The Disappearance of Grace

by Vincent Zandri

  “I. See.” The voice is growing louder now. “I. See.”

  Something begins to happen to my eyes then. They are suddenly losing their focus, as I knew they would. As I feared they would. I shift my gaze back to Hakeemullah. His eyes are locked on mine. Deep pools of black ink.

  “I. See.” he says again, the ‘See’ ending in a long drawn, ‘zzzzz.” Like ‘Seeeeezzzzzzz.’

  My eyes cut out on me.

  I find myself in the dark. A brown gray, walled-in darkness that seems impenetrable. I can no longer see my Grace, see her chest heaving, her lungs searching for the air to fill them. I no longer see Hakeemullah. But in my brain, I see him as he appeared on the early afternoon he stole my fiancée. The long overcoat, the thin beard, the sunglasses, the short dark cropped hair. Like now, it was impossible for me to see him that day. But in my mind I remember the incident as if I saw him with full clarity of vision. 20/20 unobstructed vision.

  “I. See.” he repeats yet again.

  Along with the voice, I make out the sound of water lapping up against stone walls. I hear muffled voices coming from another room attached to this one. Faint voices speaking in a language that is neither Italian nor English, but if I had to guess, is Tajik. I hear the very distant hint of a motorboat, and I swear, I hear the delicate voice of a songbird.

  I hear something else too.

  I hear Hakeemullah’s voice. But I no longer hear the words, “I. See.” Perhaps I never heard the words, “I. See.” Maybe I was deaf to the actual words or word he was speaking to me. Because if I concentrate…if I listen closely, I know for certain that he is not saying the words, “I. See.” He is not saying them at all. He is saying something else entirely.

  He is saying, “Aziz.”

  Chapter 78

  “AZIZ.”

  When it is spoken softly or spoken over a phone that is also filled with background noise, static, and distortion, it can sound very much like “I. See.” When it is spoken by a man who possesses the thick accent of a Tajik, it will sound like “I. See.” When you are undergoing bouts of temporary blindness for which there seems no cure, you will be aware of your eyes at all times. The words coming from the mouth of a man who appears to have kidnapped your fiancée will sound like, “I. See.”

  But he is not saying “I. See.”

  He is saying, “Aziz.”

  I fought in Afghanistan. I fought and survived, and I had no choice but to order an airstrike on a small ancient village situated atop a nameless hill in the violent north country. A part of my job in Afghanistan was not to fight with the rebels, but to speak with them, to negotiate with them, to try and make them understand the process of peace without terror or the trading and distribution of heroin. In doing so, I was able to pick up some Tajik. Not a lot, but some words here and there.

  One of these words was Aziz.

  It means, precious.

  Chapter 79

  I HEAR THE SHUFFLING of boots on the gravelly floor. Just a couple of steps.

  No more.

  The steps move away from me, not towards me. When I hear the faint sounds of struggling and a screaming through a duct tape gag, I know Hakeemullah has now approached Grace. I know he is doing something to her and that I can’t possibly come to her rescue. I am bound. I am helpless and useless.

  I am blind.

  I close my eyes as if this will help shield me from what he is doing to Grace. I am already blind. I already cannot see him or her. But I somehow see her gagged face and her red painted lower legs. But I don’t want to see them. I try to turn off all my senses, all of my abilities to see something without the use of my eyes. I want to be blind and deaf. I want my sense of smell and taste to disappear. I want my heart to stop and my brain to stop functioning. I want all imagination and my ability to paint a vivid picture of what is happening to my Grace only a few feet away from me on this cold damp floor to be erased.

  I want to die.

  * * *

  From where I lie on the floor on my side, I hear my fiancée thrusting about, her torso and legs slapping the hard-packed earth like she’s a fish out of water. I try thrusting my body forward towards her. But it’s impossible to move more than a few inches at a time in my bound condition. Tears pour out of my blind eyes. My heart pounds. My lungs feel like two overinflated balloons about to burst.

  Until the room falls silent.

  Chapter 80

  ANY NOISES COMING FROM Grace have suddenly ceased. Now I no longer hear her body thrashing about. No longer hear her muffled screams and gasps. I no longer register anything other than stillness and calmness.

  I can’t help but think the worst: Hakeemullah has killed her.

  He has cut her with that knife. Cut her neck.

  I try again to shimmy my body towards her. But now, in the silence, I’m not even sure which direction to move.

  I am a failure.

  I am death.

  Chapter 81

  THEN I MAKE OUT the sound of a body rising up off the floor.

  Footsteps.

  I smell a musty odor. A raw, organic scent. Like old clothes that have not been washed in ages. I breathe in the faint odor of spices. Cooking spices. Then I sense a body lowering itself beside me. Not so close it touches me, but so close I can almost feel its heart beating.

  Hakeemullah.

  “His name was Aziz,” he whispers in broken English after a breath of heavy silence has passed. “Precious. And he was my son. You bombed my village. You killed our elders. You killed our animals and destroyed our homes. You killed our women. And you killed my little Aziz. My Precious. You destroyed his legs and you took his life. You broke my heart.”

  I’m listening to him speak, but in my mind I’m seeing that fighter dive out of the blue Afghan sky, see it unloading its missiles, see the red-hot explosions, see the plumes of smoke, feel the rumble of the shock under the soles of my boots. Then I see the village, ravaged from the two explosions and from automatic 30 mm cannon fire. I see the dead and the wounded. I see a boy. I see his full face masked with a patina of white dust, his small arms thrust over his head like a child sleeping in his crib, and I see what’s left of his legs. The charred and grotesque remnants. This man is his father. He is the father of the boy killed by the missiles. And now he has killed my Grace in revenge for what I needed to do in order to stop my men from dying.

  “Precious is an angel now,” he goes on. “He resides in a paradise you cannot begin to comprehend. I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to know how it feels to lose something so precious. I wanted you to feel what it is to live in a fear so great, you live your every waking moment for the time when you will finally die. I wanted you to know how that felt, Captain.”

  He falls silent for a moment while I begin to make out his panted breaths, and from down on the floor, I can practically smell the salt in his tears. I’m trying to recall seeing his face in the village. His bearded, brown face. His short cropped black hair. I try and picture him. Try and recall if I met with him when I met with the elders. Try and recall if we ever spoke, and I cannot remember a thing. But I recall his little boy peeking out at me from behind the corner of one of the stone houses. I recall approaching him and giving him chocolate which he greedily snatched from my hand while offering me a precious smile in return. That was the last time I ever saw him and it was the last afternoon of his short life.

  “I set you up to die in that explosion under your apartment. I thought that if you died the same way my Precious left his mortal body behind, then his life will have been avenged and my soul would be restored. But when it was over and more innocents lie dead because of it, I knew that I would never feel the peace I so crave, no matter how many times I try and kill you. It is all useless. And I have only my tears and my memories to compete with my cold loneliness.”

  Once more he goes silent. I have no choice but to lie here and listen, and pray that when he kills me, that I die fast. It’s only the pain I fear. Nothing more. I want to die now. If
he has cut Grace and allowed her life to bleed out, then I too want to die. It is the only answer.

  “I know now that there is no bringing Precious back to me, Captain. There is no way to replace him, any more than we can repair the stone walls of the houses in my village; any more than we can return the blood to the bodies of the elders your men executed. It is all over now. All I want to do is return to my country to live out my days.”

  I hear movement and the sound of him getting back up onto his feet.

  I wish he would kill me. My God, why doesn’t he just kill me now and get it over with? Why is he waiting? He’s got the knife in his hand. I’m sure of it. Why won’t he just use it and end this? Maybe I deserve to die for what I did to him. To his little boy. Maybe robbing me of my sight is not enough. Maybe following orders is no excuse. But then I remember why we fought the war. I remember those buildings in New York. Those twin towers gleaming and glistening in the September sun. I recall the planes and the explosions that ripped through steel and glass. All those precious innocent lives standing on the sills of the shattered windows, having to make one final decision. Whether to die by fire or die by collision with the earth. Burn or jump. All those souls making the sign of the cross, seeing the face of a Lord who awaited them that day in paradise as they slowly allowed their bodies to drop over the edge, like petals releasing themselves from the rose.

  Then, the sound of footsteps moving away from me. Two or three bodies descending the stairs. The door slams open, as if it’s been pounded open by a battering ram.

  They enter the room.

  Soldiers. Police. I know them without having to see them.

  The sound of hobnailed boots slapping against old stone.

  Orders are shouted out. Weapons being cocked and engaged. Suddenly a bright white light shines in my face. I can sense the light in my open eyes despite the blindness. It’s so bright it makes me want to close them.

  Three sharp shots reverberate against the stone walls.

  The sound of a body dropping like a heavy sack of rags and bones tells me Hakeemullah is dead before he hits the ground. So does the spatter that hits the right side of my face. I wipe it off with the back of my hand while someone approaches me and in perfect English asks me if I’ve been hurt. An American. Another soldier shouts out the same words. And I’m certain that he is speaking to my Grace.

  “Grace,” I say, the word barely coming out. “Grace…Grace.”

  “She is okay, Captain. She is alive and unhurt.” I know the voice. It’s spoken with a heavy Italian accent. Detective Carbone.

  I feel a great wave of something wash over me then. It engulfs me and fills my veins with an exhaustion so profound, I’m not sure I can speak another word. I roll over onto my back, open my eyes back up onto nothing. Closing them, I pass out.

  Chapter 82

  THEY RESCUED US, OF COURSE. The Italian police in cooperation with United States Marines assigned to the US Embassy building under direct order from Ambassador Graham. Hakeemullah was shot dead on the spot and his entire gang of three Taliban co-conspirators rounded up and incarcerated in a military prison in Milan where they presently await questioning. Our precise location came on a tip from an island fisherman who repeatedly viewed the suspicious foreigners moving in and out of the building on many occasions, but mostly at night. When he witnessed them carting a body—my body—into the building, he became convinced that they were indeed up to no good.

  I came to in the same hospital in Venice where Hakeemullah snatched me up less than twenty-four hours before. As seems to be the case whenever I wake up from a bout of blindness and the exhaustion it brings on (or vice versa), I can see again. That was three days ago, and I haven’t suffered even a hint of blindness since then.

  Grace shares the bed beside me and she continues to sleep off the effects of her four-day/four-night nightmare. Other than the red paint Hakeemullah applied to her legs, probably to somehow symbolically mimic the cruelties brought upon his own son’s legs by the bombardment, my fiancée is unhurt and unwounded. But she does bear the scars of her emotional struggle, much of which come from those few moments we shared inside that small room together with Hakeemullah holding a knife against her neck. In the end, what happened in Venice was not motivated by terror, not motivated by a war neither one of us started or wanted. It was not motivated by the shootout that came about between the soldiers under my command and the still armed elders of the village. Some of the Tajik men died and some of my men died. It was motivated by the loss of his child and nothing more. In the end, Hakeemullah lost his life and perhaps that’s the way he wanted it. To lose his earthly life and spend eternity in paradise with his beloved Aziz. Perhaps that is why he never left Venice with Grace.

  * * *

  Grace and I are released at the end of the third day and are put up by the embassy in a hotel that overlooks the Grand Canal. We purchase a couple of bottles of wine, some cheese and bread, and we spend the night holding one another. We try and make love but we are too exhausted. Later that night when we both seem to wake up at the same time, I get up and open the windows just enough to allow the full moonlight to pour into the room, along with the cool air. Once more we try and make love, and this time we don’t stop. We make love until the dawn, until our bodies are covered in moisture and we are worn out. Then we sleep until noon.

  When Detective Carbone calls and leaves a message asking us to meet him for a debriefing along with several military types, I let the request go unanswered. Instead, I kneel down alongside the bed and take hold of Grace’s hand. She slides up a little onto the soft pillows, runs her open hand through her thick dark hair. Already tears are forming in her eyes. In my left hand I hold her diamond ring. Slipping it onto her ring finger, I say, “Will you marry me?”

  A tear rolls down her right cheek.

  “Yes. I do. Yes.”

  I press my face into her neck then, and together we listen to sounds of the boats on the canal, and water lapping up against the stone banks, and we breathe in the scent of Venice and begin to live again, starting with that very moment in time.

  We. Live.

  EPILOGUE

  “Feel this one,” my fiancée tells me. Her voice is insistent yet somehow lighter than I’ve heard it since before I went to war. All around me in this open café, I hear the sounds of voices, the clatter of plates on the metal tables, the clinking of wine glasses, the unhurried laughs of the lovers and friends who come to this place to fall in love, or fall in love again.

  I hold out my hand, palm up. Grace sets something inside it.

  “Now don’t cheat,” she insists.

  My eyes are already closed. But I try and shut them tighter. As if it’s possible for my lids to come down any harder than they already have. I close up the fingers on my hand, make a fist around the object.

  “Well,” Grace says, “let’s have it.”

  I feel a solid metal band. It’s cold in my warm palm. There’s no stone attached to it. It’s just a plain ring.

  “Couldn’t you come up with something harder than this, Grace?” I say, not without a laugh.

  “Hey, it’s not the object I’m trying to get you to see,” she says. “It’s what the object means.”

  “I see,” I say.

  “No you don’t see,” she says. “How can you? Your eyes are closed.”

  “That they are. But you wouldn’t believe what I see when my eyes are closed.”

  “What do you see?”

  “You. Me. In bed. The windows open, the breeze blowing on our pale skin.”

  “You can open them now, Romeo. Or should I say, Casanova?”

  I do it. I also open my hand and reveal a gold band. A wedding band. My eyes fill.

  “Go ahead,” Grace whispers, her voice choking. “Read the inscription.”

  I hold the ring up to my face so that I can read what’s been inscribed in the band’s interior. I see, “My Love. My Life. My Heart.”

  “It’s too early to wea
r this.”

  Grace reaches across the table, takes hold of my free hand, squeezes it.

  “You’ve earned the right. We. Us. We’ve earned the right to be married before a priest or a judge tells us it’s so. Screw the rules.”

  “I guess we’ve always been married. Even when we were apart.”

  Grace exhales a breath, and once more, paints a smile on her face. This smile is different. It carries with it a different message.

  “Now feel this, Captain,” she says, once more reaching out for my hand. “Gently,” she adds, placing my hand on her flat belly. “What do you feel?”

  A single tear falls down my face. I feel Grace and what’s now growing inside my Grace.

  “I’m home, Grace,” I whisper. “I’m finally home and healing.”

  We sit like that for a while. In silence. Not needing to speak. Needing only to feel one another’s hands. One another’s presence. One another’s heartbeats. We don’t dare release our hold on one another. Not even to steal a drink of our wine.

  It begins to rain.

  I can hear the sound of the raindrops falling on the canvas awning above us, and against the stone cobbles of the open square. I can only imagine the heavy raindrops making thousands of small splashes and explosions in the water that’s collected in the stone fountain.

  “Nicky,” Grace asks after a time, as though she is reading my mind. “Why do we have to fight in wars?”

  I exhale a breath.

  “Why do we have to love?”

  “Will you ever go back to the wars, Nick?”

  Flashing inside my brain, the image of a hill in a valley surrounded by crystal clear blue sky. The sound of screaming jet engines breaking the silence. Then two explosions that rattle the earth. Then I see a shattered village, and the face of a dead boy. Standing not far away from him, on the opposite side of the stone well, a bearded and robed elder. An entire lineup of robed elders. I see them raise up the weapons hidden beneath their robes. Coming from behind me, the clatter of automatic weapons sighting in on their target, followed by an explosion of rounds, and the dropping of bodies. I see the elders collapse and drop beside him, all of them dead before they hit the earth. I see myself falling to my knees, make out the sound of the bodies of my men falling dead-weight to the gravel-covered Tajik earth. See myself screaming, “Stop! Stop! Make it Stop!” I see myself collapsing to the same gravelly earth that a little boy shares only a few feet away from me, his heart as still and as dead as mine. I see it all as clear as I see this ring in my hand and if I had my way, I would erase it from my memory banks forever and ever. But I can’t. I can only create new memories and try and put behind me the old ones. Because the truth is this: We killed them all. Rather, my men, under my command, killed them. Every last one of them. After the bombs fell on the village, the elders tried to ambush us. All twelve of them who were left alive after the attack by the Warthog. But my men got the jump on them and they killed them all, but not until six out of eight men under my command were also shot dead on the spot. It was an execution on both sides. A bloodbath. And it did not have to happen.