that I cannot hear the prisoner’s screams. For with that first blow, they all scream. Their single eyes roll and half-tongues flail. Only later, as the spike rips upward through a prisoner’s innards, through his belly and chest, do the responses differ. Some will yowl and others whimper, their heads thrashing and pounding the flagstones. Others still will pray. All will be astonished at the thought, if not the agony, of the thick wooden pole skewering them from anus to collarbone, and the death that awaits all too patiently for days, while children gawk at them and ravens circle above.

  My thoughts, though, are with Samira. While my eyes observe the ritual, my heart lifts through the lattices to hers and the son slumbering beneath it. From the first drop of sperm, Allah determines, to our lives’ last breath. And, this, too, has been foretold.

  Or so I must believe. I must b
elieve that this order, like the embroidery on Samira’s gown, is sewn from a single thread. Unraveled, a single stitch can dissolve the whole. So the cord that binds my heir to her womb will, once cut, begin the unlacing. The Sultan will fall, and all will declare my dynasty. With soldiers and galleys and lands stretching eastward from the sea. I will bear his title, his slippers and turban. My pashas will all be slaves. And I, at last, will be free.

  The mallet’s work is almost finished. Yet another soldier steps forward with a knife and slices neatly on the back of each prisoner’s neck. There, with one last tap, the stake emerges from the skin. The single eyes strain vainly to watch it, the bright pinewood picket sprouting improbably from the nape. But as the stakes are raised and planted facing west, toward Frankdom, all they see are waves. They hear the cannons, the crowd, and the drums, drowning out their own unintelligible cries. A muezzin reminds them that our God is greater than theirs. The seagulls shriek.

  I see and hear it all. From under my turban, with the three-tailed crop rapping my palm, I, Mehmed Pasha, watch dispassionately and wait for the stakes to be secured. Only then, when the drums and cannons grow silent and the crowd begins to thin, do I smell it. As if in the hollows scooped by receding waves, arising from the brine, the smell of blood and putrefaction. The stink of death and human illusions. The reek of slaves, perhaps, who dream of becoming masters.

  The Widow’s Hero

  Shuffling down the aisle, they are heart-warming. She, Alma, holds onto the cart while he braces her back with one arm. Though roughly the same age, she is frailer, her steps less certain, shoulders stooped. Marrick, by contrast, still stands erect. His head, unlike hers, doesn’t tremble.