A Marker to Measure Drift

by Alexander Maksik

  Without consideration or preparation, she reaches out and wraps her hand around Katarina’s forearm. Her fingers just below the elbow, she squeezes it gently. She wants to say everything to her, this girl who looks so young, holding her knees to her chest.

  The wind is colder now and Jacqueline wants so much to take this girl into her arms, to draw her close, but she does not. She only offers her gentlest smile, and her warm hand on the girl’s cool skin.

  For an instant, she can feel Bernard’s hands on her breasts, and his warm chest against her back, and his breath on her neck like a ghost.

  “I don’t have to finish the story,” she says.

  “No,” Katarina responds and smiles back with a tenderness that strikes Jacqueline hard.

  “No,” she says again. “Please. I would like you to finish the story.” And Jacqueline is relieved, because she wants to finish. She wants to tell it. And she wants to tell it to Katarina. Perhaps there is some reason for that.

  Perhaps, her father says.

  Perhaps, Jacqueline thinks, there is some reason that all the turns she’s taken have brought her to this place. To this table, on this half-ruined island. To this hotel and its rectangle of green water. Here, sitting before this caldera, before this metal sea.

  Perhaps, her father says.

  God’s will, her mother says.

  Jacqueline draws her hand away carefully and pours them both more wine.

  “I don’t tell you the rest to hurt you,” she says.

  “No,” Katarina says. “No. Of course.”

  Jacqueline can see that the girl doesn’t understand. And now, listening to the words settling around her, she can’t understand either. There is no logic to it. Yet it is important to say. And there are other things she wants to explain to the girl, but she isn’t sure what they are or how to connect language to that want.

  You’re falling, her mother says. My heart. Don’t do that. Just tell the girl. Tell us.

  “The man in the beard said, ‘Minister, look at me. Look at me.’ And then my father lowered his eyes and looked. ‘It is over now,’ the man said. ‘Taylor. You. Over. On this day. Understand me,’ the man said. ‘Understand me.’ It wasn’t a question, Katarina.”

  Katarina nods. “Taylor is your father?”

  Jacqueline laughs. “Taylor was the president. My father’s friend. My father’s boss.”

  “And you liked him?”

  “Yes, Katarina. I liked him. I liked him when he was in our home. I liked him when he brought me pretty boxes of Belgian chocolate. I liked him when he smiled at me. But I didn’t know him. For a very long time, most of my life, I didn’t know what he had done. And my father pretended not to know what he had done.”

  Katarina nods.

  “But that is not this story. This story is the man with the beard who said, ‘Do you see your daughters, Minister?’

  “My father looked at me then for the first time since he’d come downstairs. There was nothing of him left. Nothing of him. He’d been draining out of himself for years. Or maybe it’s the opposite of that. Maybe he’d been filling in. Slowly I’d been watching him become who he’d always been. The man my mother had come to know years earlier. All the charm. All that confidence. The lightness and humor. He looked at me and all I could see was fear. There was nothing else in his face. Not rage, not apology, nothing but fear.”

  Maybe love, Jacqueline thinks. But she cannot remember seeing love. She does not want to add that for the sake of the story. To appease the girl. She cannot remember love in his eyes, only fear, and so she will not include love.

  “Only fear,” she says. “That’s all I saw and the man said, ‘Do you see your daughters?’ My father looked away from me then and scanned the room for my sister, but he couldn’t find her because she was on the floor still. On the floor behind the reading chair, and when the man saw that she was out of my father’s line of vision, he glanced at one of his boys, who jerked her up so that she was standing. ‘Do you see your daughters?’ the man repeated, and this time my father nodded. ‘Speak,’ the man said. ‘Speak, Minister.’

  “ ‘Yes,’ my father said, like a schoolboy before his teacher. ‘Yes, I see my daughters.’ He spoke with the weakest voice. A voice cracking in terror.”

  “You were not afraid?” Katarina asks.

  “Yes,” Jacqueline says. “I was afraid.”

  “So, not only him. All of you?” the girl asks, as if she wants to defend Jacqueline’s father.

  “No, not only him,” Jacqueline agrees. “But somehow, somehow it was different.”

  “Are you sure he did not love you then? Maybe he loved you also. With everything else.”

  Jacqueline looks at the girl. “Maybe. Yes. Perhaps.”

  “You are angry,” Katarina says. “I’m sorry.”

  The anger passes. “Perhaps you’re right,” Jacqueline says. “Perhaps it was love too.”

  Jacqueline’s mother shakes her head.

  And perhaps it was, Jacqueline thinks. Behind all the fear, and behind all that followed.

  “ ‘And do you see your wife, Minister?’ the man said, and my father looked to his side and said yes, he saw his wife. ‘Good,’ the man said. ‘Tell us their names. Introduce us, Minister, to your family.’ And my father did it. ‘This is my daughter Jacqueline. And this is my daughter Saifa. And this is my wife, Etweda.’ He introduced us all in his cracking voice while we watched him. Then the man said, ‘Good. Good. Now, Minister, now you can no longer pretend that we are not here.’

  “ ‘Please,’ my father said then. And we waited to hear what he would say next, but he said nothing else. And then the man with the beard nodded at the girl, who stepped forward and pushed her pistols against my parents’ skulls. I thought it would be then. I thought that was the signal to kill them, but I was wrong. Instead she pushed them forward and they disappeared into the kitchen, followed by a few of the floating boys. Then the man turned to me. ‘Go stand with your sister,’ he said, and I did. He didn’t look at Saifa. He looked at me and then at Saifa’s belly and then back at me. Then he smiled and said, ‘So,’ as if everything had become clear. ‘Follow your parents,’ he said, and we did.

  “I took Saifa’s hand. I led her into the kitchen. My parents were side by side on the floor. They were on their knees with their hands and feet bound behind their backs. When we walked in my father looked up at us and then he dropped his head and he began to cry.

  “The kitchen was crowded with the boys. Some of them were sitting up on the counters and others were leaning against the oven. And the girl. She was leaning against the kitchen table.”

  Jacqueline finishes her glass of wine. She sees the tall girl and her terrible eyes and her rotted mouth. She sees the heavy table. Its polish. Its dark stain.

  For a moment she can look through the glass door and across the lawn out to the storm clouds. Swollen slate balloons sagging with rain, and the palm trees bending and rustling loud in the wind.

  And then again there is only the table.

  “ ‘Kneel,’ the man said to me. And I knelt and let them tie my wrists. Let them tie my ankles. All without a fight. ‘Kneel,’ the man said, and I did.

  “Katarina,” Jacqueline says.

  “Please,” the girl says. She has released her legs and now she sits with both feet on the concrete. Her body is slumped in her chair, her arms crossed over her belly, fingers gripping her ribs. “Please,” Katarina says. “Finish.”

  “There’s no reason for it,” Jacqueline says.

  “Please.”

  “I was on my knees facing my parents with my back against some cabinets. I faced my parents, but it was only my mother’s face I saw. My father hung his head, his chin against his chest, and he was weeping. My mother and I looked at each other. Her back was straight and she looked at me and I looked back. We were very much alike. Despite so many things, we were so much the same. She looked at me across the kitchen with Saifa standing at my side and my father kneelin
g at hers, and she looked at me so intently. We were separate, she and I. Always, the two of us, we were separate from them.

  “Saifa hadn’t been bound. She was the last of us to be free. I looked away from my mother and up at Saifa, who was standing very close to me. If I could have, I would have wrapped my arms around her legs. But I couldn’t. So I just leaned to the side and pressed my cheek against her thigh. Her skin was very cold. And then the bearded man pushed her to the table.”

  Jacqueline draws the blanket higher around her shoulders, so that it covers the back of her neck. She is cold and very tired. She drinks more of the wine.

  She wants to sleep.

  She wants to climb into a soft bed in a black room and close her eyes.

  Sleep and sleep and sleep.

  Bernard, she thinks. Thinks his name. Thinks his body. His room. Their bed and the heavy air. Television strapped to the wall and a pyramid of oranges. She thinks of her cave and can feel her body inside it, her body entombed within all that rock.

  There is the heavy kitchen table and the bearded man pushing Saifa toward it.

  Katarina is watching her. Katarina waiting for the end.

  “The man pushed her forward.”

  “Saifa?” Katarina asks.

  It is the first time she’s heard her sister’s name spoken by someone else in what feels like years. The sound of it is devastating. She looks at Katarina, who tightens her lips, who seems to understand.

  “My sister,” Jacqueline says. “Saifa. Yes. He pushed her forward. He took her to the table and the boys tied her down. Boys. Just boys and they tied her down on her back, her arms and legs to the legs of the table. Maybe the man spoke. I don’t know. But that’s what they did. They tied her down on her back. Face up, you see? And there we all were. The kitchen full of us. Crowded with us. The ghost boys, the tall girl, the bearded man in his red beret, my sobbing father, me, my mother. And Saifa tied to the table.

  “ ‘Minister,’ the man said. ‘Minister, stand up.’

  “My father tried to stand, but his legs must have been numb from kneeling and he fell. One of the boys yanked him to his feet by his wrists and held him there. ‘Who do you love more?’ the man asked. ‘Wife or daughter?’ He tried to answer. I looked up at him from the floor. He’d opened his mouth, but there was no noise. ‘Wife or daughter?’ the man asked again. This time he spoke louder. ‘Minister,’ he yelled now, but still my father said nothing. And then the man, he said, ‘Okay, I choose,’ and he raised his pistol and shot my mother just above her right ear. Just like that and she fell over onto her side. Then she was gone.”

  Katarina makes a noise and Jacqueline looks up. She looks up and reaches for the girl’s hand.

  “Katarina,” Jacqueline says softly, trying to soothe her, pressing her hand. “It was better. It was better for her to die like that. To die then. Better for her.”

  Katarina draws her hand away. She finds a napkin, unfolds it, and holds it to her face. Then, after a long breath, she wipes her eyes and blows her nose.

  “Finish,” the girl says.

  Jacqueline looks away.

  She doesn’t know.

  She waits.

  She has left Saifa there on her back, wrists and ankles bound to the legs of the table. She feels as if something has been suspended. She has left her sister while she waits on the floor, while her father cries and cries. Both of them impotent.

  The only thing to do is to finish the story. You can’t leave her there, she thinks.

  You can’t leave her there, her mother says, and Jacqueline goes on.

  “Someone pulled me to my feet. One of the boys. Now I was standing on one side of the kitchen and my father was on the other. There was a boy behind each of us. All the rest of them, all the others were around the table.

  “ ‘Now we bet,’ the man said. ‘Now we bet,’ he said, and the boys cheered. They cheered and the man smiled. ‘Now we bet, Minister,’ he said. He leaned in close to my father’s ear and whispered something I couldn’t hear. Then he stepped back and said, ‘Well?’ and my father, he just shook his head. ‘Well?’ the man said again louder.

  “My father was silent. The man raised his hand and licked it wet enough to shine and then he slapped my father across the face. An open hand to the right cheek. Again and again, but still my father wouldn’t speak, and after a while the man shrugged his shoulders like none of it mattered anyway. Then he looked at me. ‘Watch,’ he said and grinned. ‘Watch.’ ”

  Jacqueline can hear the wet cracking slaps. Can see the man’s hideous pink tongue. Can see the side of her mother’s shattered head resting on the tile.

  The distance between recollection and experience is shortening. It is difficult to distinguish between memory and storytelling, between storytelling and experience, between this present life and the other. She is unsure whether there is a difference. She closes her eyes and tries to separate the filaments, tries to extricate one strand from another.

  Her heart hammers against her breast. She is having trouble filling her lungs.

  She keeps her eyes closed, but she goes on.

  “ ‘Saifa,’ I said, ‘Saifa,’ but the man held up his hand. ‘Don’t speak. Watch,’ he said. Then he turned his back to me and crossed the room. ‘Bet,’ he said, and the boys began to shout. ‘Boy,’ some of them said. ‘Girl,’ others said.”

  Suddenly Jacqueline is terrified that Katarina is gone, has left her. She opens her eyes and she’s still there, still with her arms around herself, still slumped in the chair, but when she sees Jacqueline’s face, she sits up straight and drags the chair forward. She raises her chin. As if to say, There is nothing you can tell me. There is nothing you can do.

  Jacqueline looks at Katarina’s eyes.

  And she goes on.

  “ ‘Boy,’ some of them said. ‘Girl,’ others said. One of the boys came to my father and pushed him forward so that he was closer to the table. And I stayed where I was.

  “Saifa turned her head and looked at me. All this time she’d been looking above her, but now she turned her head and looked at me. Her cheek was pressed to the table and she looked at me. I looked back. Then she smiled. A gentle smile. Sad, as if she were worried about me. A smile of resignation. Lips pressed together, everything in the eyes. Then she turned and faced the wall.

  “The boys were yelling louder now. You’d think I wouldn’t have been able to stand. You’d think I would have fainted. But I stood there watching all of it. Doing nothing. Waiting. I didn’t fight. I didn’t scream. I didn’t faint. I stood. That’s what I did. I stood. I stood while my father cried. One of the boys was standing on a chair behind my father. On a chair, Katarina. So he could reach him. So he’d be tall enough. A little boy, and he had my father’s head in the crook of his elbow, holding his head up, fingers on his eyelids, forcing him to watch. And then the tall girl came and stood at the end of the table. The boys were in a frenzy then. Screaming and screaming. Boy, boy, boy, girl, boy, girl, girl. Yelling and pounding the walls and slamming the chairs against the ground. Then my father began to scream, an awful high-pitched sound. Some of the boys began to mimic him then, trying to match their voices to his, trying to find his key. The noise was terrible. And me? I did nothing. I stood and I watched. I stood and I watched while the tall girl raised her machete and swung it down and split my sister’s belly open.”

  Jacqueline hears the liquid sound of the cutting blade.

  The sound is in her now.

  In her throat.

  In her stomach.

  At the backs of her eyes.

  She feels it there, pulsing. Some kind of living thing. It is breathing beneath her skin.

  She looks at Katarina, who is leaning forward, elbows on the table, holding her head in her hands, eyes raised.

  Jacqueline nods. “This is the story. One thing and then another thing and all these things in a row. One after another, you see? This is the story.”

  Katarina nods against her hands.

/>   “There was a sound.” Jacqueline shakes her head. “There was that sound and then when the girl withdrew the blade, the boys fell on her. On Saifa, who screamed in a voice I didn’t recognize as hers and then she went silent and they fell on her and one of them reached inside and tore the baby out of her and held it up and screamed, girl, girl, girl, a girl. He cut the umbilical cord with his teeth and danced around the room with the baby above his head, singing his song, girl, girl, girl, until the man spoke and the boy brought it to my father. At first it was just a red mass of flesh. It could have been anything. But then I saw its legs and its arms and its little head bouncing on its limp neck and then it became what it was. A baby. A girl.

  “ ‘Closer,’ the man said, and the boy pressed it to my father’s closed mouth, smearing blood over his lips. ‘What you have done to our country, we do to you,’ the man said and looked at the boy and the boy raised the child and slammed it to the ground and the man raised his pistol and shot my sister three times. Then he looked at me. ‘Watch,’ he said, and pressed his gun to my father’s skull and pulled the trigger. And that was the end. The man came to me and cut the rope from my wrists. He brought his mouth to my ear and he said, ‘Tell it. You tell them what you’ve seen. You tell them what we are.’

  “They left then. They left me in the kitchen alone with my family. And that was the end.”

  She stands from the table and walks to the edge of the terrace.

  The dull point of the black volcano has pierced the moon.

  The soft wind rises from the caldera and Jacqueline draws it into herself.

  She can breathe.

  Her heart has stopped its hammering.

  Still there is the sound.

  “Jacqueline,” Katarina says.

  The girl is at her side now. The two of them stand together looking out over the cliff, across the silver water.

  “Jacqueline,” Katarina says again, and now the girl reaches for her. She reaches out with her arms and Jacqueline allows it. She allows herself to be drawn into the girl’s body and soon she brings her own arms around the girl.

  They hold each other there on the edge of the terrace, at the edge of the cliff, in the disappearing moonlight. The two of them in the wind and Jacqueline closes her eyes.