Gardens of Grief

by Boston Teran

  The lieutenant took the field glasses from his saddle wallet and began to scan the roads below. But the captain—

  That’s right. Spend a little time reflecting. Cause the longer you keep your stare on me, the further those who mean to stand against you are stealing away . . . in, of all things, a half-assed coach with bird feathers.

  Men from that crew of murderers now rode into view, the ones with rifles. They dismounted and began to sight up John Lourdes. However accomplished they were as murderers and torturers and rapists, they left much to be desired as marksmen.

  In a flash of contempt John Lourdes doffed his hat to the captain. By the time the crack of riflefire rolled across the avenue, John Lourdes was well beyond its reach and disappeared into the streets and alleys of that ageless world.

  There was an ancient clocktower at the southeast corner of the citadel. It was known as the Tepsi Minare. It had served the Ottomans as an observation tower during the Middle Ages for its commanding view of the plain.

  The dragoman told John Lourdes to use the minare as a site marker. And with his compass travel from it due east a few kilometers to a road where a stone bridge crossed a shallow river. There, those who survived would meet.

  At sunset John Lourdes waited at the bridge and smoked as the clay-colored waters passed over the stream rocks beneath him. He was too wary and worried to rest.

  He heard the turn of the wheels along the battered road and the slow cadence of harness metal before the black araba with its strange plumage appeared out of the last of a fired sky. Throwing away his cigarette he followed the coach over the bridge and off the road into a shadowy world of trees.

  The grandson was still alive. They lay him upon the ground and Hain took a cushion from the coach for the boy to rest his head upon. The grandson knew that death was near as did his grandfather and the priest. The boy was not afraid to die, but what weighed most upon his heart was the need to know that he had served well.

  He needed to hear the words, to take them into his weakening body, so that he might wear the beauty of them when he entered the garden of forever.

  The grandfather and the priest knelt beside the child, for that is all he truly was, while John Lourdes and the guide kept back. What they knew, as the grandfather took a pistol from his waistbelt, was that dying boy could not be left behind. That with daylight they must travel hard and that the grandson’s bones would be along a nameless riverbank by a bridge near the citadel of Erzurum for eternity.

  The boy’s eyes were closed, and the gun in the grandfather’s hand trembled at the thought of the act he was to commit, while his broken wrist hung down painfully.

  The guide whispered to John Lourdes, “The old man can’t put the powder to him,” and John Lourdes’ look told him to shut his mouth.

  John Lourdes could not take his eyes from the dragoman and the grandson. The old one had awoken that morning and he and his blood and the blood of his blood had set out upon a journey. And before this night would close he would be all that was left. He alone would carry daylight to a farther place.

  I know this moment, thought John Lourdes, it is with me always. It is as close as right now and as distant as any distant days I could imagine. I carry it in the same place we attribute to God. And it bears my father’s name.

  It was the priest who took the weapon from the old one and it was he who cradled the boy’s head in his arms so that their faces and spirits were near as one. It was the priest who ordered the guide to bring water, and the priest put out a scarred hand and with the water poured there went about a final blessing, touching the child’s forehead and lips.

  As he did he told this child that he had earned with his heart and courage a place in the tent of the father of all nations, from the Palestine to the Persian Sea. And that this tent was open on all sides, to all travelers, and that all travelers would know him, for he was a part of all travelers. And that the waters he drank there, and the waters he gave others to drink there were the waters of immortality. And that his face would be part of the face that saw us all before we were. And that he would be the one waiting to tell those who had been refused food and the shelter of caverns and who had been put under the dark waters that a doubtful world would be a thing of memory, to be forgotten by divine favor. And that his grandfather was proud of him, as the priest was proud of him. And the priest loved him as the grandfather loved him. And the priest hoped one day to be worthy of the sacrifice the child had made, and then the priest put his own hand around the child’s and the grandfather put his hand around them both and in that moment so fleeting and eternal, the priest fired.

  e l e v e n

  RIEF WAS A luxury they could not afford.

  The guide dug a meager grave with his knife while John Lourdes made a splint and braced up the dragoman’s wrist and hand. When they loosed the priest from his chains, Malek labored to the araba and sat with his back against a wheel. He slipped his arms through the spokes and then he called to the guide. It was time to get the iron shoes that had been hammered into the soles of his feet pried loose.

  Hain looked at John Lourdes. “I can’t do it,” he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The guide could not look at John Lourdes, he could not look at the priest, who kept questioning him. He would not explain himself. Always nervous, his eyes were even more fugitive than usual. It wasn’t fear, John Lourdes saw that. It was something else.

  “Heat a knife,” said John Lourdes, “to cauterize the wound. Tear strips of cloth from one of the cushions.”

  “Yes, efendi.”

  John Lourdes undid his vest, he removed his shirt. He placed them on the ground by his hat. He went to the stream. He washed the dust and blood from his hands. He ran palmfuls of water over his head and down his face. He returned to the fire and was given the cloth, which he bound around his hands to keep a firm grip, for he knew the feet would bleed much.

  Malek was watching all the while. Through fire shadows he caught sight of the thick, hard scar from a bullet beneath John Lourdes’ heart. He spoke.

  “He wants to know,” said the dragoman, “where you’re from. I told him the United States.”

  “United States,” said the priest. He shook his head sadly. He spoke then began to laugh.

  “What?” said John Lourdes.

  “The United States,” said Hain. “To the priest, it isn’t much, you see. It isn’t England, to be sure. Nor France, for that matter. It is not even China. We are, after all, where we are from.”

  “I see,” said John Lourdes. “Where is the mighty priest from?”

  “He is Armenian,” said the dragoman. “But he was born in Russia.”

  “And everyone knows Russia,” said the guide. “The United States is not Russia.”

  John Lourdes squatted in front of the priest. They were eye-to-eye.

  “He comes from Moscow,” said the dragoman.

  “And everyone knows Moscow,” added Hain.

  Malek asked another question.

  “He wants to know where in the United States,” said the dragoman.

  “Tell him,” urged the guide. “Maybe that will impress him.”

  John Lourdes cocked his head at an angle. “Texas,” he said.

  “Texas,” repeated the dragoman.

  “Ahhh, yes, Texas,” said Hain, as if he knew the place intimately.

  “He never heard of it,” said the dragoman.

  “Not even once,” said the guide.

  The priest took to repeating, “Tigziz . . . Tigziz.” His tone was defamatory. He asked another question.

  “He wants to know what Texas is like,” said the dragoman.

  “Yes, he wants to know,” repeated the guide.

  John Lourdes rubbed his chin with the back of a clothbound hand. “Tell him it’s Russia . . . with balls.”

  The guide, of all people, said, “He’s a priest.”

  “I don’t give a damn if he’s nephew to Jesus Christ. Tell him.�
�

  The dragoman told him.

  The priest listened, the priest heard. The priest looked at John Lourdes with a stare that would melt iron. Then he laughed. “Tigziz . . . Tigziz.” There was still derision in his tone, but as he continued, he stretched out one foot toward John Lourdes.

  John Lourdes stared at the foot and realized. The priest had been prodding him, preparing him for what had to be done. Those iron shoes nailed into bone. A half measure was no measure at all. There would be blood, and there would be pain, and it would demand as much of one as it would the other.

  They killed the fire and slept, all except John Lourdes. He sat alone, away from the others, and smoked. There were tiny shapes of light in the nameless distance that he watched. A sudden hand on his shoulder startled him.

  It was the priest.

  In his own language he said that he, too, could not sleep. He squatted beside John Lourdes, who pointed to where he had been watching. The priest studied the curious tips of flame. They seemed to have a life of their own.

  “Turks,” said the priest.

  “Or the Germans,” said John Lourdes. “Rittmeister . . . cavalry.”

  He smoked. He glanced at the priest. The only sound the stream water running over rocks, that and both men’s breathing. Malek seemed intensely preoccupied.

  The priest then asked John Lourdes for a cigarette. He mimed smoking. John Lourdes took a beat to hell pack from his vest pocket. He lit it for the priest, who cupped his hands around the flame, to keep the wind from having at it. The priest inhaled generously.

  “Father . . . you’ve got some hard fucking bark on you,” said John Lourdes. “And it’s a good thing. ’Cause Van is over a hundred kilometers from here and we need mounts.”

  Where the plain funneled into the rural foothills, the Turks had established a lookout post. It was strategically situated on a table of rock well above the roadway. A woeful shelter of mud and timber had been framed to the stone, and a stairwell of poor slat led to a covered scout post on the roof. Half a dozen mounted guards and one officer were stationed there. The poorly outfitted troops went about their lazy hours until the roof scout let out a warning. The men poured through the single doorway gathering up their weapons. Coming out of the landscape was an araba, the horses straining against the leads, dust rising wildly from the wheels. The driver stood in the seat pointing at a rider in a strange hat who was mounted on an Arabian and firing down upon that rattly coach as he lay chase.

  The driver took to waving a white blouse. The guards were clustered around the shelter as the coach drew up. The horses were lathered and covered with dust.

  From the driver’s seat the guide called down to the guards that the pursuer was in the agency of the Triple Entente and in the araba was a captured Armenian traitor who had escaped from the prison at Erzurum.

  The guide leapt to the ground. Scrambling past the guards, begging and bowing they please follow and see he swung the coach door open. He pulled the priest out and flung him to the ground.

  “I captured him from—”

  The guide then drew their attention to the rider. He had fallen back, and in fact, he had halted his pursuit altogether and was firing now at the coach from long range.

  As the sergeant began to troop up his men to take control of the situation, a searing hole was blown through the black cloth drape that covered a coach window. Reeling backwards with arms outflung the sergeant landed dead there in the road.

  For a moment the soldiers did not understand what happened or where the shot came from. From his hidden post inside the rig John Lourdes opened fire with the shotgun. The soldiers were immediately routed. They scattered up toward the shelter and the corral. The guide with his revolver lay chase. John Lourdes charged out from the far side of the coach. He shot over the pull horses and they took off in a panic and the araba went rumbling up on toward the foothills. The two men cut the soldiers down where they ran.

  There followed a quick and leveling silence, but for the horses in the corral where they milled and whinnied nervously. It grew so quiet as the dust settled they could hear the slight thud of the hooves on hard ground and the creak of the corral posts where the horses pressed against them.

  John Lourdes and the guide moved among the dead prodding at them with boot or slipper. The dragoman rode up on John Lourdes’ mount, wearing John Lourdes’ hat and carrying John Lourdes’ rifle in his good hand. The priest stood.

  John Lourdes instructed Hain, “In the shelter. Supplies . . . ammunition. Everything worth carrying.”

  Starting up toward the shelter the guide spoke. “Let’s hope these were filthy drunks like most Turks.”

  The dragoman walked the Arabian to John Lourdes; he handed him back his hat.

  “The corral,” said John Lourdes. “Pick the best mounts. Weapons . . . If you see anything worth taking—”

  The priest had not joined them. Something had his complete attention. He was kneeling over the sergeant’s body. His companions stopped to watch. Malek rose. The sergeant’s holster hung from his hand. He held it aloft so all could see. Dangling from the belt were prayer beads, necklaces, trinkets, cameos with pictures of family members and loved ones, rosaries of different colors, crucifixes. How many, who knows. The belt was thick with them.

  Raising the holster against the sun there came this tinkle of gold and stone, glass and silver, like the voices of tiny birds.

  John Lourdes understood. “Trophies,” he said.

  “Yes.” answered the dragoman.

  The priest lowered the holster. He ran a hand over the sergeant’s Mauser and checked the weapon in a slow and careful manner. Then, he swung the belt around the back of his filthy robe and buckled it at the waist.

  t w e l v e

  HERE WAS A sudden gunshot.

  The guide lay flat on ground, smoke drifted up from his revolver. He shouted to the others. “There’s a Turk still alive!”

  He approached the shelter crawling on his belly, avoiding the window and door. The soldier was ordered to throw out his weapon and surrender.

  A Mauser was tossed from the dark and landed in the dirt with a thud. Then, with hands raised, a figure appeared in the doorway. Sorry faced and scared. Twenty, maybe.

  Hain scrambled to his feet, got hold of the soldier and shook him. “An officer no less. A lieutenant.”

  He asked the boy if he was in command, and the boy said he was, and the guide grunted. “Efendi . . . you know how someone this young gets to command in the Turkish army? Patronage . . . or . . . he gave the commandant his ass.” He hit the boy hard on the back with his weapon. “Which is it?”

  “What do we do with him?” said the dragoman.

  John Lourdes looked at the old one, then at the priest. The priest told the guide to bring the boy to him.

  The guide kept hitting the lieutenant across the back of his neck and head with the butt of his revolver, prodding him forward. He asked the lieutenant how old he was, and the officer said, “Twenty.” The guide then whispered, “You are going to be twenty forever.” He gave a brutish kick to the back of the lieutenant’s legs that forced him to his knees before the priest.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  The lieutenant did not look up.

  “Do you know who I am?” repeated the priest.

  He shook his head no.

  “If you don’t look at me, then how do you know?”

  John Lourdes did not understand what was being said but as the officer looked up, he saw a young face that was broken with fear.

  “Have you ever been to Erzurum?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever been to the prison there?”

  “Yes.”

  Hain, who had been standing beside John Lourdes, suddenly turned and took off up the steps back toward the shelter. The priest, with the back of his fingers, began to strum the remains of a people that hung from the gunbelt.

  “Have you ever been through the prison yard? What they
call the courtyard?”

  Silence.

  “I will not ask you again.”

  The lieutenant’s eyes went to the gunbelt where the priest’s fingers kept strumming.

  “Why are you looking at my hand?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “You look, but you don’t know why?”

  “I—”

  The priest now slipped his fingers under that long stream of prayer beads and necklaces so they rested there in his palm.

  “Do you know what these are?”

  Silence, but for the wind blowing dust along the road.

  “Don’t make me ask you again.”

  ”I know what they are.”

  “What do you know about the man in the prison yard?”

  “The priest?”

  “The one they call Malek.”

  “They chain him to a stake.”

  “And what else?”

  The lieutenant’s eyes darted left, then right, and then as if by some power beyond reason or control, the eyes came to fall upon the priest’s feet, bound up in bloody cloth.

  “Why are you looking there?”

  “The blood.”

  “But there is so much other blood to look at.”

  Malek waved an arm toward the sergeant lying in the road, his open eyes white against the bloody rag that was the face he would wear into eternity. At that moment the guide returned from the shelter. John Lourdes saw an ax rested on one shoulder.

  “What have you done?” said the priest to the lieutenant.

  “I’ve done nothing.”

  “What good is a soldier who does nothing?”

  The lieutenant looked up at the priest, his was a profound confusion. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Then you have done something.”

  The ax landed in the dirt between the two men. The priest stared at the guide. The priest bent and took up the ax. The guide squatted on a rock close at hand to watch.