A Time of Miracles (15 page)

“We survived a full year going from place to place. I don’t want to remember some of the people I met then, but I also found others who were kind and helped us. And all my hopes rested on the two French passports I had stolen. I believed that one day they would save our lives.

“That’s the time I began to make up stories. You were so small! How could you overcome the ordeal of such a grim reality? I didn’t want you to keep the memory of a terrorist
father. I didn’t want the burden of the dead people on the train on your shoulders. I didn’t want you to suffer the same heartbreaking experience I had when I left my family. I wanted your life to be beautiful, filled with hope and light. So I made up the story of your birth and your childhood. I imagined a more romantic past for you.

“Every night I added some details, some new events. I opened the gear and used its contents to give weight to my lies. The book, for instance, was by a French poet who lived in Russia. His name was Blaise Cendrars. I got the name Jeanne from one of his poems. ‘Fortune’ was just a brand of cigarettes. I didn’t feel I was lying to you. My only concern was to protect you.”

I am motionless under the tree in the summer heat of Tbilisi. My head is still in my hands, and my heart is pumping noisily. Above my head the sun has moved and is over the river now. I am not hungry or thirsty. I do not feel anything but total bewilderment.

Gloria is exhausted, and I think that she is scared of what is to come.

“And Mont-Saint-Michel?” I manage to ask.

Gloria sighs. “When Mr. Ha falsified our passports, he erased the original names so that no one could link us to the woman and her baby who died in the Terrible Accident. He noticed that the pictures in the catalog filled you with wonder. He’s the one who thought of Mont-Saint-Michel. There is your true story, Koumaïl.”

I look at the Caucasus sky, its small clouds and its magnificent blue. I try to gather my thoughts, without success.
I have the feeling that I could stay here for a hundred years without saying a word; that I could take root in this dry soil, become a stone, or crumble into dust.

Later an insect lands on my cheek. I chase it away with my hand, and this mechanical gesture brings me back to life.

“I’m your son. Your real son …,” I whisper.

Gloria suppresses a sob. “Do you remember the list of precious things?” she says.

I nod.

“You always wanted to know what Zemzem had given me. And I refused to answer. Now I can tell you that he gave me the most precious of all the gifts. You.”

I kneel in the grass to look at the person who has just spoken these words. It is Gloria. My Gloria. My mother! My mother, who cries silently and trembles as if she were cold, even though it is so warm outside. She lied to me, I think. All along, she lied to me.

But all I say is, “Deep down I think I always knew it.”

THAT
evening I realize that I don’t know where I stand. I need to be alone and think. Gloria is exhausted. I feel relieved to take her to her room.

Before I leave the hospital, I go back to Dr. Leonidze’s office. I ask him who the man was who recognized Gloria from the TV documentary. He explains that the man refused to give his name.

“It happens frequently here.” He smiles. “The war happened not that long ago. We all have our wounds.”

I nod and say that I will be back tomorrow.

I walk in the city for hours without bothering about the recommendations the embassy gave me concerning safety at night. I am not afraid. I feel out of touch.

Back in my hotel room, I sit by the window, in front of the table, with a notebook and a pen. I make a list, in French, like Mrs. Georges taught me to do when faced with a difficult situation:

1. My real name is Koumaïl Dabaiev.

2. I was born on December 28, 1985, in an orchard in Abkhazia that is situated in the Caucasus, per page 68 of my green atlas.

3. My mother is Gloria Vassilievna Dabaieva.

4. My father is Zemzem Dabaiev.

5. I am Russian on my mother’s side, Chechnyan on my father’s. I became a French citizen through a lie.

6. Jeanne Fortune does not exist.

7. Blaise is the name of a poet. Fortune is a cigarette brand.

8. A woman and a baby died in the express train, killed by a bomb. The bomb was made by my mother and placed under the train by my father.

9. I am the son of two criminals.

10. Vassili is my grandfather; Liuba, my grandmother. I have five uncles. Are they still alive?

11. Zemzem is still alive. He has to be the one who recognized Gloria on TV. Is he still in Tbilisi?

12. Gloria lied to me.

13. Gloria abandoned me in the truck filled with livestock.

14. Why?

   I put down my pen and look at the list. I am wiped out. Drained.

I totter to my bed and collapse.

The next morning I wake up, wondering if I dreamed it all. I feel like someone who’s coming out of a long coma. The world around me doesn’t look like it did yesterday, and yet it is the same sky, the same sun.

After a warm shower I telephone Prudence. It’s eight o’clock in Paris, and I imagine her in our small studio, still in a nightgown, in front of her cup of coffee. In half an hour she will lock the door to go to work at the flower shop where she earns the better part of our rent. She will come back home tired but will spend the evening studying because in September she’s taking an exam to become a teacher.

She’s happy to hear my voice. She was waiting for my call.

“So?” she says.

“I found Gloria.”

“How do you feel, Blaise?”

“OK.”

“And how is she?”

“Very sick. She could die soon. I don’t think she could make the trip to France. I need to stay here with her.”

“Of course.”

“I really wanted her to meet you, and for you to get to know her.”

“I wanted that too,” Prudence answers. “Show her the photos.”

“I will.”

There is a short silence. I hear a strange echo on the line.

“I’ll tell you everything when I get back,” I say. “The whole truth about Blaise Fortune.”

“OK.” Before hanging up, she adds, “I love you, Blaise.”

DR
. Leonidze welcomes me on the threshold of the third-floor room. He pushes me gently out the door, but I still have time to see tubes in Gloria’s nose and her pale face on the pillow.

“Come,” Dr. Leonidze says, pressing me on. “Let’s talk first in the corridor. It won’t take long. Then I’ll leave you alone with her.”

The corridor is depressing in spite of the decorative prints and the pastel paint. The doctor puts his hand on my shoulder.

“Her condition took a turn for the worse,” he explains. “Last night we put her under respiratory assistance.”

“The tubes?”

“Yes, the tubes.”

He explains the seriousness of her condition, the terrible deterioration of her lungs. He tells me that she is conscious, that she can talk, but not for too long. He begs me to
treat her gently. If need be, I can push the button by her bedside and a nurse will come.

He leaves me and I enter her room.

Her eyes are open. Her arms are resting alongside her body.

“Koumaïl.” She smiles. “I was afraid you would not come back.”

“Shhh,” I whisper as I sit close to her. “Try not to speak too much.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. You can’t listen to doctors. We have very little time left.”

A knot tightens in my throat.

“Don’t say silly things, you’re going to get better,” I murmur.

To ease my anxiety, I show her the gifts I brought from France. First my passport and my French ID card.

“Official papers,” I say. “With holograms that can’t be falsified. Even Mr. Ha couldn’t fake these.”

Gloria smiles on her pillow.

“I’m so happy for you,” she says. “That’s what I always wanted—to be able to give you a future. Here it wasn’t possible. In France it is. It’s a good country.”

I put my papers aside. I sigh.

“Maybe, but it’s not
my
country.”

“It is now! It is your country.”

“I don’t know.”

I take out the second gift. It’s the plastic knickknack that I bought at Mont-Saint-Michel—a snow globe where you can see the mount with the abbey and the statue
of the angel. When you shake it, snow swirls around. It’s pretty.

“I bought it the day I thought I would find my mother again. Take it,” I say.

Gloria takes the snow globe in her hands. She looks at the mini island inside, surrounded by the sea and sailboats.

“It’s a marvelous place to be born,” she says.

“Yes, but I wasn’t born there.”

“Is that so important?” Gloria asks. “When the story is nice, you feel like believing it, don’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

I take out the third gift: the photo album that I prepared with Modeste’s and Mrs. Georges’ help. All the pictures that we could gather are glued in there. The first one dates back to my arrival at the shelter in Poitiers. As Mrs. Georges pointed out, I don’t look too happy. Then there are pictures of my class, taken year after year; my birthdays, where I smile a little more. From page to page you can see me grow up. In the last ones I’m with Prudence, and our pictures are taken in front of the Paris monuments—the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, Sacré-Cœur, the Louvre and its glass pyramid.…

“This is Prudence Wilson,” I say. “She comes from Liberia. We’ve been inseparable these last six years. Now we live together in a small studio. She wants to become a teacher. Do you like her?”

“Beautiful, really beautiful,” Gloria answers, unable to hold back her tears.

I close the album. Gloria takes my hand and squeezes it tight.

“I would have loved to come with you to France all those years ago,” she says. “I knew it would be difficult, but I thought I could do it. Then the worst happened and it tore my heart out.”

She squeezes my hand.

“When I told you to climb into the trailer of the Spanish driver’s truck, I was terrified by the idea of being separated from you. But it was the only way to give you a chance. A child who arrives alone in France, even with a false passport, can make it.”

“You mean that … that you knew what was going to happen?”

“No, I did not know! It was a gamble, Koumaïl! I was hoping with all my heart to be able to reach France with you. But I couldn’t lie to myself: an adult with false papers, someone hunted in her country of origin for terrorism, has very little chance of getting across all the borders. What was the best thing to do? Staying with you in the Caucasus would have put both our lives in danger. Do you understand?”

I look at her, scared, overwhelmed, lost.

“I don’t know,” I almost cry out.

“Look at me, Koumaïl. At that time I was already sick, you remember. I was constantly afraid of dying, even when I told you I wasn’t. I had to find shelter for you, far from the war, far from Zemzem, before anything happened to me.”

I rub my face with my hands, torn between revulsion and despair.

“The truck driver said that you left while he was making a pit stop in Germany,” I tell her.

“You believed him?”

“No. But what happened?”

“I think he became afraid of the checkpoints.” Gloria sighs. “When we reached Germany, he told me he had to get some gas. There was a line at the pump, and he gave me money to go and get some coffees. I trusted him. I left the cab. When I came back with the two cups, the truck was gone.”

Gloria’s face freezes in a grimace of pain. She begins to shake. I lie down next to her in spite of the catheter, in spite of her frailness, and she holds me tight.

“I thought I’d lose my mind from sorrow, Koumaïl,” she says. “I tried to make my way toward France on foot. But I was arrested and sent back to the Caucasus. The only thing that kept me alive all these years was the thought that you were free and safe in France. Your life is over there now! You’re French. The future is all yours.”

I don’t say anything.

“Remember what we used to say?” she goes on. “Walk—”

I put my finger on her lips. “Shhh. You have to keep quiet, to rest,” I tell her. “I have so much information to absorb that I think I’m about to explode. I’ll come back tonight, OK?”

She nods.

“I want to keep you as long as possible,” I say when I get up. “I still need you.”

I put the snow globe and the photo album close to her on the bedside table. I am about to leave but change my mind. I still have three important questions to ask.

“Is Zemzem the one who recognized you on TV?” I ask.

Gloria looks up toward the ceiling. She hesitates. Then she nods.

“Is he in Tbilisi?”

Again she nods.

My last question is not really a question, but I have to say it.

“Now can I call you Mother for real?”

Gloria nods three times—three times for “yes.”

I leave the room and shut the door in a hurry. I hardly take three steps in the corridor before I hear her sobs.

THREE
weeks go by, in the sultry heat of summer.

Thanks to Dr. Leonidze, I rent a small room near the hospital, a tiny and cool room on the street level of a building that is threatening to fall down in ruins. My window opens over a paved courtyard where the kids of the area gather. I watch them play for hours, falling prey to a nostalgia that I cannot chase off.

Gloria’s health has ups and downs. Some days I find her rested, alert, and we go for a walk. Other times she doesn’t have the strength to do anything. So I sit by her side, enjoying the moment.

She asks about France, about my studies, about the thousand projects that Prudence and I have in mind. She wants so many details that she wears me out. When she’s satisfied, I’m the one who asks questions. That’s how we try to fill the gap that time has created between us.

And always our conversations end in the same way.

“Are you mad at me, Koumaïl?”

“No, I’m not mad at you, Mother.”

“Sure?”

I kiss her. She kisses me. Before I leave for the night, I read to her one of Blaise Cendrars’s poems, where he talks about Russia, the Trans-Siberian, and little Jeanne of France. Prudence bought the book in a Paris bookstore and mailed it to me. Gloria’s favorite part is where little Jeanne constantly asks, “Tell me, Blaise, are we far from Montmartre?”