The Weight of Nothing

by Gillis, Steven;

  What pity. (“What pity?”) Niles cried out louder than Osmah, his sound filled with alarm as the blade glistened and split the moonlight, his fever pitched even higher then as Osmah clutched the air, his fingers catching hold and digging into Niles’ arms, both men with knees bent and gasping, then falling as one to the earth, to the cool, cool truth and motionless surrender.

  I took Timbal’s canvas in a cardboard tube and tied it to the roof with a fibrous brown twine before Mullah drove me back to the city. The stars overhead seemed to fade as we passed Blida, then reappeared as we came again into a clearing and the landscape opened like an infinite sea. We reached the Sahel just after eleven, where I hurried inside, eager to tell Niles about my night. I tried not to think of the argument Timbal made against my want for nothing, preferring instead to clutch at the spoils from my visit, laughing as I imagined my committee’s surprise when I gave them a look at the painting. No doubt Dr. Freidrich would let me keep my job in exchange for a promise to write a book about my trip.

  I crossed the lobby with the canvas in tow, making a mental note to file a Certificate of Authenticity and Ownership as soon as I got back to Renton, only to stop and turn as someone called my name. I saw a man about my age, thin like Niles only taller, a dark caramel skin and jet black hair, moving toward me from the opposite side of the room. “You are Bailey Finne?” he asked, and when I was slow to answer, he touched my arm in a half-comforting and half-urgent gesture, and said, “I am here about your friend.”

  Before leaving the Sahel, we went upstairs where I deposited the canvas and this man—Aziz—looked through Niles’ belongings, taking away a folder and his copy of The Rebel. (“It is best for now you not have these here,” he said.) Ten minutes later we were driving back across town, away from the sea and out toward Beni Douala where a community of shops and houses rose out of the sand. I sat in the front seat flipping through the pages of the folder, reading the name Osmah Said Almend, the reality of which limited my ability to reject the story Aziz told me. Still, I tried convincing myself his claim was nothing more than a bizarre fiction, and several times along the way I asked in a confused sort of denial, “What exactly happened?”

  Aziz accelerated around a curve, glanced sideways at me as I sat tense and pale, shaking my head with worry and doubt. “It is this,” he declared, and repeated it all again.

  I tossed the folder into the back seat and looked next at Niles’ copy of The Rebel, all marked and underlined, and with the name Massinissa Alilouche beside the quote:

  The logic of the rebel is to want to serve justice so as not to add to the injustice of the human condition, to insist on plain language so as not to increase the universal falsehood, and to wager, in spite of human misery, for happiness.

  These words gave me confidence, and I nearly read as much out loud, only to be shaken by the following highlighted passage:

  The consequence of rebellion…is to refuse to legitimize murder because rebellion, in principle, is a protest against death… The rebel who, united against death, wants to construct, on the foundation of the human species, a savage immortality, is terrified at the prospect of being obliged to kill in their turn. Nevertheless, if they retreat they must accept death; if they advance they must accept murder.

  I cursed and once again blurted out, “But what’s happened?” as if this time Aziz’s answer would be different.

  “My friend.”

  “This can’t be.”

  “And yet I was there,” the rest of the story unfolded the same in a murky sort of confusion, culminating in Niles collapsing to the ground with Oz in his arms and Aziz getting him from the alley to safety. (“The whole afternoon he spoke of forgiveness,” Aziz said. “And yet.”) I turned on the seat and stared at the man beside me, wondering again what I was supposed to believe, rooting back through everything in search of clues I missed, hints of future trouble revealed in Niles’ somnambulism, the fever he exhibited that morning and I failed to take seriously. Still what had happened was beyond anything I could ever imagine. “It’s crazy. Crazy,” I said again and again until we reached our destination and the car was parked.

  Aziz’s house was one of several small structures connected in a row of adjoining walls. Inside the house, Niles had been put to bed, Aziz’s wife having placed a blanket over him, her intention to have him sweat out his illness. I was taken into the room where he lay, his pale face covered in perspiration though his teeth chattered. His entire body appeared as a soft clay heated, without form, his head resting atop two pillows that folded around his face and caused the warm air to close over him in a discomfiting boil. His eyes remained half-shut, his coloring ashen in the dim glow of the one small lamp. Despite Aziz’s warning, I was surprised by how ill he looked. His features were sallow and narrowed to a point where he resembled Odilon Redon’s Marsh Floer, a Sad and Human Head. I crossed the room, reached down and touched his cheek.

  “I have phoned a doctor,” Aziz said

  “He’s burning up.”

  “He should be here soon. My wife has offered broth but your friend is not interested.”

  “How about a wet compress?” I didn’t wait for an answer, turned in a circle, went into the kitchen and brought Niles a cool glass of water and a damp cloth that I placed on his forehead. Raising his shoulders, I got him to take a drink. The blue of his eyes had faded almost to white, and setting him back down on the pillow, alarmed again by how rapidly his fever had soared, I pulled the wooden chair over beside the bed and asked, “How are you doing?”

  He answered in a whisper, his breathing labored, as if passing through lungs half filled by the sea. “Bailey,” he said. I leaned closer, examined his face, heard the release of air, the mouthing of words not yet spoken until all would-be sound faded. “It’s OK,” I said, and offered another sip of water.

  Aziz stood just inside the door, his wife a few feet behind, watching Niles as he repeated my name, drawing me close again as he whispered, “I need your help.”

  “Yes. Of course,” I misunderstood and answered at once. “I’m here. It’s alright. You’re going to be fine. There’s a doctor coming and he’ll get your fever down.” I reached to adjust the cloth on his head while Niles struggled to sit up. I stopped him, insisting, “You need to lie down.”

  “I can’t. I have to go,” he made an effort to rise further, looked past me and searched the floor for his shoes. I came out of the chair, blocked his progress at the side of the bed while assuring him, “It’s OK. You’re safe here. We’ll leave just as soon as the doctor checks you out.”

  “Bailey,” he said again, and it was how he pronounced my name this time, with vigilance and a telling sort of intonation that caused me to stop what I was doing and shake my head. “What are you asking?”

  “I need you to take me.”

  “Where?”

  “To El Moudjahid.”

  “The newspaper? Why?”

  “Bailey.”

  “Forget it, Niles.”

  “I have to.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Take me.”

  “I won’t.”

  He began slipping his legs out from under the blanket, squirming with some difficulty until he was sitting over the edge, the wheezing in his lungs anchoring every word as he said again, “I need you to do this for me.” I circled once around my chair, animated in my resistance. “There’s no reason. Stop and think. Oz is dead. You can’t change what happened. You need to leave it be.” I put a hand on Niles’ shoulder and tried guiding him back beneath the sheet. The pressure of my fingers kept him from moving further though the second I removed my hand he continued.

  “Wait,” I returned my grip. “Just listen.”

  Niles dropped his shoulder beneath my hold and tried to stand, though even the minor exertion of slipping free seemed to weaken him, and straining to catch his breath, he said, “I can’t leave things as they are.”

  “So what are you saying? You want to confess? Why?”
I waved my arms in the air. “A murderer like Osmah deserves what he gets.”

  “And me?”

  “A medal, Niles. You didn’t kill innocent people.”

  He sat with his feet dangling, hesitating before he answered, trying to gather his strength even as the effort of raising his head caused his neck to snap and roll back. His determination remained steadfast, however. “People need to understand what I did,” he said. “I have to confess in order not to surrender to the profane,” his reference to Camus frustrated me further, and unwilling to debate philosophical ideologies, I answered, “You can’t apply any of that nonsense to real life. It’s all academic theory, Niles. Right now we need to concentrate on the facts. You’re sick. Oz is dead and the only thing important is getting you well enough to fly home.”

  “Take me downtown,” his chin fell forward, then bounced back, his eyes catching mine and holding my gaze until the muscles in his neck sagged again. Aziz’s wife stepped into the room, located Niles’ shoes and knelt in front of him, slipping them on before Aziz barked at her to stop. (“Tohaf!”) Niles watched his shoes being removed, his legs hanging down, and in that moment of confusion I grabbed his ankles and guided him back beneath the blanket, intent on keeping him there until the doctor arrived. “The important thing now is getting you healthy. You’ve done enough for one night. You need to do nothing else. Nothing, Niles. Nothing. Do you understand?”

  Niles in recline, said the word “nothing,” so soft that the letters barely formed on his lips, were little more than a tease as he thought of what was left for him, of what Massinissa Alilouche warned him about and how unprepared he was back then to listen. “The rebel has only one way of reconciling himself with his act of murder…” Truly yes, how impossible it all was to know before. He thought of Oz and then Bailey, of Jeana, and his father, and Marthe Raynal until all blurred together and the final degree of separation faded, leaving him with a single truth, his red-rimmed eyes hollowed as the heat of his fever soared.

  He allowed his eyes to shut and there in the dark Osmah appeared once more, the innocence in his face as he spun and stood for all eternity beneath the blade haunting, a perfect incongruity Niles made no attempt to chase away. He trembled then, confronted by a new sense of fear. He was Mersault, smothering under his blankets, cold then hot, struggling to breathe, burning with a great confusion. He remembered being dragged from the alley and brought away from the stones among stones, how surprised he was to find his head filled not with Jeana but Marthe and the night she lifted his shirt and kissed his wounds. He recalled the blade rising and then thrust down, how he shouted with irrefutable knowledge, only to know now it was never love and forgiveness that drove him to find Oz but something else, a condition worse than the nothingness Bailey worshiped, as complete and absolute as death.

  When he opened his eyes again, Bailey was gone. He repeated the word—“nothing”—moving his head from the pillow as best he could and staring across the room. A numbness passed through his hands, a chill shooting over his wrists as he looked through the open door. In losing Jeana, he used to assume—as Mersault did—that he was “no longer made for such devotion, but for the innocent and terrible love of the dark god he would from then on serve,” and yet now, in the aftermath of everything, how different he knew the answer to be. He thought of Marthe again and said the word “love,” in the hope that Bailey would hear. “Love,” he tried to shout as an adjuration, but the word was only in his head, the bluish stubble on his cheeks transforming him, a tightness in his stomach passing into his throat like a stone, until his wincing gave way to a different sort of resolve, quieting his limbs, leaving him motionless and becalmed, his mouth already filled with sand.

  I walked out to the front room, hoping Niles would sleep, and stared out the window at the dark. It was after 2 a.m. and the stillness of the hour was absolute, the only light from stars clustered in a tenebrous sky. “Where is this doctor you called?”

  “I don’t know. He’s obviously detained. Perhaps we should consider the hospital.”

  “No,” I remained adamant, imagining Niles surrounded by nurses and orderlies and physicians, any one of whom might notify the police about the ill American confessing to a crime near Bab El Oued. The door to the bedroom was open and I glanced back through at Niles laying peacefully beneath the brown blanket. “We’ll wait for your doctor friend.”

  “All right.”

  “He is?”

  “What? Таbеeb? Sahbee? He can be trusted, yes.”

  “And you?” I couldn’t keep myself from asking. “Why are you helping us?”

  “Me? But what can I tell you, my friend? Because I, too, have become fond of your Niles? But more than that, no? If I left him in the alley with Osmah, maybe someone who saw us together would have connected your friend to me. Of maybe because I am no fan of Osmah, either. Men such as he make it impossible for the rest of us to live. And maybe, simply,” he smiled here though not sincerely, “because you are an American, too, and will pay me, of course, for all my effort.”

  Aziz’s wife came from the kitchen with freshly steeped tea. A young woman in tan trousers drawn in tight around her ankles, she was barely older than the coeds I taught, her pitch-black hair combed straight, her head uncovered, a long silk scarf draped over her shoulders and down across her blouse which was blue. She spoke just enough English to understand the conversation between Aziz and me, knew the reason Niles and I were there. “Anah asif. I am sorry,” Aziz accepted the tea from his wife, apologized for his anger earlier when he insisted she move away from Niles. “It is like this,” he said, and elaborated on what he already told her, discussing the new twist and Niles’ desire to confess.

  In response to Aziz soliciting her opinion, Mati described what she saw in Niles’ face as she knelt before him and helped him with his shoes, how it was clear to her confessing was what he wanted. “Anah mish ahrif layh, Aziz (I do not know why),” she said. “But in that moment—hoowah mab-soot—he was happy.”

  “Maf-ti-kersh (I don’t think so),” Aziz disagreed, and when Mati said again she thought Niles should be allowed to go—“Af-tiker keda (I believe so),” he shook his head. “Anan ahrif ahsan (I know better).” Mati suggested taking Niles to the hospital then—as Aziz proposed not five minutes ago—or at the very least to a clinic.

  “La (no).” Aziz assured Mati the doctor would be here any minute and for now they must wait.

  I moved from the window and glanced again at Niles who hadn’t stirred beneath the blanket and appeared fast asleep. I went to the front door then and opened it, staring down the road, which was unlit and disappeared in the darkness. The air outside was warm and placid, the absence of sound like standing beneath water. I tried clearing my head but found it all too cluttered, and frustrated, I wanted to shout. Aziz joined me in the doorway, aware of my agitation and afraid of attracting the gendarmes, he said, “Sahbee. Let’s wait inside.” I raised my hands, palms flat as if attempting to push back the dark. “In a minute,” I told him, then turned and glanced at Mati who had moved from beside the low table on which she’d set the tea and was standing closer to the bedroom, staring in at Niles. She acknowledged me with a look of sorrow, mouthing the word, “Etfadal (come),” and summoned me with her hand.

  I hesitated as Mati continued to signal me. “Etfadal,” her arm extended, her expression softening as she noticed the fear in my face. Her milder appeal unsettled me even more however, and I began to back off, colliding with Aziz who was walking then toward his wife. “Ayh elhekayah? (What is the matter?)” he asked her, but I didn’t want to hear and covered my ears. Mati took hold of her husband’s sleeve and coaxed him toward the bed, and only then did I run with my hands still flat against my ears and my eyes squinting as if to force a great pain from my head.

  Niles’ face was already a bluish grey. I fell down on my knees and screamed, “We have to get him to the hospital! We have to get him downtown.” I began to cry, Aziz and Mati with heads bowed as I
flailed my arms and begged for their help. As tranquil as Niles appeared then, I moaned with apology, “Goddamn it, Niles! Goddamn it! It’s nothing! It’s nothing! It’s nothing!” over and over and over again, until the doctor came at last and treated me with an odd-smelling white powder mixed into water, encouraging me to sit in the chair and try to rest. Mati helped with my shoes, removed the blanket from Niles’ body, and laid it across my legs before turning out the light.

  BOOK III

  AND BACK AGAIN

  CHAPTER 16

  THE TRIP HOME

  Under the circumstances, I was ill-equipped to handle the arrangements and relied on Aziz to deal with the authorities and make the necessary preparations for transport. Tests were run to insure Niles’ body was not incubating any contagious disease, and only then was I allowed to take him home. I contacted Jeana’s family and had Niles buried beside her in Chicago. Elizabeth came from Spain for the funeral, stayed three days then returned. The shock of Niles’ death gave her reason to treat me kindly, though the situation confused and ultimately forbid anything further between us. I blamed myself for Niles’ death and insisted he’d still be alive if I’d taken better care of him. Elizabeth in turn, who knew only that Niles had caught a fever, assured me with a sentiment I took two ways, “Bailey, there’s nothing you could have done.”