Brides of Blood

by Joseph Koenig

  He held her near, and her trembling eased. The heat of the blaze was searing his legs, but Maryam edged closer to the fireplace. Calmness came over him as she settled back against his chest. He had been craving sleep—forever, it seemed—and now, scarcely able to keep open his eyes, he fought it. Turning Maryam’s face toward his, he kissed her.

  Her body tensed, and she wrenched away. Maryam had lied to him about many things, but never had she pretended to be anything other than what she was, a Bride of Blood, a virgin pure in heart, vigilant against the corruption that was the essence of her female flesh. He gave her a guilty smile. “Temporary insanity,” he said before he kissed her again, and pressed her down on the floor beside the fire.

  Her arms came together in a hammerlock around his neck. Straining against him, she tightened the grip. Her sealed lips rubbed against his in a childish way, and then opened, instinct taking over, instinct or passion, but nothing he cared to analyze too deeply now. His hand slipped under the rough cloth of the chador. Her breasts were bathed in sweat that smelled to him like spices. A bird’s heart palpitated beneath her ribs.

  She pushed him away. She squirmed out from under him and turned over onto her hands and knees, looked back expectantly and a little afraid, willing to forget they had started, if he would. Here, he thought, was a real Iranian woman—intelligent, beautiful, politically aware, utterly compliant, approaching sex as just another suicide mission. The national fantasy—but not his.

  “In a few days you’ll be in the West. No sense in picking up bad habits now.”

  He put her on her back again, and she held herself stiffly as he tugged at the chador. Underneath she still had on her shroud. He shivered at the sight of it, then tore it from her body and balled it into the fire.

  The flames saturated her skin in firelight, making something different of her beauty every second. It was impossible for him to have enough of her. She did not like to be looked at, and fluttered her hands in front of his face. “You’re the first man to see me like this,” she whispered.

  He wanted to tell her that she was exquisite. But the superlatives in which his thoughts were arranged sounded like so much hollow flattery. He tasted the spiced moisture between her breasts, lay beside her pretending not to notice as she stole furtive glances at his body.

  “You’re going to be angry—”

  “You aren’t forcing me to do anything,” she said. “How could I be angry with you? In time I think I may come to love you.”

  “Not with me.”

  “Who else is there that I’m not already furious at?”

  “With yourself,” he said. “For waiting so long.” He smiled to let her know he was joking, and again when she saw that he meant it.

  “I’m glad I did. That I waited for you.”

  Tears seeped through her lashes when he entered her. Her hand came up sharply against his chest.

  “Am I hurting you?”

  She wrapped her arms around the broadest part of his back, thrust herself at him so ardently that he was lifted off his knees. A sob answered every movement of his hips. He felt her heart beat inside his chest, an instant of perfection in which he lost himself lost in her.

  “So glad,” Maryam said.

  She woke him with kisses to ask, “Will people be able to tell that I’m not a virgin?”

  “Why would you think they would?”

  “I’ll be different—everything about me. People will see it, won’t they?”

  “I can’t speak for women,” Darius said. “But, yes, I suppose men can tell—those who pay that kind of attention. Most men.”

  She pressed her cheek against his shoulder. Her fingertips drew whorls in the hair on his thigh. “Good.”

  The sun roused her as it warmed her body. Not yet awake, she reached out to him; but she was alone on the quilt. She spotted him at the fireplace emptying the heroin into the embers, and would have called out to tell him how pleased she was if she hadn’t seen him return the yellow bags to the knapsack. He washed his hands fastidiously in the rusty water left in the teapot, then lay down again. Her body shrunk away from his, but he pressed himself against her and didn’t notice.

  He couldn’t stop staring. Dressed in a red waistcoat over a riotous blouse and brocade vest, a long skirt and felt boots, Maryam might have been a native of the high country, but for the blonde hair hidden under a fringed shawl that was held around her forehead with a satin sash. “How do you like me as an Azerbaijani?”

  “I like you any way,” he said. “Where did you get those clothes?”

  “The old woman was here while you were sleeping.” A bundle of black cloth dropped onto his chest. “She brought these for you, and more bread and cheese to take on the road.”

  The bundle came apart into baggy trousers with a wide belt and a shirt that hung below his thighs, a felt cap and boots like hers. “That was very kind of her,” he said.

  “Not so kind. She wanted our old things in trade. Also some money.” She sat beside him. When she linked her arms around his neck, he nudged her onto her back. “It’s getting dark,” she said.

  “It’s not unheard of for some people to make love in the dark.”

  “Didn’t you want to leave now? You said that by tomorrow we can be in Turkey.”

  He quieted her with kisses. “Today we may see heaven.”

  19

  THE NEON STREAKS THAT had opened the morning sky were holding back the dusk when he carried the knapsack outside.

  “It would be nice if we could tell the old man and his wife how grateful we are for everything they’ve done for us,” Maryam said.

  “The nicest thing we can do is just to go.”

  They followed the color into the highest reaches of the village, continued along a cart track into barren hills.

  “How far are we from Turkey?” Maryam asked.

  “Too far to walk in one night. Twenty kilometers, maybe more.”

  “Is the border marked? How will we know we’re there?”

  “No one will be trying to kill us,” he said.

  Two riders in the blue homespun and thick felt vests of Kurdish tribesmen galloped out of the dusk on shaggy pack ponies, their faces obscured by turbans fringed in horsehair to protect against flies. They paraded their mounts in a circle they drew so tight that Maryam was all over Darius’s toes, then cut between them and herded her away from him. One of the riders pinched Maryam’s cheek, and when she swatted his hand away he slapped back at her face and tore the head scarf from her hair. He was pawing at her breasts when Darius got his attention with the Browning, and he traced the thrust of the barrel to his belt buckle. He backed his pony away, circled one more time in a sullen victory lap, and both men rode off with their trophy.

  The trail divided around a pool of black water that trickled from a fissure in the mountainside. As Maryam cupped her hands under the seep, the whinnying of more than one horse rebounded off the cliffs. Darius turned in a full circle with the pistol in his fist, kept it out in front while a hay wagon approached from the direction of the village. The man gripping the reins was clad in filthy tatters that preceded the stink of his horses. In Azerbaijani, and again in Kurdish, he commanded Darius and Maryam out of his way. When they did not move fast enough to suit him, he stood up on the seat and invited them to ride.

  The wagon took the high fork around the spring. The horses, which were not young, or lively, stretched out their necks and ploughed into a wet wind sweeping particles of frost ahead of a storm dropping down from the summits. They moved at a man’s pace, and then at a child’s, and as the grade steepened the raggedy man ordered Darius to walk alongside the wagon. A few stars had come out, the dappled sky blending into a dome of light over the nearest deep valley. The raggedy man pointed down into the glow, and smiled. “Khvoy,” he said.

  The lights of the city vanished behind an escarpment where the wagon stopped to let Darius back on board. Leaning on the reins, the raggedy man walked the horses downhill to a grassy
flat sheltered by willows. He put out some of the hay for them, and then unfolded an immaculate white cloth stowed under the seat and shared with his guests a supper of sweet cheese and doogh, a yogurt and mineral water drink. He did not say another word. When they reached a village more decrepit than the settlement in which Darius arid Maryam had spent the afternoon, its sturdiest houses shabbier than any they had seen before, the wagon halted and he pointed the way through the mud.

  A shabby dog ran out of a windowless hut, yipping at their heels as they walked the filthy streets.

  “It will be getting light soon,” Maryam said. “We should ask if there’s somewhere we can stay.”

  “This is a Kurdish community,” Darius said without slowing. “The Kurds resent the government in Teheran—any government—but are not famous for their incorruptibility. The army comes through the Zagros regularly to bribe them with money and food coupons to turn in refugees. It’s not often that anyone cooperates. But if the mood strikes them, or times are hard, the Kurds won’t hesitate to sell out their own kind. We’ll find a better place …”

  A cold rain began to fall. The brightest star in the heavens broke loose from Orion and swooped toward them.

  “What is that?” Maryam asked him.

  Darius looked into the sky, and wiped his eyes against his sleeve. “A light plane.”

  “A helicopter, you mean.”

  The aircraft swept the valley, came up behind the village swinging back toward Khvoy and the border.

  “They’re still hunting for us,” Maryam said.

  “For us, or whoever else they can find,” Darius said. “We can’t worry about it.”

  “We can’t? What else can we do?”

  While he adjusted the straps on the knapsack, Maryam took the lead on the narrow track. “Why not leave that here?” she asked. “We don’t need the mycotoxins now. We can sneak into Turkey like other refugees.”

  She did not expect an answer, and took several steps toward him when he said, “Suppose you’re right…”

  “I know I am.”

  “Do we bury them, or burn them, or just walk away from them?” he asked. “How do you dispose of yellow rain when you don’t need it anymore? If I cut open the bags will the mycotoxins dissipate, or will they fall on the village, or get into the water? Or will the wind blow it back in our face?”

  “That’s not the issue.”

  “It is until we’ve dealt with it,” he said. “Then we can move on to less mundane considerations, like what will happen if they fall into the wrong hands.”

  They traced a flow of snowmelt to a barren promontory almost in the clouds. Darius pointed across a valley to a cross on top of a black dome.

  “Do you see that church?”

  Maryam nodded. “That’s Turkey?”

  “A Turkish village,” he said, “but it’s inside Iran. The big mountain beyond it to the north is Mount Ararat. It’s well inside Turkey. We’ll go that way.”

  “Have you been here before? How do you know the border region?”

  “This is Bakhtiari country. It was all I read about as a boy. I wanted to believe it was mine.”

  In Darius’s steps she hiked through old snow stained by summer runoff, studying the animal tracks fossilized in the crust. The sleet came down harder, and changed all to snow, and white patches merged into fields in which the odd tree pushed its stubby crown into the storm. Fat flakes swirling around her head made her dizzy and stung her eyes. Her boots were soaked through, her feet rubbed raw. An icy stretch cost her balance, and both of them would have fallen had Darius not jerked her arm so hard that she felt something pop inside her shoulder.

  They descended into a ravine clogged with boulders the size of Paycons. Chest-deep drifts forced them onto the crumbling wall. An ancient river had carved a tunnel in the soft rock, and they hiked the dry bed above the timberline and continued into a pass where two lithe poplars taunted the wind. Darius paused to stare into the teeth of what was now a blizzard. When he began walking again, Maryam pulled at his arm.

  “I’m exhausted,” she said.

  “We’ll rest soon.” He brushed the snow from her eyelashes, snapping the tiny icicles that grew from her brows like glass stalactites. “But first we have to get out of the weather.”

  “… Just a few minutes here, or I’ll never find the strength to make it out of Iran.”

  “You must have—we’re standing on the border.”

  The trackless slope looked disappointingly the same. She sighted along the ridgeline, which flattened as it passed between her feet. She took a long step over a demarcation visible only on maps, and some of the numbness went out of her legs. She kissed him, but then quickly pulled away.

  “My face,” she laughed, “it’s so cold, I thought your lips would freeze against mine.”

  “I’d like that.”

  He pointed down the mountainside. In the whiteout she imagined a Turkish village like the one they had seen on the Iranian side, smoke rising from huts in lush, purple fields.

  “Another few hours,” he said.

  “I can’t take another step.”

  “We’ve gone far enough for one night. There are Turkish army patrols all along the border, and some of them have cozy relationships with the Revolutionary Guards. If they don’t approve of a particular refugee they find inside their country, they have no compunction about sending him back. We’ll look for shelter, and go down into the valley tomorrow after it’s dark.”

  Hand in hand they plodded downhill. Their frozen boots afforded little traction in the dry powder. Darius fell, and then Maryam did, grabbing at the mountain as she slid headfirst, sweeping masses of snow in her wide-open arms to slow her descent. Darius dug her out of a modest avalanche of her own making, and brought her toward a rock wall shielded in greenish ice.

  She did not see the cave until they were behind the ice and under a ledge that protruded from the mountainside like a mossy canopy. Darius struck a match and went all the way inside. The cave was ten meters deep. The low roof angling abruptly to the floor made it necessary to squat to move about. Beneath a black smudge on the ceiling was some half-burned wood and trash in a fire ring of flat stones. It took their last match to get a smoky blaze going. Then they peeled off their boots, and set them close to the flames, and babied their feet in the warmth.

  “We should be close to the city of Van,” Darius said. “We’ll take a bus to Ankara. We can go anywhere we like from there.”

  “My father is Italian,” Maryam said. “He lives in Milan. After he left my mother, I promised never to think of him again, to turn my back on all things European. You’re not the only one to call himself by a last name less disagreeable than your own … now Italy is constantly on my mind. Have you ever wanted to see Italy? To spend time there?”

  “I’ve got a French passport. Possibly, I have friends in the U.S. I might want to take up residence in either of those countries. But, yes, I’d like to visit Italy.”

  “We’ll go to Paris also. And New York. And California. We’ll travel all over the world.”

  “Right now, I’d be satisfied to see Van,” he said.

  The dry sticks quit giving heat, and Darius searched under the ash for more wood. By the time he came up with two willow branches, Maryam’s eyes were half shut. He took her in his arms, and soon her head was against his chest, and his face buried in wet, fragrant hair.

  He didn’t know how long they had been sleeping when she slipped away and started into the back of the cave. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

  “It’s not there.” He caught her by the wrist. “Till the storm lets up, this is our living room. You have to go outside.”

  Maryam shivered. In the first gray light of dawn the snow had relented. She squeezed water from her boots, and then climbed out through the drifts that the wind had hurled under the mossy ledge. Darius was luxuriating in the willow’s dying glow when he thought he heard her call his name.

  “Are you al
l right?” he shouted, coming alert to the realization that she had been gone for five minutes.

  The wind garbled her answer. He heard other voices on top of hers, and went to stand beside the green ice at the mouth of the cave as four horses high-stepped through the snow, two men in Guardsmen’s fatigues behind Ashfar and Bijan, and Maryam on foot between them like the spoils of a small war.

  “It’s good to see you again,” Ashfar said. “Perhaps you would be so kind as to invite us all inside.”

  He pushed Maryam ahead. Darius noticed a gun in the lap of one of the men in the second row.

  “We lost you for a while,” Ashfar said, “but now it would appear that it is you who have lost someone. Consider our surprise when we found Maryam alone on the mountain. We caught her with her pants down, you might say. What is she worth to you? Is she worth something else we have lost?”

  Darius did not look at Maryam, afraid of what he would see in her face, of what Ashfar would see in his.

  “Go back to Iran,” he said with deliberate calm. “I’ll deliver the mycotoxins to our ambassador in Ankara, or anyplace else in Turkey that you say. It’s the only way you’ll get them.”

  He directed the ultimatum at Bijan, who deferred to Ashfar without comment, the threat of gunplay outside his serene realm. Ashfar laughed, and because it was expected of them, so did the men behind him. Komitehmen did not know how to laugh. These two, thought Darius, were from Ashfar’s organization.

  “We would like to believe you,” Ashfar said, “but we have it on good authority that you will never turn them over. That it has been your intention all along to deprive Iran of the capability of making chemical warfare.”

  Bijan spurred his horse alongside Ashfar’s. “You will be allowed to proceed unmolested once we have the mycotoxins. You have your prostitute. She is waiting now to save your life. You have the West. We have the yellow rain. It is the trade everyone agrees should be made.”

  The words came in short bursts punctuated by the chattering of his teeth. He sat his mount slouched to the side, clutching the collar of a wool trenchcoat caked in snow, a general who would not lead his troops into battle, and had surrendered the right to command.