A Marker to Measure Drift

by Alexander Maksik

  Her heart is slow. Her mind is quiet.

  She raises her right hand and cups the back of Katarina’s head.

  “Shh,” Jacqueline says to the girl. “Shh.”

  JACQUELINE WILL WALK home before dawn.

  She will walk through the silent marble streets, past the feral dogs, past the locked church and its empty square.

  She will take the long way and go out to the fort and stand above the village.

  She will look back at the lights of Imerovigli and Fira and beyond to the lightening sky.

  She will try to make out the silhouette of the rose church.

  She will guess which bead of glass is Petros, which light is Anemomilos, which shadow is Katarina.

  She will turn and face the open sea and look across the water to the shifting ghost islands purple in the distance and she will try to decide if she should stay here or continue on to somewhere else.

  She will pass the bus station and turn down the asphalt road and then onto the dirt and she will walk until she finds her hotel.

  Inside, in the faint light, she will remove her clothes and slip into bed.

  She will feel Saifa’s feet in her hands.

  She will see her father’s gentle eyes.

  She will see the bearded man and the tall girl and her moldering teeth.

  She will hear the sound, the splitting blade.

  She will hear the rattle of ice against glass.

  She will feel that warm palm pressing against her chest.

  She will fall heavy into sleep.

  Just like the dead, her mother will say in the late afternoon when Jacqueline first opens her eyes.

  You’ve slept just like the dead, JaJa.

  JaJa, my love, my heart.

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful to the following people and institutions:

  To Jonathan Stack, James Brabazon, and Tim Hetherington for their extraordinary film, Liberia: An Uncivil War, as well as to Gini Reticker, Abigail E. Disney and Kirsten Johnson for their film, Pray the Devil Back to Hell. And again to Tim Hetherington for his book Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold, and to Helene Cooper for her memoir, The House at Sugar Beach.

  To Lan Samantha Chang, Connie Brothers, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for their support—emotional, financial, literary—and for providing the most stable home I’ve known in years.

  To the Truman Capote Literary Trust for the means to write without any other obligation. I cannot imagine a greater gift.

  To Eric Simonoff, who has been there from the start—wise and unwavering.

  To Jordan Pavlin, who fought so hard for this novel, has so much faith in me, and manages to be so many good and disparate things at once.

  To Kimberly Burns, advisor, advocate, and indefatigable friend.

  To Madhuri Vijay, who read a thousand times, and always came riding around the corner.

  To Dorothy Royle, for listening to every word—may this book be a talisman.

  To Allan Gurganus, whose teaching was a revelation.

  To Merritt Tierce, for all of it.

  To my generous friends and readers, Ayana Mathis, Jon Brockett, Jason Martin, Pascale Brevet, Grant Rosenberg, and John McNulty, for their patience, counsel, encouragement, and kindness.

  To Anthony Marra, partner in writing what we do not know.

  To Sarah Hedrick and Jan Weissmiller, for Iconoclast and Prairie Lights, respectively—homes away from homes.

  I wrote this novel while constantly moving from place to place, and everywhere I went people welcomed me. In Los Angeles, particular thanks to my old friends James and Nina Tooley, who keep opening their door. In Estonia, thank you to Marika Blossfeldt and the Polli Talu Arts Center. In Paia, thanks to Karen Bouris and Rob Hilbun. In New York, to Mark and Jill Eshman, who very literally provided shelter from the storm. In Paris, to Andy Scisco and Ina Stolen for their apartment and that famous kitchen. In Ketchum, thanks (twice) to Barbara Boswell, to Ray and Wendy Cairncross, Margo Peck, and Lyman and Debra Drake.

  Thank you also to Pilar Guzman, Michael Reynolds, Peter Orner, Nikki Terry, Erik Leidecker, Gretchen Wagner, Steven and Elena Younger, Bob and Barbara Goodkind, Ethan Canin, Joe Blair, Caroline Bleeke, Peter Mendelsund, Lena Little, Paul Bogaards, Roland Philipps, Eleanor Birne, Cathryn Summerhayes, Laura Bonner, Claudia Ballard, and Kate Hutchison.

  Finally, to my parents, without whom none of this. With all the love I have.

  A Note About the Author

  Alexander Maksik is the author of the novel You Deserve Nothing and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His writing has appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Harper’s, Tin House, Harvard Review, The New York Times Magazine, Salon, and Narrative Magazine, among other publications, and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in New York City.

  Visit: alexandermaksik.com

  Like: www.​facebook.​com/​Alexander​Maksik

  Follow: @AlexanderMaksik

  For more information, please visit www.aaknopf.com