Gardens of Grief

by Boston Teran

  “I would like to see your country one day,” said the dragoman.

  “Yes?”

  “The movies. I get to see the cities and the people. The customs. The hats. I love the hats.”

  The old one smiled, as did John Lourdes.

  Yards later, through the tents and traffic they could see where the street opened into the pavilion, and the prison.

  “John Lourdes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you seen war?”

  “I have seen war.”

  The dragoman lifted the cloth and spread it across his lap. He placed the device on the cloth. John Lourdes glanced at him as he readied the clock, checked again the wires, set the timer. The fingers were long and thin and deeply wrinkled, but very assured. The dragoman folded the cloth back over the device. His face rose, his eyes fixed on the way ahead.

  The truck was barely moving as the dragoman stepped out. People squeezed past, Arab and European alike. The noise was overwhelming. He slipped the device far into the hay that covered the flatbed. He quickly went back to the truck door. He looked in the window. “Five minutes,” he told John Lourdes. “The call to prayer will begin very soon . . . Five minutes.”

  With that, he stepped away and pressed on through the crowd toward the pavilion, where he disappeared.

  As the truck labored past the last tents John Lourdes scanned the pavilion to make sure everyone was in position. Hain was near the café, watching over their mounts with the dragoman walking towards him. As they were setting off that morning he’d told John Lourdes, “I will serve you better than a brave man . . . or a man of beliefs.”

  “Let’s just hope all that money you bartered for won’t weigh you down too much.”

  Before he walked off John Lourdes caught him by the arm. He spoke so the others could not hear. “In the pavilion . . . if anyone is wounded and cannot go on . . . you’re to make sure there’s nothing left to be interrogated.”

  John Lourdes drove across the pavilion and eased the truck toward the prison till he had it cradled up alongside the tower. He turned off the rig and got out. He had a piece of paper in his hand and was studying it as if something was written there.

  He could see the black image of the tower in the pavilion dust and the movement of a man with a rifle along its railing. A voice in Turkish called out loudly. John Lourdes kept his attention on the paper, walking what seemed aimlessly, turning finally, acknowledging ultimately the guard who was pointing with the rifle at the truck, motioning to move it. Another guard came out of the gate shack and stood by the iron bars. Before long he was joined by yet still another guard.

  John Lourdes tried to explain in Spanish, but it was futile and finally holding up the piece of paper stumbled out a few words, “Ben . . . ah . . . kayip. Kayip?”

  The guards didn’t give a damn about him being lost. The sweep of their gestures and tone of their demands meant they wanted the truck gone. John Lourdes offered an apologetic half bow and said, “Yardim etmek.” He was pointing somewhere vaguely across the pavilion. “Yardim etmek.”

  He walked toward the horses and, looking back, saw a collection of soldiers doubletiming it across the courtyard and past the priest to the prison gate. Then came the first call of the adhan. The rising pitch of the voice carrying across the pavilion.

  For a moment the guards were more vested in their faith than in the truck. John Lourdes watched the dragoman walk his mount toward the street of the bazaar, and it was then he heard the guide. He was calling out, “Efendi! The café roof!” There, the two German officers under Rittmeister Franke were looking down into the pavilion, staring oddly at John Lourdes, who had reached the horses.

  Field glasses hung from the Arab’s saddlehorn. John Lourdes took them and slipped the loop over his neck. He did the same with a satchel of ammunition. From one scabbard he took an Enfield and worked his shoulder through its strap. From the other he took the M12.

  He turned. Hain was calling to him ever more desperately. One officer was part way down the roof stairs, the other was crossing the pavilion. On that clear and windless day there could be not more than a minute, a minute at the very most, before this small patch of universe tasted pure death.

  Time slowed for John Lourdes to a near standstill. A fine dust drifted across the pavilion in a near drowsy fashion. Figures moving through the sunlight along the prison wall were like snapshots imprinted upon the day. John Lourdes seemed suddenly possessed by a strange and unearthly calm. A veiled woman passed before him, her eyes fixed upon the foreign creature carrying so much weaponry. Others he passed also stared, their faces anchored to his presence. It was as if the din across that pavilion had died away, and all he was left with was the sound of the gravel crunching beneath his boots.

  “Efendi . . .” Hain was shouting from behind him. “. . . Efendi!”

  John Lourdes, without looking, ordered, “Kill him.”

  He did not see the guide fire, nor the German officer collapse to his knees.

  John Lourdes chambered a shell into his M12. People were running. Escaping the pavilion. A couple, European, the woman carrying a parasol and in all those ruffles, trying to run from the inevitable—

  n i n e

  HE STONE WALLS of that prison may have been hallowed for withstanding centuries of the broadsword and spear, but they did not belong to the province of the future. The sheer ferocity of the explosion lifted the truck as high as the tower and bits of wall and iron fittings fell across rooftops streets away. Bodies were flung far into the pavilion, pockets of smoke rose from their uniforms where scraps of metal had scored a pathway to the bone.

  The guard tower was consumed in fire, and from this ancient battlement smoke billowed skyward into the still air ever blackening, ever thickening. The gate had been blown into the courtyard, uprooting the post where the priest had been chained. He now lay beneath this bent monstrosity alive but unable to shoulder the weight and free himself.

  The brothers plunged past the burning wreckage upended beside the gate. Part of the tower had collapsed across the entry. The guard shack was in ruin, a gaping hole in the prison wall next to it. The courtyard clouded with smoke. As the brothers scaled the debris John Lourdes took up a position at the gate, where he could command the courtyard and the pavilion.

  The few guards left were scattered amidst the rubble. One staggered blindly toward the barracks. Through the haze John Lourdes could hear carbine fire killing them where they lay, while across the pavilion the guide was in a running gunfight with the surviving officer.

  The grandson rode headlong toward the gate with the priest’s mount. Great shocks of flame erupting up through the truck windshield and chassis caused the horses to veer wildly. The German officer had taken something from his saddle wallet, and John Lourdes intuitively knew. “Kill him now!” he shouted to the guide. “You’ve got to kill him now—”

  The officer’s horse was felled by a shot and the great chest swung about and the whole of its weight collapsed upon him but not before the officer fired off a signal flare. It tailed across the pavilion and burst above the prison and a starfield burned then fell through the waves of smoke.

  John Lourdes leapt fallen tower stones and entered the courtyard. The prisoners were shrieking at the bloodshed. Their arms stretching through the window bars, their faces in the dusty air all wild and frenetic. The brothers had the gate near lifted. One shouldered it on his back while the other helped the priest pull free from beneath it.

  A barracks door was thrown open, guards came charging out into the courtyard. John Lourdes turned his shotgun on them and the door wood splintered, and the wall stone nicked, and there was blood on the wall and blood on the wood and pockets of it in the dust that followed the scattering trail of the wounded. There were empty shell casing all about John Lourdes’ boots and the prisoners wailed with vengeful joy at the carnage.

  A guard leaned out from the roof and shot the brother holding up the gate. He tried to gasp air in pa
st the breach in his throat as John Lourdes chambered round after round till the guard reeled away from the ledge holding the front of his uniform which was a bloodmask of holes.

  As the brother crumpled to the ground, John Lourdes rushed over and braced up that mass of iron using his shotgun as a crossbar. He held long enough for the priest to get dragged free.

  The dragoman now reached the guard tower. John Lourdes shouted to him for cover fire while they got the priest out. The guide came riding toward them with the rest of the mounts. John Lourdes let the gate fall and helped the priest stand. He yelled to Hain to come on. The guide jumped to the ground and ordered the dragoman to keep rein on the horses. With gun drawn he vaulted the burning truck and was gone into the clouded gray of the courtyard.

  It was a scene of pandemonium with guards striking out of the smoke and along the roof and the prisoners howling up vile degradations and rattling clay bowls and wooden spoons across the bars. John Lourdes swung the empty shotgun onto one shoulder and took the Enfield from the other and put up a wall of fire. Retreating backwards toward the gate over the bodies of the slain he and the guide left a trail of stripper clips and shell casings and the dust they trampled through was wet with red that clung to their boots and the bottom of their trouser legs.

  Between the smoke and fire the horses reared and shied but they managed to lift the chained and hobbled priest up on a mount. He braced the withers with his legs and shook his head he would be all right. Once they were all mounted and clustered up by the burning wreckage of that fallen gate, John Lourdes gave the order.

  They started across the empty pavilion. People huddled up in doorways and stairwells watching the nightmare of a gunbattle. When they reached the far street the riders had to pull up. A platoon was coming toward them at a trot. They spotted the heavily armed riders streaked with dust and the priest in chains and they formed up along the road and began a volley fire.

  The riders wheeled about, retreating into a wall of dust of their own making. When they raced past the tower a guard stepped from the yawing flames and fired into their ranks.

  There was a cry as the remaining brother was driven from the saddle. His foot caught in the stirrup and he was dragged under the mount. Its spindly legs tripped over him and the horse flipped, and it and the rider lay dead in the shadow of the prison wall.

  The dragoman now led them through the abandoned bazaar where the horses sidestepped carts and jumped crates as the riders tore with their arms at tents in their path.

  They turned into a bare street awash with light. They could hear the clatter of hooves on stone at a run. They turned down into a walled avenue to be stared at in disbelief as they commanded and whipped with the reins for a path to be cleared.

  The street opened into a square that troops were crossing at a full gallop toward the prison. They were forced back the way they came and at the next crossing were met head on by two mounted Turkish soldiers.

  The shadows of pursuers and pursued overlapped as they fired into each other. The priest charged the soldiers whipping at them with the chains that bound him. In the confusion the troops retreated. The fight grew more intense and wild at close range. The grandson was gutshot, the horse the old one rode toppled and he was flung into a wall. The chain the priest wielded tore across the soldier’s eyes and momentarily blinded him. John Lourdes brought the Enfield to bear. One soldier was taken in the saddle and his mount bolted away with him slouching there lifelessly; the other was wounded and fell to the street and was killed under the hooves of the riders.

  They circled up with people scattering before them. John Lourdes swung out of the stirrups and knelt over the dragoman. His left wrist was broken and he was dazed and beyond riding and the grandson began to sag out of the saddle and it was the priest who sided him and held the boy to keep him from collapsing into the street. The boy was holding his stomach and there was blood seeping through the youth’s fingers.

  “Efendi . . .” The guide’s mount reared back on its hindquarters. “We must go.”

  The dragoman understood and addressed the priest in Armenian, asking he leave, and he told John Lourdes. “I said to go. Take the priest and—”

  The priest answered. It was the first John Lourdes heard the voice. It was gruff and deeply emotional, and the priest regarded John Lourdes with a stare that breathed authority and will.

  “Efendi,” said the guide. “The fool won’t go.”

  “I can see that.”

  John Lourdes stood and surveyed the wreckage that was these men. He wiped the sweat and dust from his eyes. This small patch of ground at that moment was the universe. He looked there for the answer, searched there for the answer, hoped there somewhere, somewhere, an answer—

  He moved toward Hain. He pointed, “The araba.”

  The guide swung about. Sitting in a dusty lot between hovels was an old and heavy coach of faded black drawn by two horses drinking from a wooden trough.

  “Get it!” said John Lourdes.

  The guide kicked his mount and sped off. John Lourdes swung the Enfield up on his free shoulder and helped the dragoman to his feet.

  Hard wheels were trundling toward them with Hain at the whip. People along the street stood frozen in amazement or anger. A man leaned out a second-story window thick faced and furious and pointing at the rig.

  As the guide pulled to a stop he yelled, “Efendi, it seems we have made yet another enemy!”

  The araba was a converted hackney. Four wheels, black cloth for windows. The wheels had been painted red and there were long plumes of colored feathers at the four posts of the coach roof. It was a ridiculous looking affair if ever there was one. And as was the custom, the seats had been pulled out and passengers either sat or lay about on cushions.

  John Lourdes walked the dragoman to the coach steps and was turning to help with the boy, but the priest had already dismounted and was carrying the badly wounded youth in his arms.

  There he was, in chains and with those pieces of iron hammered into his soles and scarcely able to lift a foot, and yet he was carrying the boy. Carrying the boy and climbing into the wagon, mute to his own suffering.

  He turned to John Lourdes and spoke. John Lourdes looked to the guide who translated, “The priest said, ‘thank you . . . for the boy.’”

  t e n

  HEY HAD CLOSED the carriage’s dark shades and the guide pushed those drafthorses hard through the streets with John Lourdes following. The araba bounced and shook and sometimes skidded and the long roof feathers pricked back like the windfashioned plumage on a lady’s bonnet. When the rig turned into a dirt street that descended a long hill the guide put out a hand that he was slowing and for John Lourdes to see ahead.

  Fronting the street below was a madrese—the Cifte Minareli—named for its two minarets. There troops bivouacked on the road beside the great school.

  The daylight was going, the madrese walls of dark volcanic tufa now stood in their own shadow. John Lourdes eased his mount up to flank the coach. The soldiers’ attention was on a distant part of the city where a lake of smoke spread across the windless blue.

  John Lourdes looked back, watching vigilantly. On the crest of the hill face they were just descending was a column of riders. It was Rittmeister Franke and that army of convicts. They were moving along the boulevard with a steady resolve. There was a glare at the head of the column. Shiny, mirror-like. John Lourdes understood: the captain was searching with field glasses.

  The guide spoke, “Efendi?”

  “I know,” said John Lourdes. “We have even less ammunition than we’ve had luck.”

  At the madrese John Lourdes chose not to follow the araba. He had come to a decision, a gamble really, which he explained to the guide and those in the coach.

  He, alone, went along the avenue that bordered the base of the hill where Rittmeister Franke and the men with him rode. He placed himself out in the open, to insure that if the captain knew who he was hunting, it was only John Lourdes
that would be found.

  He glanced back at the araba. It was making its way past all those troops, in the same manner as all the other carriages. Hain was casual and courtly to those he passed. And then, in a moment that was purely brazen, the guide stood up in the seat and called to the troops, shouting that he was praying for the swift destruction of an enemy too ignominious to name. That chancy little bastard, thought John Lourdes.

  He watched the araba till it was long down the street and clear of danger. He had put rifle and shotgun back in their scabbard. The satchel with the ammunition was looped to the saddle. He took the glasses that hung from his neck and focused in on the road above.

  The column was still on the move. Officers could be seen galloping back from their search of side streets and alleys. As John Lourdes panned the roadway, Rittmeister Franke finally posted up in the lenses. He sat atop his mount. He was scanning the city below. He was extraordinarily meticulous. He would stay fixed on a place for a long while then the field glasses would meter slightly.

  John Lourdes waited and watched. In due course the captain came to bear upon that place in the road where John Lourdes sat atop the Arabian in the last runs of daylight. The captain’s gaze fixed, he leaned forward in the saddle. His cheeks and jaw white against the sun.

  You’re not sure of what you see, or are you, captain?

  Through their field glasses each man was just a pistol shot removed from the other, and the movement of their mouths imminently visible.

  Are you thinking . . . that’s the citizen of Mexico down there. The one you told on the dock the other morning . . . there would come a time . . . when with your help . . . my rightful country would belong to me. You thinking about that moment now? My rightful country. It may come to pass. And if it does . . . it will mean something different than you ever dreamed.

  Another officer rode up to Rittmeister Franke. It was the German who had sent up the flare.

  You survived, Lieutenant. You should have taken your rightful place among the dead. Well . . . dust yourself off, there’s always tomorrow.