The Gendarme (24 page)

“I am okay.”

The questions follow, the same questions, the questions I answered before. Do I dream? Are these dreams frightening? Are there things I have done in these dreams? What things are these?

I respond, at least to most of them. I want to be respectful, to authority and to Dr. Mellon. My fellow Rotarian. Is it true? Is it fair to all concerned? This is the Rotary motto, or part of it. But the questions become repetitious, so tedious that I soon grow distracted, staring at Dr. Mellon’s smooth skin, which stretches up like a black chess piece. A rook, perhaps? Bishop? I remember how I played chess in London, how the others were amazed, patient and doctor alike, that I could remember how to play but remember nothing about myself. Three of us there had lost memory, head injuries grouped together before the guard came, and I was moved. The man next to me was Harold—a boy, really—with yellowish hair and a caul-like red scar that crossed his face and one eye, leaving that eye puffed and large, as though he only squinted through the other. He was fascinated by the chess games, periodically shouting out “I remember now!” but quickly growing despondent when it became clear he remembered little, about anything. He would then shake his head, lifting the heavy metal bed with creaking springs and great thumps until the nurses came, the interrupted game could be resumed. I did not see him again after they moved me, but I wonder now: Did memory return for him? Did he regain some former life? Perhaps he was placed somewhere, housed forever in an institution like this. His mind darkened and aged and bent beyond all recovery.

“Do you know your name?”

I sigh. “Emmett Conn.”

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“You put me here, you and Violet. I have a brain tumor. It has produced vivid dreams.”

Dr. Mellon leans back in his chair, a hint of a smile on his face. I gaze at the thin woman, noting how her left biceps resembles a chicken’s wing.

“Do you know who I am?”

“You are Dr. Mellon. The Rotarian.”

He laughs, the big, booming laugh. He looks around, as if searching for someone to backslap.

“You seem to be doing okay.” He pulls out half-glasses, adjusts them on the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to ask you a few more questions, okay?”

“Okay.” But my mind swoops away again, a bee buzzing off to a flower. Great rows of pumpkins line the far wall, their stems twisted to arm shapes, to hands and black feet. Flies swarm. And then the vultures, pecking and pulling. I hear Dr. Mellon’s voice, see the thin woman’s eyes, take in the room, the table, the chairs, but other sharp things as well: oxen bellowing, rats shedding water, soldiers beckoning, a dark man on horseback. Hands reach out for me. Voices sigh. I come back for a moment, thinking that I deserve this, to die alone as their prisoner . . . then dance away, a dog dodging a stick, listening but not hearing, watching but not seeing. Wind whistles somewhere, its sound in my ears. The impact, when it comes, knocks me off my feet, slamming my head to the ground as I fall.

“Hey! ”

I fight to get clear. Breath hisses as my foot meets a groin. I bend back fingers from a strange, prying hand. Only the voice pulls me out of it, the booming, non-laughing utterance that sounds oddly familiar, that makes itself clear across a roomful of people. The cadence of a distant island. Dr. Mellon’s voice.

“Emmett! What are you doing?”

I find myself on the floor, Lawrence’s acne-scarred face near mine. Dr. Mellon stands behind him. The thin woman peers from the wall like a raccoon.

I release Lawrence’s fingers. He retreats, rubbing his hand.

There are questions, but my answers seem muddled. I am confused. Time again has been lost. My release . . .

I am returned to the dayroom. John Paul hovers near.

“How did it go?”

I shake my head. “I began seeing things. Then I found myself on the floor, with Lawrence trying to pin my arms.” I glance over at Lawrence, busy adjusting an ice pack.

“I hope you bit him.” John Paul scratches the tip of his nose. “You know, it’s all about dopamine,” he continues, “dopamine and receptors. Some of us have too much, some not enough. In diseases like—”

“Lunchtime!” a voice proclaims. Andre appears, arms about his head. John Paul rises. I follow, fighting light-headedness, the dots and curlicues that form and dissolve. I merge into line behind John Paul and his pink nose, the stooped black man Puff, Leo and his steepled hands, and then a new figure, broad-shouldered, close-cropped, a head with ridges so prominent as to be lobes of his brain. I stare, remembering Araxie’s description, chills at work on my spine, chills that strengthen to near-paralysis as the figure turns and exhibits his face, his familiar masculine jaw, his wide-set eyes and protruding lips. It is Sasha’s face. I reel, grasping the couch for support, staring at this intrusion from another time and place, shorn and re-clothed and perhaps re-gendered, but otherwise one and the same. His gaze meets mine as he passes, a glazed and medicated glance that bespeaks no recognition but collapses me nonetheless, and then I am fine, stolid and resolute and surprisingly hungry. I straighten my shoulders and pull at my trousers. I follow the others on the slow march to the dining area. Lawrence stands at the doorway, still kneading his hand.

I sit at a table with Elmo and this new person, the man Lawrence introduces as Victor. My questions as to his background produce no response, save for the dull smacks of his eating, his swallows of sweetened iced tea. I content myself with just looking at him, remembering my conversations with Sasha, his double, calculating the improbability of this strength of resemblance. Perhaps we have met elsewhere, perhaps as client or employee or friend, but I can visualize him only in a tentlike
jilbab
, cutting his deals with his customers, haranguing or praising or pleading or sweeping, anger or avarice at play on his face.

“Medicine!” The queue forms. Heads bend to charts, necks tilt, practiced hands toss tablets down throats. I eye my pills, the two yellow tablets and three red-and-white capsules. I empty the cup into my mouth, add water, swish it down, open my mouth to meet Andre’s inspection. We disperse afterward. Lawrence strides ahead, unlocking doors to the rooms along the dayroom’s one side. Some of the group shuffle inside, yawning and stretching, while others stare at the doors or the TV. Elmo hurls a pitch at a far wall, Leo bows in prayer. Puff speaks to Lawrence, laughing, rubbing his hands along the sides of his face. I stop near the couch, dry-mouthed now and weary. John Paul pulls up alongside me.

“They let us nap if we want to.” He dabs a napkin at his nose, which is bleeding. “Are you tired?”

I silence a yawn. “Yes. And you?”

“I usually don’t nap. You can lie down if you want to.”

John Paul continues talking, about steroids, transfiguration. He will not quiet. I envision my hands on his head, shaking. Finally, he leaves.

I enter the bare room, sit on the bed, remove my shoes, stare at my feet. Glancing out the doorway, to where a baseball announcer’s voice echoes from the dayroom, I look for him, for Victor/Sasha, but he is not there. I close my eyes, searching again for patterns in nothingness, noting the shapes floating past, the mutant half-bodies, the dragons that become griffins that become vultures that become—what? Jesus? The Prophet? I am renewed.
Canlı
. And then I sleep.

I awake to darkness,
to the pressure of a hand at my throat. I struggle, but the hand holds me back. I kick. I flail my arms at the body beyond but strike nothing, as if the hand is a ghost’s yet retains all its power. My breathing grows short. Lights glow in the darkness. And then, just as my abdomen convulses and my hands make contact with the assailant’s thick arm, his voice appears in my ear, instantly recognizable.

“I want you to see something.” The hand releases its pressure, the figure backing away. I sit up, coughing, as a candle springs to light.

“Do you see this?” Mustafa points to his right arm, or where his arm should have been. It is gone, sheared off at the shoulder, leaving his torso strangely oblong, like a chicken cut for the market. “It became infected, after our battle. The doctors cut it off.”

I cough some more, to recover my breath. A knife gleams now in Mustafa’s one hand.

“It is difficult with one arm. Everything in life becomes harder. Every time I eat, or piss, or button my shirt, I think of you, of this moment.” He pauses, lifts something off the divan with the blade of his knife, holds it up in the air. “I have followed you, my friend. I lost you, but with the help of a kind man, I found you again. I know what you do each day, where you go. Even when you were at the knife maker’s shop, I was there. I was recovering, regaining my strength. And now I am strong again. If not whole.”

He tosses the object to where it lands in my lap. Even in flight I know it, know its outline and texture before my hand brushes against it, before I touch the familiar stones. The necklace is cold, oily with sweat or blood or some other substance. I trace its edges and ridges and the smoothness of its pendant, just as I did on the day I bought it, the day I gave it to her. My heartbeat pulses in my jaw, in my face, down the contours of my injured throat. I eye the knife in front of me, the dark stripes on its end.

“You recognize it, yes? A little bloody, perhaps, but still there. I wanted you to see it. I wanted you to know this, to share a little of my pain. It is so hard. Do you see? It has all been so hard.”

I nod, wheezing, my breath in ragged draws. I dig my hands in the sheet on the bed.

“What do you have to say, my friend? I do not hate you, for you cannot help yourself. A part of me says I should not even kill you. Perhaps I should only cut you, remove a piece of you—perhaps your arm? Then we would be alike, chopped by life and left to go on.” He smiles. “I must know, though, Ahmet. Do you feel it? The fear in the back of your throat, the certainty that all is now lost? The girl, your arm, even your life—do you not wish to fight for them? Let’s see who is stronger. After all, I have only one arm.” He raises his eyebrows, as if inviting me to join him. The candlelight gleams on his blade. “Only one arm.”

I fling my sheet at the candle as I dive in the opposite direction. The light flickers but holds. Mustafa seems to have expected my action, as he takes only a half-step in the sheet’s path before reversing his course and lunging toward me. I scramble to my feet, roaring, an outburst at once loud and unintelligible, dodging as he hooks the knife forward in a fierce left-handed thrust. The blade catches the edge of my forearm, turning me sideways and down, tearing skin and muscle before lodging in the wooden pallet’s base. For an instant we hang there, the knife embedded, Mustafa nearly on top of me, my arm free of the knife but afire with bright pain. I smell his foulness, his animal-like sweat. The bristles of his beard scratch my neck. He thrashes upon me, as if he seeks to punch me while I’m pinned down but has forgotten he has no right fist. His body rocks. He pulls at the knife, his teeth snapping, catching some part of my ear and sparking new pain to life.

He releases the knife and grabs for my throat. I twist sideways, my one arm caught beneath me, attempting to throw him off with my legs and free arm, but he is heavy, too heavy. His weight pins me down. I buck like an animal under a rider but succeed only in shifting his bulk, my back now more fully against him. I shake my head. He knees me, stomping with his feet, trying to gain any purchase. His fingers dig deep in my neck.

My breath contorts. Light dims. I try to roll but cannot. I jerk my knees up but fall back. With my one hand I gain small movement, enough to grasp the knife’s haft. I pull against it but have no leverage. My arm is weakened by pain. I rock the knife, bruising my palm against its tempered hardness, thinking of all the knives I have forged, formed, and sharpened—I need only this one, now! But I cannot free it. I rotate it like a pestle, concentrating my hatred of all knives upon it, but it only quivers and holds fast. My arm throbs in defeat. I cannot breathe now, I must release this and try something else, and I
do
feel the panic, and push one last time with the flat of my palm. The wood cracks then and splinters. The knife frees. I pick it up, reverse my grip. Mustafa must feel this, for he lifts up slightly, his hand still on my throat. I am thinking, absurdly, of what he must think now—is it anger, or doubt, or only murderous instinct? I shift beneath him. My eyes cloud without air. With a pain that spears my arm like a poker, I drive the knife backward, deep into his chest.

Mustafa stands, the knife like a rib pulled apart from its brethren. His face shows surprise, a mask nearly of pleasure. He starts to say something but blood garbles his words. Staggering, his hand out and grasping, he reaches his full length until his palm strikes the candle and the room falls into darkness. I turn but lie paralyzed, wanting to scramble to my feet, to run—is he not dead? He does not topple. I smell him, hear his shuffling feet, picture him swaying and squinting. I should scream but cannot. Something clatters, and a fresh terror seizes me. Has he
pulled out
the knife? His moans are almost deafening. I reach my knees but he lurches toward me, his body corkscrewing, weighted perhaps by his single arm, a force that pitches him back down on me. The knife, still embedded, strikes me full in the face, breaking my nose and front teeth as if they were sticks. Pain explodes, blinding me for some seconds. I swallow pieces of tooth. Choking, my arm almost useless, my face crushed and leaking, I push his body from mine. I struggle to stand upright.

A light flares. Sasha stands before me, grabbing Mustafa’s hair with both hands, pulling his body onto the floor as something—I think his neck—snaps in the process. She brings a small candle closer.

“You have enemies, I see.” She explores my wounds with her fingers, rotating the light with her hand. Blood seeps over my clothing, the exposed straw of the bed, my bare feet. I take in great gulps of air. I feel faint.