Ollie's Cloud

by Gary Lindberg

  Anisa proceeds to her chair next to Ollie. At last Herbert finds some words. “I would wager that you have some interesting tales to tell,” he says to Anisa.

  “I don’t know if my tales would interest the English,” she replies. “My missionary parents were murdered in Persia. I was captured as a child, taken to Bokhara where I became a slave to many men, and was finally purchased by a Persian prince for his harem.”

  Ali notices that his mother does not refer to the kelauntar as her husband and has elevated his status to Persian prince.

  “I understand you were rescued by Mr. Cranston,” Reginald says.

  “The gallant Mr. Cranston,” Anisa adds. “And now I am at home with my true family.”

  “I am certain The Times will be very interested in your story, Mrs….uh…” Herbert has stumbled headfirst into quagmire. How should he refer to this woman? Was she ever officially married?

  “My Persian name was Anisa. My English name is Anne. You may call me Anne.” She glances at Mrs. Chadwick for approval, but the old lady’s eyes are on Ollie.

  “Very good,” Herbert replies. “If I may be so bold, Anne, as to suggest myself as a most capable interviewer and writer of articles for that esteemed newspaper. I believe your story will captivate the nation.”

  Ollie understands the purpose of this dinner. It is not a family occasion. It is business. London is not so different from Bushruyih, except that here the women are unveiled and speak openly to men.

  “Perhaps later we can arrange a time for the interview,” Gordon suggests.

  Mrs. Chadwick claps her hands loudly and shouts, “Clare, our dinner please.” Two English servants immediately enter with trays of food.

  Over a dinner of pheasant and squash, Gordon peppers Reginald and Herbert with questions about happenings in England since he had left the country eighteen months earlier. An astonishing flow of chatter, incomprehensible to Ollie, pours across the table, marinating the platters of food with news about attempted reforms at Oxford, accusations of new developer intrusions in Kensington, gossip about the monarchy, complaints about the state of politics, and boasting about the growth and widening influence of Reginald’s parish. Gordon hungrily devours each morsel of news while Anne tries to look interested.

  Ollie picks at his food. The pheasant is good but he longs for lamb kebab and rice. To keep entertained he tries to pluck familiar English words from the unceasing surge of the unfamiliar and then repeat each word in his mind, over and over, thinking the odd shape of its sound exactly the way it had been pronounced.

  After dinner, Mrs. Chadwick suggests they retire to the drawing room. The men all pat themselves on their bellies to express their satisfaction with the meal, then compliment their hostess as if she had cooked dinner herself. Herbert joins Gordon and Anne for the short walk to the drawing room. Mrs. Chadwick takes Reginald’s arm as they follow. Ollie trails them all. He cannot hear the quiet conversation between Mrs. Chadwick and the Anglican priest.

  “Reginald, I need a favor,” Mrs. Chadwick says. “I want Oliver at the Charterhouse.”

  “My dear lady,” Reginald responds, “Charterhouse is certainly a fine school. I am most aware that your late husband graced that institution with his presence at one time. But its reputation, how should I put it… has been suffering of late. The students are mainly lower- and middle-class riff raff these days. Let me make arrangements for a tutor instead.”

  “My husband had a great affection for Charterhouse, Reginald. And if I may point out, our son, Augustus, also attended Charterhouse. My husband believed that English gentlemen could not be reared in the drawing rooms of the upper class. Can you make the arrangements?”

  Reginald smiles. “So this delightful feast was a bribe, then.”

  Mrs. Chadwick looks at him slyly. “Exactly.”

  “Then I will do my best, Emily. And may I say the plum sauce was magnificent.”

  They have reached the drawing room. From an ornate sterling tray, Gibson serves small glasses of sherry. Gordon and Anne sit next to each other on an overstuffed sofa. Ollie sits at his mother’s feet, more comfortable on the floor. Mrs. Chadwick offers Ollie large round chocolates from a ceramic bowl and he takes one but is not sure what to do with it.

  “Go ahead, eat it!” Mrs. Chadwick says, smiling.

  Ollie tentatively takes a bite and likes what he tastes.

  “Mrs. Chadwick, I can’t recall ever hearing how your son ended up in Persia?” Herbert, the newspaperman, is holding the sherry glass just under his lips as he speaks. And then it occurs to him what an unfortunate choice of words he has made. Ended up in Persia? Perhaps the old woman will ignore his words and…

  “He ended up dead, Mr. Eaton,” the old woman says flatly. Herbert gulps the remainder of his sherry and abruptly sets down the glass as Gordon tries to smooth over the awkward patch.

  “I believe he meant…”

  “I know what he meant,” Mrs. Chadwick continues. “He meant ‘what was he doing in Persia?’ Well, Mr. Eaton, my son Augustus was a brilliant man who was wholly dedicated to God. What caused him to leave the Anglican church and join the Presbyterians we will never know, but he served the same God as you and I, you can be assured of that.

  “After his ordination, he was assigned as minister to a small Presbyterian church near Devonshire where he met and married a fine, upstanding young woman named Elizabeth. They had one child, a daughter they named Anne. But Augustus was not content to serve God in a country church. He petitioned for permission to undertake missionary work in India.

  “When they left England, Anne was six years old. While serving in Bombay, Augustus met a trader from Isfahan, Persia, who had learned English in Bombay. The trader filled my son’s head with stories about the exotic land of Persia. This was a land in which the Good News of Christ had not been heard. It must have been an irresistible lure for my son. At any rate, he packed up his little family and went to Persia. Three months later I received a letter that he had sent from Bombay. I imagine he was already dead by that time, but we had no way of knowing.”

  Ollie finds that he can comprehend a great deal of what Mrs. Chadwick says. He understands that this story is about his grandparents, Augustus and Elizabeth Chadwick. But he feels nothing for these people. It is far less interesting than listening to a tale from The Arabian Nights.

  Mrs. Chadwick stands and walks to a wooden mantle, lifting two small paintings in gilded frames. She stares at them for a moment, hands trembling slightly, and then offers them to Herbert who looks at the faces and passes them on.

  “This is a portrait of my son,” Mrs. Chadwick says, referring to a handsome, dark-eyed young man who bears a striking resemblance to Ollie. Each person in turn, upon seeing the portrait, glances at the child on the floor to confirm the uncanny likeness.

  “And the other one, of course, is Anne’s mother,” Mrs. Chadwick continues. Young Elizabeth is a plain woman with a nose slightly too large for her face—attractive nevertheless, but with little of Anne’s smoldering beauty. “God knows how they died.”

  “I know,” Anne interjects. “I was only seven, but I will never forget. Several weeks after our ship landed at a large port in Persia we joined a caravan. Where we were headed I do not know. I remember that one day we were slowly walking across a large desert when I heard shouting and yelling. The people in the caravan grew very frightened. They tried to form a circle with their animals. The men took out their muskets and started shooting. And then I saw the Turkoman. They were like demons descending on us! I was very afraid. In all the confusion I started running. Suddenly I found myself outside the circle.

  “My father noticed that I was missing. I could hear him screaming my name. But I couldn’t see him. And then I turned and saw him running toward me. A man on horseback came between us. He raised a big, curved sword and swung it… cutting off my father’s head.”

  Mrs. Chadwick gasps. Anne starts to weep, then says, “I’m so sorry. Forgive me.” Anne’s earlie
r displays of emotion had been forced and artificial, but this time Ollie senses genuine anguish. Gordon puts his arm around Anne’s shoulders and pulls her close.

  Ollie looks over at Mrs. Chadwick, who leans backward in her chair as if dead. Reginald is standing by her, holding her hand and offering a handkerchief. “What a barbaric thing for a child to witness!” he offers. “And for a mother to hear!”

  Herbert is mesmerized. He leans forward and asks, “What about your mother?”

  “Good God!” Reginald scolds. “Don’t ask her to relive another moment of terror.”

  “It’s all right,” Anne says, calmer now. “It’s been more than twenty years. I’ve just never… I’ve never told the story to anyone before except Gordon. After the Turkoman beheaded my father, he pulled me up onto the horse with him. I clawed him with my nails, but he just laughed. Another Turkoman reached down to grab my mother, who screamed and hit his legs with her fists. He tried to pull her up, too, but she fought back and fell to the ground. And then his horse rose up and came down on top of her. The horse started running and its hooves struck her again. That was the last I saw of my mother. They took me to Bokhara and sold me.”

  For a moment there is a deep silence. Ollie’s mind is spinning. He has never heard this tale before. At last Anne looks at Mrs. Chadwick and says, “Perhaps this was not a good time.”

  Mrs. Chadwick takes a deep breath, dabs her teary eyes with Reginald’s handkerchief, and says, “No, my dear, this was a good time to tell your story. For two decades I believed that I would never know what happened to my son. And then one day Gordon came calling.”

  Reginald sits down as Herbert stands. “So Gordon, my good fellow, how did you manage to find Anne in such a despicable place?”

  “As you know, I am an Evangelical. Like Augustus, I traveled to Bombay to begin missionary work. While there I became acquainted with some Presbyterians—dedicated people, I must say, although not of my particular religious persuasion. They told me about Augustus and his family, who had left for Persia two decades earlier and had never been heard of again.

  “I must admit, the mystery of it intrigued me, and I became interested in Persia. There was so little known about it. And to my way of thinking, there were countless souls there for converting. I could have the whole land virtually to myself. Within two years, while performing medical and spiritual healing among the Hindus, I became relatively fluent in Farsi, taught by a Persian expatriate who had moved to India.

  “Finally I began the first of several missions to Persia. I quickly learned that the Muslims—the followers of Muhammad—took a very dim view of Christians attempting to convert their own. If a Muslim changes religions, he can be put to death for apostasy. The one who entices him to convert can also be executed.

  “During my wanderings, I arrived in a hamlet called Bushruyih and called upon the mayor to pay my respects. The mayor and I talked for about an hour and then, quite unexpectedly, he told me that one of the slaves in his harem claimed that she could speak some English words. Now if the mayor had been a strict Muslim, he never would have escorted me to the anderun where the women were kept. Fortunately for all of us, the mayor was not a deeply religious man. In fact, he was a nephew of the shah, and so part of the secular order.”

  “It would be quite some time before I would lay eyes on Anisa’s face because of the obligatory veil. But when the mayor introduced us, I can remember saying to her, “Good morning,” and being quite startled when Anisa responded by saying, “Good afternoon.” She was correct, of course, as it was half-past noon.

  “Anisa implored the mayor to engage me as her English tutor. I believe he found the novelty of this idea quite amusing. And he probably found me quite innocuous. At any rate, I began to teach English to Anisa—Anne—and then to her son. I stayed in Bushruyih for about one month. But I had other obligations, so I had to leave and did not return for another three months.

  “During our separation, I began to put the pieces together. An English-speaking slave girl, the mystery of the vanished missionaries two decades earlier—well, you see where this was leading me. On my next visit to Bushruyih, I was once again engaged as Anisa’s tutor. But this time I prevailed upon her to recall her early years. And I discovered that her parents indeed were the fabled Chadwick missionaries. I can’t begin to tell you how excited and terrified I was. Here was a child, an English citizen, held against her will in a foreign land and now grown up. An English child who had survived misadventures and cruelties beyond imagination.

  “It became my mission to return Anne to her family in England. When I proposed this to her, she immediately seized upon the idea and we hatched a plot to escape. But my time in Persia was too short and my financial resources too depleted to implement the plan at that time.

  “One of my remaining obligations was to return to England for a speaking engagement—a fund-raising tour, actually, for our missionary work. So within several months I found myself in London. I looked up Mrs. Chadwick and told her the story. She contributed a generous sum of money to our cause, which allowed me to shorten my tour and return to Persia. I landed there six months ago, and here we are today.”

  Mrs. Chadwick suddenly stands straight up and says, “I know this may appear rude, but I have grown very weary. If you don’t mind, I’m going to retire. Gibson?”

  The entire group stands. Gibson enters and takes Mrs. Chadwick by the arm, leading her out the door and into the shadows.

  Herbert turns to Gordon and Anne. “Well, I say, this has been a most gripping evening, but I think I’ll shove off as well. May I call you for another conversation? I would like to hear more of the details for the article in The Times.”

  “As you wish,” Gordon replies.

  Reginald pats Gordon on the shoulder. “An Evangelical, eh? My, my.” He staggers out the door without another word.

  Ollie is staring at a large oil painting, a portrait of a stern-faced man with brows like a thick hedge, eyes with droopy lids, and pouting lips.

  “That is Mr. Chadwick,” Herbert explains. “Edward Chadwick, your great grandfather. He was one of the owners of The Times. Very powerful, influential… and wealthy. Not a bad family to be born into, my boy. You’ve done well.”

  Chapter 3

  For Ollie, the next several weeks are a tumultuous blur of English elocution sessions, shopping trips to acquire the proper apparel for an English school boy, lessons in etiquette and money counting, evening dinner parties, and tours of London and environs. A series of newspaper articles catapults the story of Anne and Oliver into the public’s consciousness.

  In The Times, drawings of mother, son and rescuer accompany a long article under the headline: ENGLISH HAREM GIRL AND SON RESCUED BY MISSIONARY FROM ENSLAVEMENT IN PERSIA. The Manchester Guardian and British Volunteer writes: LONDON PUBLISHING HEIRESS FOUND ALIVE IN PERSIAN HAREM. And The Observer announces to its Sunday readership: ENGLISH SLAVE GIRL BROUGHT HOME FROM PERSIA.

  Anne and Oliver are the talk of society.

  Except for the parties, at which he and Anne are usually the evening’s curiosity, Ollie finds himself cut off from his mother. She, too, has been caught up in a whirlwind of activities: interviews with newspapermen, endless speaking engagements at churches and libraries, fund-raising events for the Evangelicals. Despite her tightly packed schedule, Anne seems to thrive on the attention.

  Gordon has received a handsome advance from a London publishing house, George C. Boothby & Sons, to submit a manuscript detailing his Persian adventures and the rescue of Anne Chadwick. And he has announced plans to marry Anne.

  Ollie is defended from the ferocity of public intrusion by his great-grandmother who personally attends to the boy when he is at home. He finds himself basted with her love and basking in her luxurious favor. The hollow space in Ollie’s soul once occupied by his mother has been generously filled by Mrs. Chadwick. At her urging he has begun to call her Mum, an endearment he is fond of because it is so much easier for his Farsi
tongue than great-grandmother. In his mouth the word Mum becomes a hymn of praise, a mantra, a plea, a gossamer thread that binds him to this knobby, wrinkled old woman who makes him feel so warm and happy. The word embodies a power, like the word Qa’im, which penetrates vast mysteries and reveals unfolding layers of meaning. Mum! The sound of it makes him feel at home and brings a smile to the parched lips of Mrs. Chadwick.

  In Ollie’s evolving notion of spiritual truth, the two deities of God and Allah both demand worship and prayer. Ollie has solved this dilemma by viewing the five daily prayers of Islam as five individual opportunities for prayer. And so at dawn, when the mu’adhdhin of habit awakens him, he prostrates himself for his well-practiced conversation with Allah. The next three prayers are offered to God in the posture of Christianity, on his knees with hands folded. The evening prayer is once again presented to Allah in the attitude of complete submission.

  On one particular damp night, Mrs. Chadwick enters Ollie’s room to find him prostrate on the floor chanting undecipherable words. She gasps, and the intake of air startles Ollie. He arches his back and looks under one arm, seeing Mrs. Chadwick upside down in the doorway. Hurriedly, he chants the rest of his prayer to himself and then rolls over and sits up.

  Mrs. Chadwick still has one hand over her mouth in astonishment. “Ollie, what are you doing?”

  Ollie is quite sure that Mum will not approve of his praying to Allah, but he cannot bring himself to lie about something so sacred. He decides to tell the truth, even if only part of it. “I was praying,” he says. Not at all untrue.

  “Praying? But what words were you uttering? Certainly not English—or Latin.”

  “I was praying in Farsi,” he says honestly. “Since I am more fluent in Farsi than English, perhaps my prayer will be better understood in that language.” A valid premise. Who is to say?