Dreams of Bread and Fire

by Nancy Kricorian

  Sliding his feet onto the mattress, Ani crawled to the other end of the bed and took his head into her lap. “Sorry. I was thinking about something. What did you say?” She applied pressure to his temples.

  “I said it’s like the culture and language were pulled up by the roots and tossed into the desert to wither away. The plan was to exterminate the Armenians, drive out the Greeks, and assimilate the Kurds. Only the last was unsuccessful. So now they’re razing Kurdish villages. According to government policy there are no Kurds, only ‘mountain Turks.’ You can be thrown into prison for speaking Kurdish.”

  Ani heard what he was saying, but his words dropped through silent air until they hit bottom with distant echoing splashes.

  Van stopped talking.

  She said, “My grandmother used to tell me about angels and spirits. Satan was a fallen angel. In the old days there were devs as big as mountains that came out at night to make trouble. There were evil spirits that liked the dirt in corners, which was why you had to sweep carefully. There was a hearth angel who lived in the fire. We didn’t have a toneer or an ojakh, so I thought the angel lived in the pilot light of the stove.”

  As she talked, Ani slowly massaged Van’s face, pressing deeply into his tense jaw muscles until she felt them begin to slacken.

  She continued. “There was a small blue and yellow flame inside the oven that burned night and day. Sometimes I would open the oven door and peer into the hole to check on the flame. As long as that pilot light was burning I knew nothing bad could happen in our kitchen. I also believed that my pink blanket had magical powers to protect me from Satan. I would pull the blanket over my head at night before I fell asleep so that not even the tip of my nose was showing.”

  Finally Ani lay down beside him and listened to his breathing as it grew deep and regular until she drifted off herself.

  It seemed like five minutes later that the alarm went off. Van reached across Ani to slap the clock quiet, then pulled her closer.

  “Sleep some more,” he murmured.

  Ani rested her head on his shoulder. A minute later she rolled over and looked at the alarm clock. “Oh, shit. It’s almost seven. I won’t have time to shower and change.”

  She jumped up, pulling on her skirt, and nudged Van with her foot. “Come on, get up. The door’s barricaded. We have to move the furniture.”

  When Ani arrived in the Bartons’ kitchen Sydney was lining up the pancake ingredients on the counter.

  “Your hair is sticking up on one side and it’s flat on the other,” the little girl observed.

  Ani told her, “It’s called bed head.”

  “You have a new hairdresser?” Sydney asked slyly.

  “You’re too smart for your own good, little lady.” Recognizing that the sentence and tone came straight from Violet Silver’s repertoire, Ani laughed.

  The following weekend the Bartons were away. Van arrived on Friday night with a day pack and a toothbrush. They cooked meals in the palace kitchen and made forays to the local greengrocer, cheese shop, and bakery for supplies. On Sunday evening when they emerged at dusk to seek out dinner there was a guy lurking in the passageway near the front entrance.

  “Van, hos yegoor,” he said, in a gravelly voice. Wearing a black leather jacket and jeans, he had a beard and mustache and looked to be in his mid-twenties.

  Van told Ani, “Wait for me in the garden. I’ll be three minutes.”

  “Van!” Ani protested.

  “Go on, please. Hratch is a friend. I have to talk with him and then we’ll go.”

  Ani glanced at the guy and shrugged. “Okay.”

  Hratch addressed her in a brighter tone. “Kisher pari, Ani.”

  She reluctantly walked through the passageway to the garden, where she righted a metal chair and sat in a pool of light spilling from the nearby arcade. Ani didn’t like that Hratch knew not only her name but also where she lived when she had never even heard of him. As a matter of fact, she didn’t know any of Van’s friends, except for Pascal and Isabelle. He didn’t know any of her friends either. They met each other in a separate world outside of her daily contacts at work or school.

  It seemed like a lot longer than three minutes before Van ­appeared.

  “Come on,” he said, lacing his arm through hers. “I’m ­hungry.”

  “What was that all about?”

  “He was trying to get in touch with me all weekend.”

  “Give him my phone number, will you? All we need is for the concierge to see him skulking in the alley like that.”

  The next morning after Van had padded out to the hall for his shower, Ani went for his pack. It had been in the back of her mind to do this since she had searched his wallet. Out of a front compartment she pulled Van’s U.S. passport and a pocket spiral notebook filled with Armenian words she couldn’t decipher. She reached into the main section of the pack, pushing his clothes to one side. Toward the bottom her hand brushed a zipper on the back inside face. From this hidden pocket she extracted a small booklet. It was a Cypriot passport with a white slot in its dark blue cover. The name on the outside was Yannis Antoniades. The photo inside was of Van.

  There were any number of reasonable explanations for why Van had false papers, although Ani couldn’t think of them at the moment. She could just ask him, Hey, Van, why do you have a passport in the name of Yannis Antoniades? When he questioned her about how she had come across this item, she would answer, Oh, I was sweeping the floor and by accident I knocked over your pack and the false passport fell out.

  She remembered how grim-faced he had been when the cops had pulled them over outside Lyon. Was he a drug runner? Wasn’t Marseille some kind of drug hub? She remembered the unspecified “errands” he had done in Marseille and in Ajaccio. But she couldn’t believe that Van—who didn’t drink alcohol, who disdained cigarettes, who lived an austere life in a tiny rented room—could possibly be a drug dealer.

  Then what the hell was he doing with a false passport?

  She replaced the booklet, arranging his pack exactly as she had found it. She would say nothing, but she would monitor him closely with the invisible threadlike antennae of her doubts.

  there is life like iron and there is life like silver

  ARAA, that’s where Van said he worked. The Armenian Refugee Aid Association. How would that read in French? Association pour l’Aide aux Refugiés Arméniens? Ani paged through the telephone directory in the central post office until she found the listing.

  As she dialed, Ani decided that if Van answered the phone she would hang up immediately, but there was no answer. At least there was such an organization with an office in Paris. Since Ani had found the Cypriot passport she had begun to worry that nothing he told her was true.

  Ani had scrutinized his face for signs of deceit. But there didn’t appear to be anything counterfeit about him. He seemed genuine. Was it a facade behind which another life—another Van—existed?

  She wished she had access to some pot. Most of the time that she smoked—always with Asa—it had made her feel like a chipped teacup on an empty shelf. Occasionally, though, the ­altered ­habits of perception it provided had been enlightening. Everything was a half inch off-kilter, nudging ordinary sights, smells, and sounds into strangeness. One time she was able to watch and listen to beautiful, outwardly invulnerable Asa and hear not only the words he was saying but also the anxieties and insecurities that lay behind them. It allowed Ani, if only briefly, to recognize the power she had over him.

  Knowledge is power.

  While on the ferry from Corsica, Van had said, Knowledge is a kind of power, but force is also power. You can know many things and not have the ability to alter them because they are braced by violent force.

  What gives true power? Ani had asked.

  A gun, Van had said, jokingly aiming and sit
ing his finger at her temple.

  Ani’s Van was a kaleidoscope of memories and images, starting with their first meeting when they were small children. His smile burned like a candle’s flame in a dark chapel. His touch melted her as though the scaffolding inside her body were made of wax. She had refused to allow the gesture of a gun to her temple be a part of how she understood him. But now she found herself resifting his words, especially the ones she had pushed aside.

  She wouldn’t see Van again until the end of the week. She was grateful for the machinery of daily life that kept her occupied—lecture, seminar, and dance classes. Through it all, though, her thoughts of Van were like a string of beads she worried in a jacket pocket. Late on Friday night long after Sydney had fallen asleep, Van finally arrived in the front hall of the Bartons’ apartment carrying a duffel bag.

  Ani rested her head on his shoulder and breathed in. She sighed deeply, his presence dispelling her frantic doubts.

  Van laughed. “What do I smell like?”

  “Spices of the Orient. Earth in Baba’s garden. October apples.”

  “As long as it’s not unwashed gym socks, I guess we’re okay.”

  She sent him upstairs to wait for her.

  When the Bartons swaggered in several hours later Tacey’s lipstick was smudged and John’s face was florid.

  “Sorry we’re late, Ani.” With her words, Tacey blew a puff of whisky breath into Ani’s face. “First of all, the play was dismal. Lots of nonsensical screaming and dashing around the stage. If it had to be modern they should at least have been naked. But no, they wore these hideous costumes. Then there was dinner and then these clients dragged us off to a bar and we lost all track of time, right, Johnny?”

  He was already halfway up the stairs to the second floor. “Shut up, Tacey, and come to bed.”

  She dramatically whispered into Ani’s ear, “If it wouldn’t mean losing all my credit cards, I think I’d divorce the bastard.” She put her hand over her mouth in a theatrical gesture and laughed raggedly.

  When Ani slipped in, Van was sitting on the couch reading Libération, the table lamp beside him shedding a circle of light in the otherwise dim room. This picture was transported immediately into the house of Ani’s memories—the particular quality of the lamplight, the serious concentration on Van’s handsome face, the sense of possession it gave her to find him waiting for her.

  Van looked up at her with panther-dark eyes and she felt a whirlpool spin behind her ribs down through her belly and below. She didn’t want to talk about anything at all. . . .

  Hunger drove them out into the world after sundown the next day. They went to a bistro on the rue des Petits Champs. Van turned Ani’s palm up on the table. He traced her lifeline, which wrapped itself around the mound of her thumb almost to her wrist.

  “You have a long life ahead of you, Ani. I’d guess you’ll live to be ninety years old.”

  “Can I see yours?” Ani asked.

  He turned his palm up, placing his fingers over hers.

  “Is this it?” she asked, running her finger along a crease in his open hand. She wanted to pull his fingers to her lips.

  “That’s it. Not long, not short. But I don’t really believe in this stuff,” he said. “Maro was into palmistry and tea leaves. You’re more sensible than that, aren’t you, Ani?”

  “Sure. My superstitions are random. Except for believing that dreams are messages.”

  “Messages from whom?” he asked.

  “Messages from yourself,” she told him.

  They were up late on Saturday night and slept until noon. Why put clothes on when you could lie around under the sheets with books and a bottle of mineral water to pass back and forth? Ani opened the final volume of Proust while Van read Fanon. Every now and then one of them would read a line out loud.

  On Monday, Ani readied herself for the morning routine chez Barton. While Van stuffed his duffel he told her he was going out of town for work for a few days. His tone was casual, but the news had the same effect on Ani as a window shade unexpectedly snapping open. After the initial start from the noise there was the moment of adjustment as stark light poured in the window.

  A trip. A business trip. What kind of business? And under what name are you traveling, Mr. Ardavanian?

  Attempting to sound equally casual, Ani asked, “Where are you going?”

  “Belgium.”

  “Are you taking the train?”

  “Driving with a friend.”

  His sentences were clipped and telegraphic.

  “Are you going with Hratch?” she asked.

  “No. Another friend.” He hefted the duffel to his shoulder. “So. I’ll see you Friday night?”

  “Friday night? I’m not sure. I might be busy on Friday.” Her tone was chill.

  He dropped the bag to the floor and turned to face her. “Give me a break, Ani. It’s my job.”

  Ani blurted out, “And what exactly is your job, Mr. Yannis Antoniades?”

  She watched as awareness spread across his face. Following seconds behind was wrath.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Ani. You shouldn’t have gone through my stuff. How am I going to trust you if you do things like that?”

  “How are you going to trust me? You’re the one with the false passport.”

  “Listen, Ani, I work for a relief agency. I have to travel all over. I go to Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. You can’t use the same passport.”

  “What exactly is your job description?”

  He glanced at his watch. “Shit, Ani. I don’t have time for this. Can we talk on Friday?”

  “Are you a drug dealer?” Ani asked.

  Van laughed, his face suddenly sunny. “Is that what you’re worried about? Listen, Ani, look at me. Do you really think I’m a drug dealer?”

  “No. I guess not. But there are a lot of things you aren’t telling me, Van. I know that much.”

  “Ani, I promise, when the time is right, we’ll talk. Trust me.”

  “I’m supposed to trust you?” she asked.

  “That’s right,” he told her firmly.

  The next day Ani dialed the ARAA number again. This time a woman answered the phone and gave Ani the office’s hours of operation. A half hour later Ani entered a cobbled courtyard on a narrow street in the Ninth Arrondissement. She climbed a flight of worn wooden stairs and knocked on a heavy door with a gold knob in its center.

  “Entrez,” a woman’s voice called from inside.

  Ani opened the door and stepped into a small cramped office where two desks were squeezed into the corner and bookcases lined the other walls. One of the desks was empty and at the other sat an Armenian woman in a brown cardigan and a beige dress. She reminded Ani of the organist at her grandmother’s church. Her raven hair was set in waves around her head, and her jet eyebrows were plucked into sleek arches.

  “May I help you?” she asked Ani.

  “I just wanted to look around. I was curious about your ­organization.”

  “We have offices in six countries. We help Armenian refugees and immigrants. There are difficulties sometimes with the papers. Or with finding work or permanent lodging. We have a network of churches and businesspeople to go to for assistance. We also have a library of books in Armenian that people can borrow. Over there are back issues of our newsletter.” She pointed to a bookcase full of yellowing periodicals. “Are you Armenian?”

  “My mother’s Armenian.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “The States. Watertown.”

  The woman’s face softened. “Watertown? I have cousins there. The Mardigians? You know them? They live on School Street.”

  “I don’t know them, but my grandparents probably do. They know everybody.”

  “Where are
your grandparents from?”

  “My grandmother’s from Mersin. My grandfather’s from Marash.”

  “My people are from Erzurum.”

  Ani had no idea where any of these places were on the map or how far Marash was from Erzurum. For Armenians, being from one place or another seemed to signify something about what kind of life your people had lived because of geography and climate. The same way that to say you were from Watertown meant one thing and to say you were from Fresno meant another.

  “Do you work here alone?” Ani asked. She wanted to find out if the second desk was Van’s.

  “I’m the only full-time employee. We have a few part-time people and some volunteers.”

  So Van didn’t work here—at least not full-time. She wondered if he was even on the payroll. Should she ask the woman what Van did here? Then when he got back from Belgium he’d find out that she had been snooping.

  How am I going to trust you, Ani?

  Damn.

  She wished she had time to sit down and read through some of the newsletters, but she was due at Sondage’s seminar in half an hour.

  On Friday night the Bartons reached home earlier than usual. Van hadn’t yet arrived and Ani was worried that he would ring the front bell. Instead of returning to her room she sat on the step outside the marble entrance hall with its gilt and crystal chandelier. She was wearing a sweater, but hours after the sun had gone down the stone was cold. She wrapped her arms around her legs and put her head to her knees, willing Van to appear.

  Vhat you doing, you crazy girl? Sitting outside freezing you vorik?

  That was Grandma’s voice. Ani smiled. She was freezing her vorik with only a thin cotton skirt and her vardik underneath.

  And Baba? What would Baba say? He’d come up with some gnomic phrase.

  When Ani was in the third grade the teacher had required everyone to stand in a circle and hold hands while they spouted adages. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. A stitch in time saves nine. A penny saved is a penny earned. Ani tried to bring new and unusual ones, polling her family for suggestions. Violet had proposed a few that had gone over well with the teacher. Grandma’s offerings, however, tended toward inappropriate Bible verses, such as A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband: but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones. Ani knew enough not to repeat this at school.