Way of Escape

by Ann Fillmore

  Jani seemed imperturbable. Perhaps, no, definitely, she had heard this argument many times already. What must it be like, wondered the hatchet-faced old warrior, to be ripped from your Western world where women drove cars, voted, carried on as if they were men—why, often wore men’s clothing!—to be brought to the safety and security of a compound where everything was done for you, where you were cared for with all your best interests at heart? The commander smiled past the woman and said to her husband, “Do you wish me to have a word with your daughter?”

  The objective of the visit being reached, Sheikh Sultan i-Shibl motioned to the vizier. “I am so delighted you would do that, Commander Yusef! Rida, fetch Zhara.”

  Vizier Rida quietly nodded and slipped away.

  “How is your wife, Commander Yusef, and your son?” i-Shibl asked in an off-handed remark.

  “My wife is as well as can be expected,” he said, “she will go to Florida next week for her third cancer operation. My son will go with her.”

  “Oh, I am so sorry to hear she is that ill. Please, give her my regards,” said i-Shibl, “and those of my wives.”

  Zhara must not have been more than a couple rooms away because the big vizier reappeared with her in tow at this point. She was taller than her mother and most probably very distressing to her father being taller than her father. She was dressed in a long skirt made of stunning gold sari material and a white blouse with a scarf that matched the skirt. The scarf was not well wrapped, her eyes and nose and some of her reddish hair could be plainly seen. Yusef felt deeply embarrassed by her forwardness. Rida indicated for her to stand about ten feet away from the old warrior.

  Commander Yusef stood and was inwardly dismayed to find the girl was only an inch shorter than he was. “Your father wanted me to have a talk with you. He wants me to remind you of the seriousness of your stubborn behavior.”

  Her eyes flicked past him and gallantly remained staring at some distant carpet design on the opposite wall.

  “I imagine,” Commander Yusef went on, trying to be kind in his very gruff way, “that you are aware of the penalty for adultery, and that includes the intention of an adulterous act?”

  Her eyes flicked across his face, rudely, and instantly returned to their target on the wall. Yusef resisted the urge to slap her hard, although he bet her father had done it several times, or had had the vizier do it for him.

  “I can only plead with you to consider your actions,” he continued. “Your marriage to Sheikh Sultan Mustafa Bayigani will assure you of a home, of a future, especially if you give him sons. He is one of the wealthiest landowners in Kuwait. He has the ear of many American governors. I’m sure you may get to travel with his entourage. I see no downside to your situation.”

  Princess Zhara i-Shibl felt the bile rise in her throat. The image of the aged Sultan Bayigani was enough to make her gag, the mere thought of that man sticking his withered old penis into her made her want to throw up. She suppressed an inner painful, wrenching laugh. At eighteen, most girls in her circumstances, would have been long married, and if not, would not only still be virgins, they wouldn’t have the slightest notion of a penis, of sex, of how babies were made. In fact, Arab girls from these conservative families still bought the whole business of the woman determining the sex of the child. Ignorant fools, she swore under her breath.

  Her father spoke up, loudly, “She was caught using the telephone last night, Commander. I want you to trace that call. I want to know with whom she spoke.”

  Ah, the truth comes out, thought Yusef, the real reason he had been summoned here. “Of course, your highness,” he smirked. “I can do that with a mere call to the telephone company.”

  The sheikh sultan waved a royal hand over the heads of the people in the room, stopping at his daughter. “You see, Zhara, nothing you do is secret! You watch out. I will catch your friends and I will have Commander Yusef bring them to trial just as you will go to trial if you do not behave yourself!”

  Zhara nodded, solemnly.

  “Hear me,” Yusef reproached her sternly, “your life is on the line. You can be executed. Do you understand that?”

  She cast her eyes down and pretended shame. The rage she had felt as she had been dragged from her teacher’s flat in Paris, the all-consuming fire of desire for Emil, she struggled to keep invisible. She knew the passion of Juliet and she would have it no other way. Death was so much more preferable than being a slave. How could these men not understand?

  The shaming went on for some time, until they got tired. She covertly watched the vizier lead the brutal old commander away toward the back of the house and, inwardly sighed relief at his parting company with them. When she and her mother were dismissed from her father’s presence, she grabbed her mother’s arm and the two of them scuttled down the hallway to the women’s quarters.

  “Momma,” whispered Zhara, “don’t stay! Please don’t stay! Come with me when I go.”

  “My dear, my dear,” her mother said softly, patting her beloved daughter’s hand, “how can I? It would make the hunt for you all the more intense. I want you safe. That is my only, only wish in life.”

  As they took off their scarves and Jani her outer robe, Zhara said emphatically, “You know full well, Momma, that after I escape your life won’t be worth pennies. It will be just what second wife wants. She has the two sons, she has Father’s fancy, you are a fool if you stay. I can tell Haji…”

  “Shhh!” Jani put a hand to her daughter’s mouth, “Never say that name in here. There are ears in the walls.” Jani hugged her daughter tightly. “I do wish you’d been able to hide away with that teacher in Paris. Oh, how I wish you were already safe.”

  “Momma, I beg you, come with me,” Zhara felt the tears starting down her cheeks.

  Her mother brushed them with her fingers and whispered, “Let me consider it, Zhara, let me think. I…only if they can assure both our safety.”

  “That’s all I ask,” Zhara hugged her back, “think about it.”

  Into her daughter’s ear, the mother whispered in the barest minimum of sound, “Who did you call? Not the haji?”

  “Oh, blessed Allah! No!” Zhara laughed out loud. “I ordered pizza for me and my half brothers to eat while we watched The Empire Strikes Back.”

  Her mom threw her head back and laughed with her, the laughter grew into peals of hilarity and like the cap off a bottle of shaken champagne, they giggled until they cried.

  Zhara thought with a smile that she could never have been so foolish as to contact the underground through so traceable an instrument as the phone or over the computer. Her news would come by donkey boy, as if she were being held in the encampment of a desert king two thousand years ago. Sad, so sad, how little it’s changed. Saudi Arabia of today is little different from the testosterone-driven existence on the dunes of history.

  As her and her momma’s laughter subsided, she reflected on how wonderful it would be to be shed of all these clothes, of this slavery, and to be in the arms of her beloved Emil.

  Commander Yusef got his view of the back battlements and was happy to take his leave shortly thereafter. His thoughts went to the reports he was scheduled to give to two local men regarding catching the daughter of one and the wife of the other—two sisters—driving to town yesterday. Regardless that they were hurrying a sick child, a daughter, to the hospital, they should have had a man to do it. He wasn’t sure which had been driving. The hospital personnel who’d reported it hadn’t seen them get out of the car. So Yusef would be kind to the women, he would have them fully restricted to quarters, he would give their fathers and husbands heavy fines and make sure the child was well.

  Yusef motioned to Faruq to get going. Sitting back, he pulled off his scarf and wiped the sweat from his head. After all, he thought, he could see the women doing such a chancy thing if the youngster had been a son.

  Sound carries great distances in clear bitter cold and the brisk wind helped. Sture heard sleigh bells. He paused
as he was about to get into the Saab and Krister, holding the door open, looked around also.

  “Probably the Johannsons, my lord, exercising their Belgians.”

  Sture nodded. “Bloody big beasts to keep in shape this time of year. Can you imagine the feed alone…” he ducked into the warm front passenger seat “…not to mention the combing and brushing and hoof trimming and stable cleaning,”

  Krister nodded, taking the driver’s seat, “and it’s every day of every month. Where are we going, min herre?”

  “To Norrkoping, to Person’s office.”

  “Right, my lord.”

  The Saab slid forward into the murky darkness and the special snow tires caught on the gritty drive. They were on their way. It was a little over six miles to the gathering of shops and schools called Ostby. They passed skiers, shoooshing along the lane and eventually, passed the four-in-hand huge brown Belgian horses pulling a large sleigh with the bright crystal lamps lit. Old Mr. Johannson was driving and Sture lowered his window to wave. The Belgians were dancing with energy, their breath sending clouds of steam along their backs. Their stable mate, a giant wolfhound romped alongside, seeming to enjoy the sub-zero chill.

  Near the Ostby ICA food store, the only place for miles and miles where the local residents could buy supplies, Sture lowered his window again and Krister slowed the car.

  “Hej da!” he shouted.

  The very pretty Katrina, all bundled up in polypro and wool, paused in her long ski strides and her eyes, the only visible part of her body, smiled at him. Her Great Pyrenees dog, massive and white, bumped his muzzle into her. Sture could hear the old dog grumble as the sled he was pulling hit his hind legs. She patted the massive head and said something kind to him that was indistinguishable to Sture. She looked up at the Saab. “Come skiing with me this afternoon!”

  “I must return to Stockholm!” Sture shouted back.

  Her gloved hand waved a hopeless gesture at him. “You study too much, Sture Nojd!”

  “Next week, Katrina, I will ski with you next week!” Sture assured her and let the window slide back up. The Saab moved along the lane, careful to avoid other skiers and dogs with sleds on their way to the ICA store.

  “You should be more attentive to that young lady,” Krister admonished him gently, “or she’ll surely find another young man, my lord.”

  Sture laughed. “You are quite right, but when will I ever get five spare minutes’ time?”

  The lane ended at the intersection with the slightly larger road which led to Norrkoping and from there to the big highway which went east, skirting the shore of Lake Malaran, to Stockholm and west, up into the rolling hills, to Dalarna parish. From this point on, they could travel faster and the ten kilometers to Norrkoping would go quickly.

  Traffic was fairly heavy once they reached the suburbs of Norrkoping and within a mile of the city boundary, the snow on the road vanished. The entire small city, all the buildings, under the streets, throughout the plazas, was heated by the steam exhaust from the big central electric facility on the tip of Lake Malaran about two miles south of the city. This warmth and lack of snow seemed a wonderful idea at the outset and certainly in the long run it was a lot cheaper than snowplows and individual heating units, but it brought a nuisance none of the planners had counted on—the drunks.

  From all over central Sweden, the alcoholics who didn’t want to be shut up in care facilities, to which they were entitled, would arrive in Norrkoping along with the freezing weather and first snows. The police would get after them, though without much success because the vagrants would simply move from plaza to park to alleyway gratings.

  Sture noted four men and a woman sitting, huddled, just barely visible in the pale lights of the steaming fountain in front of the attorney’s office. How, he wondered to himself, was it fairly easy to tell the difference between a male and a female although completely bundled up? The big Saab was parked near the café and after Krister had opened the door for him, then locked up the car, he hustled off to his favorite table for coffee and sandwiches. The bums held out their hands rather dispiritedly as he passed and he gave them nothing. Sture went around the other side of the fountain and avoided them.

  Mr. Ingmar Person, the brother, was out, Mr. Alexanderslund was meeting with a client, and Ms. Inge Person, the clerk told Sture, would be with him shortly. Please sit.

  He sat.

  Inge Person, mid-forties, tall, blond, and regal in her sharply cut yellow suit appeared about five minutes later. She extended her hand to him as he stood. “I am so sorry about your father,” she said.

  For a second, Sture didn’t know what she meant, then remembered that to all these people, Dad was dead. What a farce! he thought and answered, “Yes, yes. Thank you.”

  “Come into the office,” she led him back and indicated a chair in front of her desk. “Isn’t there going to be a funeral? Or at least a memorial service?”

  “Ummm,” Sture’s mind was racing, “well, I guess so, as soon as we can get the body out of Egypt. There’s still an investigation going on. You know how those countries operate.”

  “What a shame!” The woman smiled consolingly at him. “What can I do for you this morning, Baron Hermelin?”

  “I have to find a way to make sure there is money coming into the housekeeping accounts and into mine. I must pay the servants. I must pay my tuition at college.” He scooted forward in his chair and put his hands, clasped into fists, on her desk.

  She nodded. “As soon as I found out about the Pastorkirche’s decision last week, I began gathering all the paperwork. So far, as I told you over the phone, I’ve not seen any way to undermine what has happened.” Glancing at his huge hands, she said, “I can understand your frustration.”

  “I don’t think so,” the young man said firmly, “you don’t have an entire castle to run without the slightest idea where the money to operate it will come from. The National Swedish Historical Trust won’t cover expenses for our private wing, that’s for sure!”

  “Did you get a copy of the letter the Pastorkirche sent to your father’s first wife?” She opened the rather thick folder containing all of the Hermelin affairs, probably back into the last century, perhaps earlier. Her father’s father had passed it on to her father who’d given the trust to her and her brother. Somehow, she had taken over most of the work for the Hermelins and Sture often suspected she had the hots for his Dad. Too bad, he thought through gritted teeth.

  “Yes, I got it,” he replied almost in a snarl, “and I spoke over the telephone with the person in charge of doing all these investigations, someone named Miss Birgitta Algbak.”

  “Funny name, isn’t it?” Inge Person allowed herself a chuckle.

  “Hysterical.” Sture sat back in his chair and crossed his arms.

  “I’m working as fast as I can, Mr. Hermelin,” said the attorney, “I’ve submitted all sorts of objections, I’ve asked for a probate court to give an opinion. I’ve sent an overnight letter to this Bonnie Ixey requesting confirmation on her end, I’ve sent for the original marriage certificate from the State of Nevada and all residence records from the state of California. I don’t know what more I can do!” She raised her hands in semisupplication.

  “Why California?” asked Sture.

  “That’s where they met, or so I understand, and where they lived together for several months until your father, under the name Carl J. Mink, got his green card. It was easier then, for an outlander to do that in the US.” She handed the reluctant Sture a photocopy of the form that documented Carl-Joran’s US green card.

  Sture held it in his hand. “I’ll bet Dad didn’t even read this or any of the forms before he signed them.”

  She shrugged. “Regardless, it’s still legal and so is the marriage certificate.” She dug out another form, glanced at it. “They were married in Las Vegas.”

  “Is that a state?”

  “Ha! Almost,” she laughed. “No, it’s a gambling city in Nevada, which is nex
t to California, where people can go to get married in a hurry.”

  “Sounds about right,” he muttered, “getting married in a hurry is a gamble.”

  “So I’m not sure why you’re here,” she coaxed him, “or what you want from me.”

  “Money.”

  Her head went up, then down, her chin falling onto the fluffy cravat tied onto the top of her blouse. She said, “There is an open account for housekeeping, I told you that on the phone. There is your private account which was in trust and which came to you automatically. That’s to cover your college tuition. How are your studies coming, by the way?”

  “Fine, fine. I graduated from Uppsala last summer and I’m studying medicine in the Karolinska Institute now.” He brushed the accomplishment aside and said, “What, exactly, does this first wife inherit? And how will it affect me?”

  There was a long silence while Inge Person shuffled through the folder. She produced a sheaf of papers held together with a bright yellow plastic paperclip. “Mrs. Bonnie Ixey,” she read, “inherits all the estate, except accounts held in trust for the castle upkeep, your college expenses, and the organization your Dad was helping, Emigrant Women, which has a small Swiss account.”

  “I had a call from…someone in EW,” began Sture—which was the truth, he had, “and they’ve not been able to access their money.”

  “Ahhh,” she said, “that’s because the Swiss banks have a hold on the accounts until the Swedish authorities get a response from Mrs. Ixey confirming her acceptance of the inheritance. You see, the trust accounts are not of one certain amount. They get money from the accounts, which keep monies from the businesses’ and investments’ profits. So you and the castle can keep on running since they’re from Swedish accounts, but EW’s account is frozen until the Swiss banks get papers from the Pastorkirche that everything has been transferred.”

  “Damn it!” swore Sture. “I know Dad wants, er, wanted EW to go on operating without any hiccough. It’s probably life and death for them.”

  “You’re probably right. But there’s nothing I can do, absolutely nothing. The Swiss banks are a world unto themselves. Not even a Swiss lawyer could do anything for you or EW.”