by Mike Bond
“I had to leave too – you Americans made Afghanistan too dangerous for everybody.”
Behind Jack the little man cleared his throat. Jack glared at him. “It’s not my fault.” Oh yes it is. “I tried to help, tell the truth.” His words sounded hollow, disgusting him.
“I don’t want to think about Afghanistan –”
“Just one coffee. You can give me Ahmad’s latest news. After that, if you don’t want, I’ll never bother you again.”
“I haven’t seen or heard from him.”
The little man tugged Jack’s sleeve. “Excuse me.”
“Just a minute!” Jack shoved the hand away.
“What did you say?” she said.
“Somebody here, wants to use the phone.”
“Goodbye, then.”
“Wait! I’m still a journalist, doing on story on Doctors Without Borders. I need to interview you.”
“There’s others you can talk to.”
“It’s because you were in Afghanistan. And to talk about Ahmad. Tomorrow after work, I’ll meet you at the café on the corner of St. Dominique and Bosquet – five thirty?”
She hesitated. “I’ll only have a few minutes...”
He hung up and turned on the little man. “Couldn’t you wait a minute?”
“My wife’s gone into labor.” The little man reached in his pocket, came up empty. “Do you have a franc?”
THE CAFÉ WAS JAMMED. Sophie watched the lithe muscular American with the deep blue eyes and golden hair. When you’ve saved someone’s life does it bond you to him? She didn’t want to be bonded, certainly not to this man. Too physical, really. Too dangerous.
Says he wouldn’t be alive without me... An unnatural thought. The Cinzano clock on the wall said 17:35. Pick up Leo, she reminded herself, by six.
In Afghanistan she’d never heard of American journalists. He didn’t look the part, not with those strongly tendoned forearms, those sternomastoids in his neck, the thick deltoids...
“Do you remember how they came in, those Hekmatyar guys,” he said in Pashto, “all stoned on khief?”
“Stop speaking that! Someone’ll think we’re terrorists.”
“You’re speaking it.” His voice was deep yet gentle, that funny American accent.
“I can barely remember it.” Her own voice seemed thin by comparison; she cleared her throat. “Damn language all tied up with death and misery.”
“You said you were leaving, four years ago. That they were going to kill you too.”
“You remember what I said, way back then?” She watched his hands twirl his beer glass. No ring on his finger. “They killed every woman who wouldn’t wear a veil, any woman with a profession. Even Doctors Without Borders, they were killing us...”
The waiter elbowed to their table. “Another demi?”
She raised her hand. “Got to go.”
He took her hand, an amazing forward gesture. “Four years I’ve wanted to find you. Don’t go – this’s the best day of my life.”
She pulled her hand away. “It’s bad luck saying that –”
“Most of the kids were beautiful,” he said. “If you saved them young.”
She watched the sharp curve of his mouth – was that pain? “What kids?”
“Before I was a journalist –”
Behind her the hiss of an espresso machine. “Yes?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “Always liked kids.”
“Have any?”
He shook his head. “What I most want to do, really, is have kids. My dad died when I was young...”
“How?”
“Vietnam.”
“Merde.” She nodded at the waiter. “Yes I’ll have another demi.” Glanced at the clock. 17:50. “No!” she waved at the waiter. “Got to go.”
He stood, an amazing fluid motion like a dancer. “I’ll go with you.” She shook her head. He put a twenty-franc bill on the table. It stuck in a circle of wet beer.
He took her arm as they walked toward Avenue de la Bourdonnais. She wanted to shake off his hand but didn’t. When we get to the school I’ll say goodbye, she decided. Poor man, alone in Paris.
This thought made her like him more. He’s very kind, she told herself. They walked past a flower store and he let go her arm and dashed inside. She kept going.
A minute later he caught up, handed her a huge bunch of white roses. She pushed him off. “Are you crazy? I can’t take them. I don’t even know you.”
“You saved my life!” He took her arm again, annoying and impertinent. Were all Americans like this?
She waited on the curb for the light to change. “I barely remember you.”
They walked in silence along the sidewalk under the sycamores. “Maybe that’s better,” he said.
“What?”
“That you don’t remember me.”
She went into the school to get Leo and when they got out he was still there, holding her roses. “Hey,” he said, kneeling down to Leo, “you like it in there?”
Leo looked shocked. No one had ever asked him that. He reached for her hand. “No.”
She tugged Leo’s hand. “Say goodbye.”
“Do you like dogs?” he asked Leo.
Leo looked up at her: What’s going on here? “I don’t know.”
“I used to have one. Want to know his name?”
Leo shrugged. “Yes?”
“Bandit,” the American said. “That’s Russian, don’t know it in French.”
“The same,” she said without thinking.
“Govaritse po-russki?” he said quickly.
She felt a stab of pain. “Da.”
“We can speak Russian, then,” he said. “Sorry,” he said to Leo in French.
“Toje panimao,” Leo said. I also understand. “I go to Russian school. Twice a week.”
“You and I, then,” the American said to Leo in Russian, “we’ll just speak Russian. I need the practice.”
“I really have to go.” She started to walk away with Leo.
The American caught up to her. “You haven’t told me how you knew Ahmad.”
She glared at him. “Nor have you told me.”
He shrugged. “So what about our dinner?”
Say no, she told herself. But that’s impolite. “No...”
“Why did you save me?”
“It’s my job.”
“I mean from the Spetsnaz. From Hekmatyar? Why’d you risk taking me to Ahmad?” He knelt down to Leo. “Hey buddy, tell your Mom please say yes –”
“Maman!” Leo stared accusingly up at her.
“Okay,” she sighed, “just this once. Come to our place Friday night?”
She walked on quickly into the fading light. “Spetsnaz,” Leo said, dragging behind. “That’s Russian –”
Furious with herself she bit away tears. “Hurry!” she yanked his hand. “We’re late.”
“Late? For where?”
“Can’t you remember anything?” The tears blurred her eyes. “The dry cleaning – we have to pick it up!”
Who Are You?
ASIMPLE MEAL, steaks and salad and baguette, a burgundy from her cave. With the dessert of yellow apples and Roquefort they drank the Graves Jack brought. “We’re supposed to drink white Bordeaux with Roquefort,” she said. “It’s the new thing.”
Jack smiled across at Leo sitting atop two telephone books on his chair. “I’m not much for new things.”
His muscular roughness made her wrists feel weak. She imagined making love with him, dismissed the thought: after this dinner she wouldn’t see him again. “What did you mean the other night,” she said, “that it’s better I don’t remember you?”
“What did Ahmad tell you? About me?”
“I never saw him again. I had to leave, was pregnant with Leo...” She bit at her lower lip. “I dreamt all last night about Afghanistan.”
“What happened there – your husband?”
She sat back. “I don’t want to talk about it.”<
br />
He took her hand, again that lithe forward motion. “I’m sorry – I’m bringing that back into your life, aren’t I?”
She pulled her hand away. “Why did you try to find me?”
“When you looked down at me on the operating table it was like I was in the hands of God or something...” He shook his head as if to say I can’t explain it.
She laughed. “I’m hardly the hand of God –”
“Yeah, the Muslims when they blow people up say it’s the hand of God... All this time, since then, you’ve been in my mind... Like the rest of my life would have been a failure if I hadn’t found you.”
The thought made her shiver. She could make love with him, just this once. Would he go away then? How long had it been? She felt her pelvis throb. She ran two fingertips up the inside of his forearm, the tendons like steel. “You mustn’t let other people be so important in your life...”
“What else is there?”
Leo got down. “I’m going to watch cartoons.”
“Okay,” she told him. “I’ll be in soon to see what you’re watching.”
“He’s barely three and a half,” Jack said. “He’s not watching naked girls. Not yet.”
There it was: sex on the table between them, the gilded gorgeous snake. She reached for his dish; he held her wrist. “I’ll clean up.” He stood and pulled her to him; she was a wisp of paper, a reed, her body catching fire as she tried to show him nothing.
When he kissed her it was soft at first, just the gentle touch of lips on lips. She pulled back. “Leo will see –”
“He’s watching cartoons.”
She felt him hard against her. Oh God what will I do? She pushed away, sat down.
“Hey, let’s not stop now.”
“Who the Hell are you?”
Taken aback, he sat. “What are you hiding?”
“How could I hide anything?”
“What’s inside you. What you feel –”
“Who are you to tell me what I feel?”
“You’re still dying for Afghanistan? It’s over.”
“For whom?”
He glanced beyond her terrace to the rooftops and church towers of the Seventh Arrondissement, thought furiously of Hassan Husseini somewhere out there festering. The wine glass snapped in his hand. “Oh shit! I’m sorry.”
“Idiot, you’ve cut your hand!”
“Thank Heavens there’s a doctor near!”
“Stop joking. It’s really bleeding.”
He went into the kitchen and wrapped his hand in a paper towel. “It’s your fault.”
“Let me see it! Acch, you need stitches.”
“I wanted to make love with you not argue, for Chrissake!”
“I hope you bleed to death.”
He went back out and sat on the terrace, saw his roses in a crystal vase on the sideboard. “I’m so overwhelmed by you I don’t know how to act.”
“Just be yourself.”
He smiled. “Who’s that?”
“The person you’ve always wanted to be.”
Leo came out, glanced at him stolidly. “What happened to your hand?”
“Your Mom stuck me with that wine glass.”
“Maman!”
She laughed. “I did not!”
“There’s no cartoons.”
“TV’s not good for you anyway,” Jack said.
“Who are you,” Sophie fumed, “to tell him what’s good?”
“He’s right, Maman.”
“When I want your opinion, young man, I’ll ask!”
Leo eyed the setting sun. “We should go to the park.”
“I have to put some stitches in him first.” She went into the bedroom and came out with a medkit. “I’ll give you a shot of painkiller first.”
“Just stitch it. Leo wants to go.”
“I should do a lobotomy.”
He pulled her against him. “I want you naked.”
She glanced after Leo, who had gone to get his coat. “Don’t say things like that –”
Chestnut leaves rustled underfoot in the aisles of the Champ de Mars. Leo ran on ahead scattering the pigeons. “Sorry I’m so edgy,” she said. “It was a horrible day. We were short-handed, heart attacks, two suicide attempts, three car wrecks...”
He thought of the shredded guts in the Métro. “I wouldn’t want to do what you do.”
“I don’t even know what you do.”
“Most of the time I help politicians make up stories to defend themselves, or translate their boasts about things they haven’t done.”
They walked along silently for a while. “Your shoulder, how did it happen?”
He told her about the stepping-stone bridge across the stream, the sudden ambush, how Bandit saved his life. “I was just traveling with this bunch of mujihadeen. Doing a story on them. They were ambushed by Hekmatyar’s men.”
“What bunch of mujihadeen?”
“Some guys with Ahmad’s brother, Wahid al-Din.”
“Leo’s father was trying to arrange a peace through Ahmad. That’s when he died.”
“Maman!” Leo held up chestnuts that had fallen off the trees. “Can we cook them?”
“Of course.” She put them in her pocket. “Go find more.”
“How did he die?” Jack said.
Behind her the Eiffel Tower soared brightly into the darkening sky. She took a breath. “You’re not who you say you are.”
“Nobody is. Does it matter?”
“To me it does.”
“These subway bombings, they bother you?”
“I asked, who are you?”
For a long time he said nothing, then shook his head.
“Then I don’t want to know you.” She ran ahead, snatched Leo’s hand and trotted him quickly out of the park. For a moment Jack went after her, then sat on a bench and stared unseeing at the Tower.
A young couple came up to him speaking Japanese, motioned with a camera.
He took a picture of them smiling toothily in front of the Tower, gave them back the camera and walked into the night.
Losing Sophie was like a fork in the road and he’d taken the bad one.
Husseini was out there. Find him.
Chocolate Raspberry
AT 18:30 FRIDAY Jack slipped into the back of the Sartrouville Mosque among the old men. A checkered Palestinian scarf across his face, he scanned the crowd for Husseini.
Kneeling he pulled his hand from a cockroach squashed into the worn prayer rug. “Only we are God’s people!” chanted the mullah. “God’s sword to vanquish His enemies!”
“Thou art dog shit,” Jack said in Pashto, then thought of Bandit. “No,” he said, “thou art pig shit. The veritable shit of swine!”
Men blocked his view. Then Husseini was standing in the corner talking to the mullah. Jack tried to move toward the door but there were too many people. Without my beard maybe he won’t recognize me. But they’ll have told him; he’ll be looking for Wahid.
I still haven’t thought this through. He adjusted the Makarov under his arm. But he couldn’t shoot Husseini here, not with all these people. The young men he’d met, the teacher – they’d be here somewhere.
Best to wait outside. When Husseini left he’d follow him. See where he lived. Or take him in an alley. Jack reminded himself of Bandit, the night on the stepping-stone bridge. The blood-pasted Métro car.
He sidestepped toward the door. “Praise God!” the mullah called.
“I give Thee thanks,” chanted the man beside him, “for my beautiful family, for our food, for this good day...”
He reached the street, the night air cool and safe. Men were trickling out. The mullah had put a tape on the loudspeaker. Husseini stood near him, his beaded cap sparkling in the streetlight. Jack slid back into the shadows.
“There you are!” a voice behind him made Jack spin round reaching for the Makarov. The teacher. And four of his friends.
“He’s here!” the teacher said to Jack. “Your lea
der from the mujihadeen.”
“Leader?” Jack slid off the safety.
“The man you called Husseini! Come, I’ll bring you to him.”
“I can’t,” Jack whispered.
“Can’t?” the teacher asked, confused.
“It isn’t safe! Could be agents here. The DST...”
“It’s safe or he wouldn’t be here.” They walked him toward Husseini. “Master!” the teacher called. “He’s here! The Eagle of the Hindu Kush!”
Husseini glanced round, saw them, saw Jack. “Aaaah!” he screamed and ran.
Jack sprinted after him. Husseini ducked left at the corner. As Jack cut the corner four huge shapes smashed into him and pinned him on the ground. His ribs felt crushed; he couldn’t swing his fists, couldn’t breathe. “Help!” he gasped in Arabic. “Help me!”
“Want help?” One of them kicked him in the stomach. “How’s that?”
“He’s got a gun!” one yelled in French.
Steel whacked his forehead. Pain exploded down his skull into his chest, and he reached out to fight back but was sinking, no air, feared he was dying, face down in the gutter. Fight back, he told himself, tried to lurch upward but many hands held him down. Fight back.
They cuffed him, dragged him to a car and threw him in the rear, pinned between two of them, the others in the front. “Brothers!” he said in Arabic, “what are you doing?”
One laughed. “We’re not your brother, you fucking sand nigger,” he said in French. “You’re going to jail.”
“THIS IS LIKE FISHING!” Ricard exhaled. “I think I’m pulling up a trout but what I get is an old shoe. A bag of shit.”
Jack held a hand over his eyes to cut the glare. “I want their names. The guys that did this to me. Tell them I’m going to kill them. Slowly, one by one.”
“When you ran, you idiot, they thought you were Husseini. Remember, we don’t know what he looks like. You’re lucky my men treated you so well. Sometimes people die before they even get to jail...” Ricard pulled up a stool and sat opposite Jack. “You lied to me.”
“What’d you expect?” Jack tested a tooth. “I don’t work for you.”