by Mike Bond
“What does Walid get out of talking to you?”
“I've seen Mohammed twice now. He says if we can pull in the Druze and Amal we might make peace. Do what you can.”
Neill stood and dropped ten dollars on the café table. His head spun fiercely and he wondered whether it was malaria or blood pressure. “I don't sell guns and I don't sell people. But I'll tell his story, if he wants.”
He crossed the patio of café tables and turned left on Rue de Californie, so dizzy he feared falling down. He walked to the corner and straight across Rue Bliss. Has nobody ever done this before? he wondered. Tried to talk peace with them all?
ANDRÉ CARRIED THE PAIL of water into the kitchen and put it on the stove. She turned on the gas and it lit, a low fitful blue. The water sparkled beautifully in the galvanized bucket. She was shivering and he took her in his arms, realized he was shivering too. There was nothing to say and no need to say it, just holding her thin and shivering in his shivering arms. We two bits of flesh, he thought, bits of feeling, thinking flesh, back from death.
“It'll never boil,” she said, hugging her arms together. She glanced up at the barren shelves. “You want a cookie? I have cookies.”
He smiled at what she'd said, then smiled again thinking that whatever she said in her rough-throated accent would make him smile. He dipped a finger in the water: cool. She shrugged, looked into his eyes, bit her lip.
“It's warming,” she said.
He kissed her, behind the ear as she turned into his shoulder. “Such an optimist!”
She was crying, her shoulders shaking. Women are the stronger, he realized, because they cry. “We'll go away from this,” he said, thinking of the people knocking, down in the cave. “I swear it.”
“This is my home. I have children to teach. I missed three days of classes. I don't want to go away.”
“Then you're crazy.” The water got warmer before the gas ran out and he sat in the living room while she washed in the kitchen. This is crazy he thought, and went into the kitchen.
“You scared me!” she said, bent naked over one leg raised on a chair, rubbing it with a piece of wet towel. Her spine was impossibly long and went down into narrow full buttocks and long, long legs, a tuft of dark hair between them.
He took the piece of towel. “Let me wash you.” You're mine, he wanted to say, and I am yours, but there was nothing he dared say, not wanting to harm it. “In Paris,” he said, “we could just stand in the shower.”
“Imagine, all that hot water beating into your shoulders!” she sighed. “Ooooh...”
The people in the cellar, André decided, they'd surely be rescued by now. When they both had finished washing he tossed the towel over the chair and kissed her, her body all damp up his, skin to skin, feeling the fur in her crotch and the hard nipples against his chest and the lovely skin down her long back and the strong spine and buttocks and everything was holy, everything was good, her short hair and little ears, her lovely wide lips and big teeth and strong hips and such lovely long legs, their coolness up against his.
“My God,” she whispered, “how beautiful you are. What a lucky woman to have a man like you.”
“It doesn't matter, that –”
“I already know what you're like. That's what matters.” She drew her hand up the side of his ribs, feeling each one, up around his shoulders. “But to get this too...”
The air was cool, a mix of night and sea. This is a moment that changes your life, he realized, her eyes closing, her mouth eager, her fingertips sharp in his shoulders and her lips full against his, her teeth seeking his lips, his tongue, biting it but letting it through, to hers, and it's over now, he thought, suffused in her smell, I have her, have her forever, want her for ever, all I ever wanted, all these crazy thoughts cascading through his brain, thoughts he'd never admitted and now he saw that each was true, she was lovely, knew more than he, understood more than he ever would, she the crucible of life that he must honor and protect and love fully in rage and pain and despair and joy, and can you really do that, he thought, are you up to this? Because if you are, why are you here?
You're here because you came for her.
So now you've got her, why don't you go?
44
Although Hezbollah is clearly in a continually stronger position, Neill wrote, Mohammed has stressed his distaste for the war and its impact on Lebanon. Although he has defeated the combined attacks of Syrian, Israeli, Christian, Amal, and often Palestinian forces, he has committed himself to what may be the most important peace overture of this war.
By offering to keep his perimeter if other forces maintain theirs, by promising to relinquish arms if others do, Mohammed has broken through the long impasse on force and territorial negotiations. He has promised to work toward open elections and to live by the result. He has offered to send his Hezbollah fighters to help rehabilitate Christian areas, and asks that the Christians, Israelis, Americans, and Syrians help rebuild Muslim areas they have destroyed. Initial Syrian response has been positive...
It was a lovely sunny day with no trace of war, pigeons cooing on the pavements, white clouds dashing across the sky. Last night he'd blocked his window with the table for fear of jumping out in his sleep – it's just the depression of all this horror that's made me like that, he told himself. It won't last.
A car went by dragging its tailpipe. The newspaper seller on Emile Eddé had opened his kiosk and Neill bought last week's Figaro, the Pope on the front page, holding up his hands. Come help us, he thought, you're the one who caused this. You and your kind.
It took half an hour to get through on the radio phone from the Commodore to London. “Glad you called,” said Commors, the deputy news editor.
“What do you mean?”
“That piece you sent, Neill. I can't accept it.”
“It's the way things are!”
“We want impartial reporting. Not the Hezbollah line. If I wanted that, I'd send for their press release.”
“Damn it, they're the focus of all this. The reason every peace attempt has failed is because Hezbollah's top dog and no one'll talk to them.”
“I've talked with the FO, Neill, and Hezbollah's definitely not top dog as far as they're concerned –”
“What does the FO know about Beirut? They got out the moment it got hot.”
“I've always feared you have too much ego to be a good reporter. Now you're saying you know more than the British Foreign Office?”
This is where you blow it, Neill told himself. Where you lose this job. “Tell me what you want. I'll write it.”
“Fall out of love with Hezbollah.”
“I don't even like them! I hate them all!”
“That's a problem, then. You have to empathize. Anyway, we're a little full this week, the miners, a backbench row, the PM's going to Belgium...”
“Jesus, may she stay there –”
“We're thinking of pulling you back, Neill.”
“Back? Why?”
“Beirut's just not fulfilling our needs right now. There's good stories closer to home. You're costing money.”
Neill looked down at the torn dirty carpet, not seeing it, scuffed it with his toe. “Don't know if I'd come back.”
Across two thousand miles of cable he felt Commors shrug. “Your decision,” Commors said. “Call us after tomorrow. By then we'll know.”
“In the meantime, you want me to send this last story, about the peace offer?”
“Sure,” Commors said. “Go ahead and send it. But I can't promise we'll use it.”
“LAYLA IS MY WIFE!” Mohammed whispered. “While you are not.”
“I wouldn't be!” Rosa snapped.
He drew back, his hands retreating into his robe. Now I've hurt him, she worried, so finicky under his roughness, I mus
t remember … His disapproving way of tucking his chin back against his neck, his beard flat against his chest, made her hate him even more. Remember who he is, she told herself; the hard part's already over. “You'd rather be with me than her. Why don't you say it?”
Under his robe he folded his hands like a good imam and she hated him again. Remember what he's like, she repeated. She shook a cuff free and poured his coffee, slipped in the sugar. I could kill you, she told him with her eyes; he wasn't looking.
“I know it's hard for you,” he said.
She gave him the coffee. “Nothing's hard for me.”
He looked up, amused. “I can't imagine what you mean.”
“I thought you were a defender of Palestine, a Warrior of God.”
He sipped the coffee. “And you don't think so any more.”
“I still need you,” she said. “I want to change you, make you see.”
It was as if she'd struck him – the thing he'd least expected. He couldn't help himself. “And I need you.”
“Then why run to her?” She tucked her gown and stood.
“I don't!” He slapped the floor. “Sit!”
She glared at him: this is where I have you. She sat. “Every obedience is a favor. Remember that.”
“I don't want to give you up.”
“You make it sound like alcohol, some filthy habit –”
He reached out, scaring her, clasped her ankles. “Don't waste this time.” He twisted his arm to check his watch. “Already I'm late.”
She stood fiercely and swirled away. “Don't come back.” She spun round. “I wish I hadn't bothered to rescue you!” She watched his face, her eyes watered. “No, I don't wish that!” Wiping savagely at her eyes she stalked out.
He wondered if he should call her back and decided no. Learn to manage your life without love. Everyone else does.
He was late again anyway. Layla would be furious in her own insidious way. His lung pained, the wound a hole razored out of him anew. Does it ever end, this being bent down by things? Bent down by what's on our backs and what's inside us. Our own great weight. And blindness. Bitterly trying to see the ground. The pain of knowing we will die.
That's what breaks our hearts, he realized – the moment as children we understand we're going to die, that there is death and it will have us. That moment breaks our hearts for life. To know this mysterious ecstasy must pass. At any moment.
He took out the Makarov and checked it. Eight bullets glistened in the magazine. Eight deaths. Who had made them? Who would make death for eight perfect strangers?
He stood, old pains shooting up his legs. From how many troughs of concrete going up how many buildings on his back? On the backs of others, good young men with strong hearts, from poor families, climbing that mountain to early death.
He'd been thinking too much. It brought sorrow, challenged things. So many voices to hear – which one is right? He nestled the Makarov under the gown against his heart. Always imagined it might some day block a bullet, save his life. But when the bullets came there'd be many and one little gun over the heart wouldn't block them all.
Time to go. A married man. Mektoub: it is written. He swallowed, his throat sore. He shouldered his few clothes, his Kalashnikov. These are what bear us down, he thought. Thinking of the Christian doctor, he went down the stairway to the main tunnel, its sallow walls creeping with slime evilly candle-lit, the air choked with resinous fumes. There was thunder overhead as a truck passed. They could blow you apart, he realized, even down here. Implode you. He ran up the steps to a brighter room where two mujihadeen saluted. “God be with you,” he said absently.
“The car's ready,” one answered. He had broad moustaches and bright black eyes, was swinging his prayer beads.
“So am I.” Bright sun outside. Bright trees, flashing light off passing cars. The mujihadeen moved past him to open the car door but a smack like a cannonball smashed him back into Mohammed, knocked them down, Mohammed's ribs breaking on a low steel fence, the man's shuddering body on him. The air was loud with smashing bullets and people screaming and now a Kalashnikov firing and Mohammed realized it was his own men firing back, machine-gun bullets hitting the car, sheets of glass and chunks of metal flying. Another salvo hit the building behind him, tiles and bricks crashing. A bullet hit the man on top of Mohammed, skittering him sideways. Mohammed dashed for the building but bullets raked it and he dived into a concrete drainage trough, bullets spraying dirt. They've got me, he realized. Betrayed.
“TONIGHT WE’RE GOING TO THE CASINO. And drink champagne.”
“I have to be up early –”
“I don't want you walking there every morning, Anne-Marie. It’s too dangerous.”
“How else am I going to teach? It's my job. I'll starve.”
“I'll send you to France. Right now.”
“Right now? Heil, mein Kommandant!”
He felt guilty, a fool, a man who steps too blindly. “It's safer.”
“This is my world, remember?” She took his hand. “There's talk of a ceasefire that might last. They can't go on this way.”
He looked out of her kitchen window at the rough-roofed assemblage of buildings, alleys, and light wells overlooking the Beaux Arts. Have they got our neighbors out of the basement yet, he wondered, remembering the faint tick tick of steel on concrete. “Half of Beirut's still standing. Why stop now?”
She reached out her arms to him, and it's so automatic, he thought, taking her in his arms, as if we've always done this. “Let me finish the school year,” she said, her fingertips gentle up his back, softening bruised muscles. “Then we'll see?”
For an instant he saw how her lovely kindness would always be tempered by awareness of what was best, not for her but for those she loved. That the value of actions, the depth of love, is shown over time. It was impossible anything could be so warm, so electric as her body all the way up against him. “I just want what's best for you.”
“You fill up my heart,” she said. “That's what's best for me.”
His heart felt it would stop. “Me too.”
She kissed along the edge of his jaw, down along his throat. “You wait, I'm a bitch and sharp-tongued and … You just wait and see what I'm really like...”
QUICKLY AS THEY’D COME they'd gone. Just two, one with a machine gun and one an AK, waiting for Mohammed, knowing he'd come here, to catch him in a crossfire. And what had saved him was the dead mujihadeen with the thick moustache and bright eyes. “I don't even know you,” Mohammed said, kneeling over his body.
“Hurry!” Amali grabbed his shoulder. “We want you out of here.”
“How did they find me? There hasn't been a change in our personnel, a contact, for a week –”
“The one who came twice to see you, damn him. And first to your wife. He could have sent a signal –”
“Who?”
“The English journalist. With his silly questions, stinking of drink and ignorance.”
45
WHEN ANDRÉ REACHED THE CORNER of Rue Basta he wanted to go no further. The street where he and she had been buried was empty, its ruins bright in the sun. There was a car-wide path through hills of rubble, a bidet perched atop one pile, pieces of wall on either side sticking up like stumps after a forest fire, chunks of concrete suspended on reinforcing steel like hanged men. He thought of the Palestinian girl, her slender tanned muscular arms, the Kalashnikov, wondered where she was.
A motion in one building made him reach for the Jericho but it was just an old woman sitting in a stairwell, rocking and weeping. “Let it be,” he said to her in French but she did not look at him or answer.
He found the cellar stairs he'd run down when the bombing had begun; they were still blocked so he went down the stairs next door and through the wall the jackhammer had cut.
Light came faintly through the hole in the wall, dusty. Something was dripping, a broken pipe maybe, splashing slowly into a puddle. The slab was before him, half visible, enormous, waiting as if it had called him back, would get him this time.
He sat on the edge of the slab and listened. Plunk-plunk, went the leak, plunk-plunk plunk. He dug a brick from the broken wall, knelt down and thumped the floor, waited, thumped again, the beat Anne-Marie had used. Even the sound brought fear.
Tick tick, came the faint response of steel against concrete.
IF THE NEWSPAPER wanted Neill to return to London he'd take a leave of absence. He was going to see this through. See Layla again. They couldn't just send him way down here then yank him.
This damn place. That once was Paradise. Everyone so afraid. Natural to drink, keep the spirit alive. A pun, that. If he couldn't live without booze, it wasn't going to kill him. If he hadn't been drinking, would he have had the courage to stick it out here?
Freeman would have to pay the second installment, for Neill had met Mohammed. Not once but twice. Met him wired. “The way to peace is understanding,” Mohammed had said. “Each of us learning to understand the other, and the part of ourselves that doesn't want to understand.”
Neill felt affection for him, briefly, as toward any other shred of feeling, thinking matter. He felt an expanding warmth that covered all creation, even the evil. The sore under his arm stung every time his clothes grated against it. It's because you're coming down sick, he realized. Malaria. Fever worsens the pain.
Once you catch malaria it stays with you till you die, the Plasmodium falciparum parasite waiting in your liver for the next time you weaken, the next time reinforcements arrive from new mosquito bites. Like the virus of war inside the soul, waiting out the dull years of peace.
Like this damn transmitter under his arm. Freeman had said two stitches and that had been a lie. Had said he wouldn't feel it and that was a lie. What else did Freeman lie about?
In Neill's pain and nausea everything seemed a failure, a mistake. Was Freeman even MI6 at all? He could be CIA, Mossad, Iranian, Russian … Once he'd mentioned Sandhurst – was that too a lie? Like the transmitter that wouldn't hurt, the virus lying in wait, a malarial parasite counting the days.