by Boston Teran
“What have you done?” said the priest again.
The lieutenant blinked repeatedly, his expression grew more confounded.
“You don’t know how to answer to save your life,” he said. “The Armenian women and children are told they are to be deported. If they refuse, they are killed. If they go, they are taken to the desert to be starved and butchered. Or brought to the sea and drowned. The men are told they are not allowed to bear arms. If they obey, they are helpless against the threat that means to take them. If they disobey, they are hunted and killed as enemies of the state. How are they to answer? How does anyone answer to save their life, when there is no answer that will save the life? Can you answer me that, soldier?”
The rising tide of anger in the priest John Lourdes saw was touched also with agony. The voice remained under control, the words premeditated. He touched the gunbelt. He ran his fingers along the hanging line of lives. “Were any of these taken by you?” he said.
“No . . . no.”
“How do I know if you lie?”
“I have always been a truthful—”
“How do I know you won’t swear to anything to save your life at this moment?”
“I—”
“Ahhh. I will tell you a story. About a man and a woman. My sister and her husband. I had in my possession two photographs of them. Until the gendarmes arrested me. They burned them in my presence. One was a picture of their wedding. The other was taken at a park in Erzurum in 1905 by a man of the newspapers. In that photograph they were lying dead with other Armenians. Four hundred. Lined up like fish. Struck down by a maelstrom of political force. The two photographs. The alpha and the omega.”
The lieutenant’s eyes went to each of the four men. The guide, squatting on that rock, kept pointing to the dead sergeant, pointing and nodding his head.
“My sister and her husband had two children,” said the priest. “Gone to where? Who knows? Who looks out for them now . . . Who knows? Who knows even if . . . Who knows?” He took a long sad breath, “Now . . . I am left to hunt for them in my dreams.”
John Lourdes did not understand a word but as he watched the face of the priest in the telling, it was a face he had seen and remembered from the Spanish books of God, with their illustrations of saints and demons and prophets in moments of unbridled fury. Then the priest brought the ax down.
It cut into a rock beside the lieutenant’s head. The rock was larger than a man’s fist and the ax blade struck with such force the stone was cleaved clear through, and the handle sheared in half.
The lieutenant clung to the earth downfaced and foundering until the priest reached and lifted him like a cloth doll. He then dragged off the Turk past John Lourdes a dozen or so paces. He held the boy’s head in his powerful hands and whispered to him. Tears ran down the lieutenant’s moon face. He was shaking shamelessly, and he nodded again and again at what the priest told him, and then the priest reached down to his waist and tore from the gunbelt a necklace. He held it up in front of the soldier’s face and then forced it into his shirt and, with that, he shoved him into the road.
The Turk stumbled there, unsure, and then he started away, wiping at the tears and looking back in dread constantly. He then began to run.
The dragoman, who had been close enough to the priest and the boy to hear what was said, walked up to Malek. The priest was trembling with rage and he looked at his hands as if they were treacherous strangers with a life of their own. He and the dragoman spoke together, and then the priest turned and started away. He walked past John Lourdes with neither a word nor a look, and on up that foothill road that was to take them to Van.
t h i r t e e n
HEN THEY RODE on into the frontier they were well outfitted. They had two extra mounts weighted down with ammunition, food, ouzo, wine, and charcoal for a heavy brass samovar that clanged mercilessly as they made their way along trails footed for goats. They also now had, in John Lourdes’ possession, a pouch he’d discovered in the shelter that carried letters and dispatches. It appears one of the dead was an envoy en route to Van by order of the mutasarrif—the district governor.
They rode single file above the valley floor through the cool blue shade of the afternoon, the guide in the lead. He looked back and spoke to John Lourdes, who rode behind him.
“Malek did that fool boy no favor. He cannot explain to his commanding officer how it came to be he is alive.” Hain shook his head and laughed cynically. “The priest gave the boy a set of iron wings and asked him to fly.”
John Lourdes glanced at the others following silently at a distance. “Did you hear what was said to him?”
“No, efendi, but I asked the old man.”
“What did he say?”
“He called me the hind legs of the dog.”
Darkness overtook them. They camped in the stone mountains. The guide filled the samovar with charcoal and they drank hot tea. John Lourdes sat near the fire with the dragoman who read through the documents and translated while John Lourdes wrote in his notebook anything he thought of import or value.
He would occasionally glance across the flames to where Malek sat alone. He had the gunbelt off and was studying each memento with deliberate intimacy. John Lourdes came to realize the priest was praying over each.
John Lourdes said to the dragoman, “I’d like to ask you something.”
“What the priest said to the lieutenant?”
“Yes.”
The dragoman looked toward the guide. “That one asked before. He said you wanted to know. Of course, I saw he was lying.”
“In my country they say, there are people who will lie even when the truth sounds better.”
The dragoman nodded in agreement.
The guide was squatting beside the samovar. He was adding ouzo to his tea and smoking his chibouk. His face moved nervously in some world of lost thoughts, but when he saw he was being stared at he grinned.
“As to your earlier question,” said the dragoman.
“If you can’t tell me—”
“No. I can tell you. It has been on my mind all day.” He paused, then said, “He told the soldier that if he wanted to live he must make a promise.”
“And the promise?”
“That after the war if, god willing, he were alive, he was to take an orphan child into his home and raise the child in the Armenian faith and tradition.”
The deeper implications of this were not difficult for John Lourdes to understand, for they cut to the raw core of every conflict. “That’s why he put the necklace down his shirt.”
“Yes, that is right.”
“I’m sure you asked, but how does he know that fellow will keep the promise.”
“Of course. Tell me . . . what would you say?”
John Lourdes considered, “He had no answer,” he said. “For you cannot answer a question there is no answer to.”
“You listen well. Yet, Malek also told him . . . ‘We are in a war. But, at the end of the war, any war, all wars, there is no way of knowing what kind of peace a man, any man, every man, will have to make with himself, as well as with others.’”
When they mounted up that morning it was gray with only a rumor of light. The wind blew their tracks away as quickly as the horses made them. Beyond the mountain line a low tremor of thunder, and the air soon smelled of rain.
They approached a large village at the base of a volcanic monolith that looked to be chiseled out of the naked land. Through his glasses John Lourdes scanned the desolate streets, “It seems to be deserted.”
Soon after, out of the stark silence a voice came echoing up the long rift of that slim valley. Growing louder, they came to realize it was a woman’s voice. Hain called out, “Efendi . . . upon the rock.”
She was there. Hundreds of feet up that straight stone rockface and how in god’s name had she gotten there? She wore a burka which from such a distance looked black. The wind blew wildly the garment and the veil and she seemed obliviou
s to all.
As they rode past the abandoned dwellings they watched the woman high up on that ledge clasp a hand to her breast in a manner of beseechment. She called to the heavens and then she threw her arms out wide. None understood her words, for they were not words at all but rather some mad undressed cry.
There came a rolling wave of thunder and wires of lightning and John Lourdes saw a flash of silver in the dust by a doorway. He turned the Arabian and walked it to the spot and leaned from the saddle. The others had drawn their mounts around and he trotted up alongside the priest to hand him the bracelet he found there.
The storm came sweeping out of the east where they rode four abreast their heads bowed against the rain. They pressed on into the night for a shelter the guide knew of. They rode the ridgeline where the rain poured down through faults and crevasses and seams in the slope to the plain below, and in a momentary flash of lightning what they saw there was gone before they were sure.
They called to each other and pointed and asked if what each saw, they saw, and they rode on vigilantly watching, and there came in time another drum of thunder and the crack of lightning and what they had seen, was in fact what was there.
A city of tents in orderly rows through the trampled brush and mud for what seemed miles. Lines of caissons dripping rain, lines of mounts picketed, blocks of supply wagons and medical wagons and ammunition wagons, all dripping rain.
The Turkish army there, then gone in darkness. The priest turned toward Hain and began to berate him. The dragoman joined in. The one word John Lourdes heard repeated was—nazar. And even when the guide whipped his mount and rode off, they yelled at his back, “Nazar.”
Under a vast ledge stood an abandoned shelter of stone and mud. A dilapidated shell, but still large enough for men and mounts. There was a firepit for warmth, and the air was smoky and damp, and John Lourdes had the dragoman translate the last of the letters and dispatches. To that end John Lourdes was not only searching for anything that might directly affect their survival, but be an indictment of what he had seen so far in the country.
The guide sat alone in a miserable state. He had taken to drinking the wine and sitting crosslegged before the fire. Beset by self- pity he called John Lourdes to his side.
“They didn’t curse me for the shelter?” he whispered.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Hain ran his fingers across his eyes, “Nazar . . . it was not my fault coming upon the army.”
“Back on the ridge,” said John Lourdes. “I heard that word. What does it mean?”
“The evil eye, efendi. They say is on me.”
It took John Lourdes a moment to understand. “I see.”
“I lost my boncuk during the escape from Erzurum.”
“And what in God’s name is a—”
“Boncuk . . . boncuk. Something you wear. On your being. A . . . amulet. It protects against evil spirits.” He glanced at the priest and the dragoman. He told John Lourdes, “I will get one in Van. I swear it. There is no evil eye on me.”
John Lourdes did not know what to say except, “Keep drinking.”
He went to leave, but Hain would not let go of his arm. “This was a fine place once. I have lived many lives, efendi. Some bad, some not so bad. This was one of the lives.”
He would have gone on but for the dragoman calling to John Lourdes. Something had been discovered in one of the letters. It was from a member of the Special Organization to a friend in Van.
“Do you know of the Ten Commandments?” said the old one.
“I know the ones I was taught by my mother and the priests. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not—”
“No,” said the dragoman, gravely. “These Ten Commandments were created by two doctors . . . Nazim and Shakir. They of the Special Organization. People know these commandments exist, but none have ever seen an official document. And the government denies they exist at all. But this letter, though not official—”
The dragoman explained to the priest about the contents of the letter. The priest took the letter. He read aloud in that burned voice and the dragoman translated, “. . . Destroy all Armenian societies . . . Collect arms . . . Provoke massacres . . . Send them to provinces such as Baghdad and Mosul and wipe them out on the road, or when they get there . . . Apply all measures to exterminate every man under fifty . . . carry away the families of all who succeed in escaping and apply measures to cut them off from all connection with their native place . . . All actions begin everywhere simultaneously, and thus leave no time for preparation of defensive measures . . . Pay attention to the strictly confidential nature of these instructions, which may not go beyond two or three parties . . .”
When the priest was finished reading he stared at the letter. He folded it back the way it was. He handed it not to the dragoman but to John Lourdes. As he did he repeated part of what he’d read. The dragoman again translated, “Pay attention . . . to . . . the confidential nature of these instructions . . . and do not allow it to go on beyond two or three parties.”
John Lourdes took out his notebook and handing it to the dragoman said, “Would you please translate that letter for me line by line, so I can add it to my report and pass on the information”
John Lourdes rose and went through that crumbling doorway and stood looking into a rain that fell from the ledge roof in long full streams. He lit a cigarette and just let the night come in. There was something about these men that had the feel of childhood and memories. As if they were part of the barrio and railroad yard of his youth along the Rio Grande where he had been witness to stories told around the fires of poverty and class and color.
He looked back into the shelter. The priest had come about and was watching him. No, not watching, but rather, studying him. Constructing the human through brief impressions and taking measure.
f o u r t e e n
HEN THEY VENTURED forth, they rode toward the eye of the sun, ever vigilant to the horizon and threat of military patrols. They hid in a deep ravine as a column of Turkish cavalry made a sweep of the plain before them. They followed their trail of battered grass to its terminus, then pushed south further into the reaches of a land marked by knotted mounds of stone and long straights of grass. Nearly invisible they were against the vast undertaking that was the earth before them.
In the course of their journey they came upon small groups of refugees who would scatter and run from their approach, not knowing who or what the riders may be. Most were orphaned children and they would disappear into the trailless hills or forested slopes, and no amount of calling to them, no offer of food or friendship, allayed their fears or caused them to return.
At a creek they rode upon a small cluster of Armenians. A raggletag troop of families that looked to have been beaten and nearly starved. They did not have time to flee, for the horsemen had come too suddenly from a grotto of trees, and many just threw themselves prostrate to the earth and pleaded for their lives.
Even as Malek and the dragoman patiently explained, even as they offered food, the poor and beaten souls only wanted them away, for they represented danger. To John Lourdes this was a telling and pitiful testament to an ultimate state of defeat.
Among their number was an old priest. He wore now the meager robes of a vagabond. He came forward and spoke to Malek. He knew of him, but he no longer considered Malek a priest. His tone was harsh, his judgment critical, “Examine thy soul,” he said. “The inner eye demands self-consciousness.”
Malek listened then bowed, and he said with his eyes downcast, “Father . . . self-consciousness leads as much to tragedy as it does to truth, for it can breed in modern man . . . inaction.”
One afternoon they came upon a Roman aqueduct. The remains of this remarkable structure stretched eerily across the frontier before them. As they approached the horseman could see hanging by their feet from one of the high arches the naked bodies of three men long since dead.
“Kurds, did this,” said t
he guide.
John Lourdes took out the Enfield and rested it across his saddle. They proceeded beneath that vast construct. Birds flew from their stony perches before the riders, birds with white wings and black crowns.
There was no trail where they rode now and when they came to a rise, they halted. Before them lay flat miles of grass that would easily drape their saddles. A wide, softly moving river cut a line right through the heart of it to the horizon. There were estuaries along the main channel and breaks where streams ribboned off invisibly.
John Lourdes took the field glasses from his pack and surveyed the country. It was quiet and still and the grass moved slow as an hour hand. The priest and the dragoman talked among themselves, and the dragoman asked, “Are we going?”
“I’m deciding.”
John Lourdes focused on the line of the river. Studying the shores on both sides. There were horse tracks on the near one that marched out a few hundred yards to where the river made a soft curve. He took the glasses from his eyes. His face grew taut. “How good are you at tracks?” he said to the guide.
“I’m still alive, efendi.”
“That about answers it.”
He handed him the field glasses and explained, “The river . . . The shoreline this side . . . Tracks . . . See them?”
Hain looked, “I do.”
“See where the river curves.”
“Yes.”
“The tracks just end there, don’t they?”
“Yes, efendi. They just end there.”
“Do you see tracks on the far shore where they might have crossed?”
“No.”
“Do you see grass trampled where they rode inland?”
“No.”
The guide took the glasses and handed them back to John Lourdes. “They could have ridden into the shallows and downstream that way.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think so. How many riders you say from those tracks?”
“A handful.”
“Kurds?”
“Kurds.”
“Bandits?”