Dreams of Bread and Fire (16 page)

When finally she climbed into bed, she had waked repeatedly during the night to check the clock, worried that she might oversleep.

“You mind if I rest for a while?” Ani asked Van.

“Why don’t you push your pack onto the floor and lie down on the backseat,” he suggested.

When Ani opened her eyes again the skies were clear and the terrain mountainous. Her spirits had lifted as well. An adventure was unfurling around her like a colorful banner. Perhaps she would have an exciting life after all. She sat up and climbed through the bucket seats to the front.

“How long was I out?” she asked.

“About two hours,” he said.

“Sorry to be such dull company,” she said.

“No worries. I’m not much of a conversationalist when I drive.”

They stopped briefly at a small-town café for lunch before heading south again. They chatted amiably, or rather Ani noticed that she chatted and Van gave short, companionable replies. Making an effort to check her patter, she stared out the window at passing farms. Rolling clouds cast long shadows over broad plowed fields and farmhouses with red tile roofs.

On the southern outskirts of Lyon they heard a loud Klaxon and saw a white police sedan draw up behind them. Ani glanced at the speedometer and noted that they were well within the limit. She had no idea why they were being pulled over, unless the car’s taillight was broken or something like that.

“What’s the problem?” Ani asked Van.

“We’ll see,” he said grimly.

Van halted the car at the side of the highway. The officers asked them to step out of the car with their identity cards. While Ani rummaged in her bag for her passport and
carte de séjour,
Van reached into his jacket’s interior pocket for his documents.

One of the cops stood a few paces back inspecting their papers. The other one looked at Van contemptuously. Nodding his head toward Van, he asked Ani, “What are you doing with this dirty Arab?”

Ce sale arabe
were the exact words.

“Why did you stop us?” Ani asked the flic. “Do you check every sixth car?”

The cop gibed, “We do it by the smell, mademoiselle.”

Ani was appalled. She glanced at Van to see his response, but Van’s eyes were on the rutted mud at their feet. His eyes flickered up briefly to meet hers with a sharp warning. She pressed her lips into a line and stared into the distance.

In less than five minutes they were on the road again, but Ani was jittery with rage.

“That racist pig,” she said. “I can’t believe he said that!”

Van’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “Ani, next time, if there is a next time, don’t wise off to the cops. Sarcasm can land you in jail.” His voice was honed to a fine edge.

“What was that all about anyway?”

“Stupidity on my part. I should have shaved,” he said.

“What? That asshole said it was because we smelled like Arabs.”

“No. They pulled us over because
I
smelled like an Arab. And if I had shaved, the smell wouldn’t have been so strong.”

“What kind of weird thing is that to say?” Ani asked.

“Ani, understanding their racist ideology doesn’t mean that I agree with it.”

They drove in silence for a long time. Van’s face was expressionless. Ani wondered if this counted as their first official fight. Their first official fight as friends.

By the time they reached Marseille the tension had ebbed. They decided to have a meal of fish and chips at a sidewalk restaurant in the Vieux Port. Van said he wanted to pick up a few things for the trip. He left Ani sitting in a café reading and writing in her journal. When he returned he was beardless.

“Well, you certainly smell better,” Ani said. “Quick visit to the barber?”

“Stopped by a friend’s apartment.”

“You have friends in Marseille?”

“An Armenian has friends everyplace,” he said.

The ferry was called the
Cyrnos.
After leaving the car in the hold they climbed to the passenger deck and installed themselves on a banquette upholstered in green vinyl. As the boat trundled out to sea, Ani dozed while Van read some Armenian newspapers he had picked up in Marseille.

Ani slumbered fitfully through the night, falling in and out of dreams. Asa and Ani sped down a rural pine-lined highway on a motorcycle. No helmets, just the wind on her face and through her hair, faster and faster as she held tightly to his waist. They crashed into a massive tree in a tangle of limbs and metal. She started awake. Van was still absorbed in his newspapers. She drowsed again.

In the morning as land appeared on the horizon, Van was sleeping. Ani went to the exterior deck. A dark-haired guy wearing a thick woolen sweater stood next to her at the railing staring over the water toward the island.

“Can you smell it?” he asked in French.

“Smell what?” Ani asked suspiciously.

“The maquis.”

Ani sniffed the air. “No.”

“If you came here in May you would notice it. The flowers are all over: yellow broom, rock rose, heather. It’s the perfume of the island. When I smell it I know I’m home.”

Ani returned to her seat. Van’s head was tipped to one side, exposing his Adam’s apple and a line of neck that Ani yearned to touch. His sleeping face was vulnerable and approachable. A longing radiated from the center of her body and pushed against all its borders.

Just then a voice from the loudspeakers announced that drivers should descend to their cars. The ship was arriving at the dock. Van snapped awake.

They parked near the center of Bastia and wandered through the flea market on the place Saint-Nicholas. At the terrace cafés old men were drinking coffee, playing cards, and arguing in a language that sounded to Ani’s ears to be somewhere between Italian and French. As they walked around town Ani noticed the letters FLNC spray-painted in black on the facades of several buildings. She pointed them out to Van and asked if he knew what the initials stood for.

“Front de Libération Nationale de la Corse,” he said.

“Nice accent,” she said. “What exactly is this party?”

“In Corsu they call themselves Frontu di Liberazione Naziunalista Corsu. Corsican separatists. They want an end to French occupation of the island.”

“How come you’re so well informed?”

“It’s my line. I know a lot about national liberation struggles.”

“And my ignorance is as vast as a continent,” Ani said.

“But you’re willing to learn, aren’t you?” Van asked.

“Always. Self-improvement is
my
line,” she replied.

The sky was overcast as they made their way along the main highway. Ani held a map of the island on her lap, tracing with her finger the route they were following. A few kilometers from Saint-Florent, Van turned onto a dirt road that didn’t appear on the map. The road grew bumpier and more rutted as they drove through scrub toward the water. When they stopped by the shore, Ani opened the car door to the scent of broom, resin, and ocean.

“I smell it,” Ani said.

“What?” Van asked.

“The maquis. The perfume of Corsica,” Ani said.

Van gestured toward the white mountain peaks in the distance and the hills dropping to the sea. “Beautiful, huh?”

They walked to the water’s edge, where sea anemones clung to rocks. Shells and plastic debris dotted the shoreline. Ani kicked a pink tampon applicator aside.

“The French flush their toilets and it washes up here,” Van commented. “We should get going. Pascal’s expecting us for dinner.”

Van’s friends lived in an old stone farmhouse by the side of the road just north of Ponte-Leccia. Pascal Centuri had dark curly hair and a gap between his two front teeth. His wife Isabelle, her wavy chestnut hair tied up with a scarf, was visibly pregnant.

In French, Pascal said, “Let me show you the caravan. Bring your stuff out back.”

Pascal led them through a rocky meadow where a donkey grazed on a patch of tufted grass beside a stream. Pascal gestured that they should enter and they stepped into a mini-camper, which had a foldout bed, a small kitchen table, and a sink with no water. The bed was a little wider than a single, but not much.

After Pascal returned to the house, Ani and Van moved gingerly around the camper, trying not to bump into each other. Van crouched low over his pack. His back was to Ani as he said, “You take the bed. I’ll unroll my pad and bag right here on the floor.”

At dinner, Pascal and Isabelle sat at either end of the long wooden table. The benches were crowded with their friends, Louis and Flore from Aléria, and neighbors whose names Ani didn’t remember. She and Van were seated across from each other in the middle. The Centuris served lamb stew with beans, a delicious sheep cheese, fresh bread, olives, and lots of red wine. Pascal, who was proud of the Corsican cheese and wine, refilled everyone’s glasses assiduously.

Van put his palm over his glass, shaking his head.

“You can trust a woman who doesn’t drink, Ardavanian. But a man who won’t drink? Who can trust him?” Pascal protested.

“Do you trust me?” Van asked.

Pascal smiled. “With my life.”

“Then take that bottle away, my friend.”

After the meal, pear brandy and cognac were passed around. Pascal insisted that Ani try both. When Pascal recited Corsican poetry, Ani countered with an Elizabeth Bishop villanelle. Several more rounds of brandy followed. Liberal toasts to the Armenian cause and Corsican liberation were made. The Corsicans sang what seemed to be nationalist standards; Van rejoined with a few Armenian patriotic tunes Ani had never heard before. Pascal appeared to be singing along in Armenian, which made perfect sense to Ani at the time. She herself joined the choruses in both languages with gusto.

At about three o’clock in the morning when Van steered Ani through the moonlit meadow toward the caravan she was tipsier than she had ever been.

“Van, have you noticed that I talk a lot more than you do?” Ani stumbled over a stone.

Grabbing for her arm, Van steadied her. “I have.”

“Do I get on your nerves?”

“You don’t get on my nerves.” He opened the caravan door, helping her up the steps.

“Sometimes it bugs me that I rarely know what you’re thinking. Do you ever say what you’re feeling?”

Van led her over to the bed and sat down next to her. “I’m feeling that you had too much to drink.”

“I have this incredible urge to put my nose right up against your neck.” Here Ani leaned into him and inhaled the fragrance of his skin, the scent of Van Ardavanian.

She felt his fingers stroking the hair at the back of her neck. She closed her eyes and saw a spinning black pinwheel. Then there were two black pinwheels, and four.

Ani groaned. “Oh, no, I’m going to be sick. We better go outside. . . .”

Van jumped, hustling her out of the caravan and toward the stream. As they reached the bank Ani doubled over and dinner came churning up. Most of it landed in the rushing water but Van’s running shoe took the rest. Ani vomited until there was nothing left in her stomach.

“I am so sorry, Van. Your sneaker. I’ll buy you a new pair. I have never done this before. Have you ever been sick like this?”

“In high school.”

“I didn’t taste beer until college and I still don’t like it. The only alcohol in our house was in the vanilla extract. Oh, no, I’m going to be sick again. Sorry.”

Ani heaved again, but all that came up was bile that burned the back of her throat.

Ani woke the next afternoon wearing her nightgown in the caravan’s bed. Van must have removed her clothes. She checked: her bra was gone and her underpants were on. Every molecule in her body had been poisoned and her head throbbed like a thumb that had been hit with a hammer.

There was a note on the table reading,
Gone kayaking with Pascal. Hope you’re feeling better. See you later. V.

After a half hour of staring at the rust-spotted ceiling, Ani decided to trek to the house for a shower. When she opened the door the donkey stuck its gray bristly head into the caravan and brayed loudly.

“Shoo,” Ani admonished. “Move,
eshek.
”

The donkey grabbed at Ani’s nightgown with its big yellow teeth. Ani jumped back and slammed the screen door. The donkey blinked at her through the screen. Defeated and exhausted, Ani climbed back into bed.

About an hour later when Van smacked the donkey’s rump it ambled away. Van entered the caravan with a cup of tea and two slices of toast.

“I thought you might want this.” He sat on the edge of the bed.

“Just tea.”

“It’s some herbal mix Isabelle swears by,” Van said. “How you feeling?”

“Let’s not talk about it. How’s your shoe?” That was one detail Ani remembered clearly.

“A little stinky, but otherwise unharmed.”

“Great,” she said. “I didn’t know you kayaked.”