The Gendarme (30 page)

I brush my teeth, thinking of John Paul and his scars, of SGPC, Violet, Lissette, and then back—all mixed together, of some things perhaps lost. I create mental tests for myself. When was I born? What was the knife maker’s name? What tunes did Omar play at the
klimbim
? I think again of Wilfred. Do I remember anything new? I exit the room again, return the key to a slot before the small, darkened office. The zippered façade is still half lit, in neon. I cross the parking lot to the car.

The traffic is full now, trucks bleating and whining. I see police cars. I think, Do they seek
me
? I imagine telling them that I, too, was a gendarme. I grip the wheel with both hands. I keep to my lane. Cars appear behind me, slowing, zipping around. I feel more comfortable after a while, my driving easier, more mechanical. I take my time. The day lengthens. My stomach gurgles and pouts; I turn the radio on but it is loud. I turn it off. Thirst beckons. I think to count signs as I once did with the children, and the memories soon follow, flowing up with such strength as to blot out light, even life: the great wooden doors at the hospital in London; a chess match in which my enraged opponent ate the pieces he captured; Carol, pale-faced and sick on our voyage to America; the strange Western clothes she had me wear at the time. I was a new man. I was starting a new life. More memories follow of the city’s great swirl, its darkness and closeness, the way the wind swept and howled and tossed hats like stray birds. Lissette’s tiny body, light and warm next to mine. The strangeness of southern Georgia, the odd accents, the heat. And then voices. Carol’s upper register, John Paul’s baritone, calling to me and the others. I can just make out words that erase, like a dream. Violet, Dr. Wan, even Wilfred. They compete, talk, talk over their own talking. If they would all only quiet, I could hear them, perhaps remember. Her voice was smooth, yes? I strain to catch it. I see signs for New York and think I am a fool, for this search at the end, an old man’s hopeless quest. And yet elation cuts through me. I grip the wheel tighter. I am a child before Christmas, alive in my greediness.

And then it happens. Blue lights behind me, the single whirl of a siren. I pull, deflated—so close!—to the shoulder. Two policemen. They take their time exiting, the lights winking and mocking, my mind leaping back fifty years to another time the police stopped me. At night then, New Jersey, coming home from a job, 1940. I had only just learned to drive. I had purchased a car, a Chevrolet. I was so proud, then. A man was with me, another plumber, Ranesh. We were made to get out, place our hands over our heads as they searched through my car. They made us strip down. They had sticks. Ranesh protested and they hit him, just once. They poked at our clothes. They pulled down our underclothes and placed the sticks lengthwise along the cracks of our rears, prodding, not deep. They laughed with thick laughs and said niggers shouldn’t be driving. I could not see their faces. Then they left. I told no one of this. For a time I could still feel the cold rod on the edge of my buttocks, still awake thinking of standing naked along a highway. Then I stopped thinking of it. I have not thought about it in years.

The men reach my window. I try to lower it but do not know how. I exit the car, carefully following their directions. They are young, their faces greasy. Must I strip? I am a
citizen
! But they only ask questions. Where is my license? Why am I driving slowly? Am I really . . . ninety-two? I must touch my nose, count backward from 100. I think, English. English. I stare at my skin. Has it not lightened with age? One turns to the other, saying, I usually call these in, but . . . All as my mind gallops. Do they not know? Have they not heard? They ask again where I am going, and I answer softly: To see a friend. They scratch their heads. It is hot. They say, Be careful, to drive at least forty-five, that someone probably should drive me around at my age. Then they leave.

I slump in my seat. I have forgotten now how to drive. Are they gone? They are gone. A fly buzzes about me. Slowly things return, the key, the ignition. The motor turns over. I pull onto the highway. My speed builds. I am free—unrestrained and still free! My head bobs in relief. My hands stick to the wheel, sweat pasting my shirt to the Chevrolet’s red cloth seat. I search again for blue lights. I will find her, I say to the dashboard, the speedometer. Cars are about again, whizzing and rocking. An ambulance zings past and I must empty my bowels.

Has time elapsed? I have stopped, sipped some water. New York is closer. The last of my money I must spend on the tolls. I remember my first bank account, the concept so foreign—to give someone my paycheck, a week’s worth of work. Whom would I trust so? No one, but Carol talked me into it. And then the Depression, the bank failures. I walked by the bank and its columns two times each day, often more. Our bank did not fail, but still I wanted my money, to touch and rub my fingers on the hours of my life. Later, in Georgia, I would go and sit at the bank and ask to see my account balance, to be reassured. Sometimes I took money out just to put it back in. I am exposed without cash—I have felt this way since my youth. There are the cards, the machines that give money, but I have never worked these, never trusted them. I pull my wallet out now, finger its edges, toss it onto the seat. In the end there is nothing. I will be naked before her.

Things grow more familiar. The traffic is slow now, there are horns and brake lights, blue spurts of exhaust. How long since I lived here? I calculate but lose track. The flood of cars makes me anxious, the freeway clogged like a drain. There are signs for food, for lodging—all in English. Did I expect something else, perhaps Turkish? I remember how strange I found signs at first, how incomprehensible. My struggle to learn English, to sound out the strange symbols. The day I took the wrong train, when I mistook E for F. The foreman who shook his head and made strangling pantomimes. I would go home to ask Carol: What is brain dead? What is jackass? My children mocked my odd accent, “Not
eef
, Papa,
if
.” “ ‘We go to
the
store,’ Papa, not ‘We go to store.’ ” I worked at it, worked. I became proud of my English. I follow the English signs now for bridges, Manhattan. My fuel gauge shows empty. I know E from F.

I make my way. I miss an exit, backtrack. It is all so confusing. Carol and I lived in Queens, not Manhattan. First an apartment, then a row house. I remember our steps, our neighbors the Manellis. The Ruggieros on the other side. The day we brought Lissette home. The day a storm wrecked our railing. Was Araxie here, too, then—a mere train ride away? I work the window down, acrid smells of exhaust, food, and smoke entering the car. The memories that trail behind these are pleasant. How strange it all was then . . . how wondrous! The buildings, the subways, even the cars. The smell of people and machines, the bread lines and protests still years away. The smell of possibility. There were people of all colors, descriptions. What did they do? Where did they live? Could I ever have imagined this? I found work. I survived, even the Depression. I did not wish to leave, but Carol insisted it would be best for the children, old as they were then. It was the beginning of her decline. And so we left. It seems so long ago.

I am here now. Manhattan. A chill rides my spine. It is the same, but different, clogged with trucks and yellow taxis. Crazed people on bicycles. Glass and chrome and neon. Noise—was it always this noisy? Like a great anthill, the ants stacked and marching and noisy, noisy ants. The sky is browned with their output. Pedestrians throng at corners and seep between cars. I know the address but still I must find it. I make several false starts and stops. Horns peal like bells as cars stack up behind me. Will my gasoline last? I am close, I think, close. The voices and headache are silenced and slain. So near! I can feel it. I tilt my head out and shout at tall buildings, at the bottoms of water towers I installed as a young man. Fear follows, not of death or injury but, worse, of disappointment. The address may be dated, Carl said. She would have to be . . . eighty-nine? Ninety? I search my memory, for the last thing I said to her, the things I wish to say now.

The car stops, the gas gone. I pull to one side. Horns shriek anew, a fat man bent and yelling. I open my door to the street. I search for signs, the light fading. How far? Still some blocks. I begin walking, my legs weakened. I must pause and rest often. The smell of food comes, Turkish food,
pide
and
güveç
and even
şiş köfte
. I am back then to the desert, huddled around a campfire, warming my hands before a hearth. Buying kibbe near a fountain. I smell smoke from a narghile—even
sucuk
! But my hunger and thirst are less clamorous. I reach Ninety-fourth Street and must rest on a stoop. Cars rumble, people chatter. I listen, breathing deep, smelling again, tasting. A woman yells at someone—a husband? a lover?—and laughs a harsh laugh. Someone throws out garbage as I had at the
klimbim
. From somewhere comes the patter of water turned from a tap, trickling, draining. I sit, and savor it.

A vestibule.
Dim, inside. There is no doorman. I find buttons, numbers, the names adjacent. But it is wrong—the name at 5C is Gilbert. I stare as my stomach folds. I walk outside, then return. Is the address wrong, the building? I am tired now, and weak.

I push the button. There is silence, then a voice, a young voice. “Yes?” This voice does not know me.

“I am looking for Araxie. Marashlian.” My voice comes from the crypt.

The button offers no response. Then, “Who is this?”

I close my eyes. “Ahmet Khan.”

There is something. A sigh? Finally, “Please come up.”

An elevator cage, a hallway smelling of food and tobacco. Number, numbers, and then a door, partly open, a woman’s frame in yellow light.

“Come in.” The light falls, her face becoming just visible.

I am lifted, transported, to desert and hilltop and a thousand dream places. It is she, still a teen, one eye blue, the other somber and dark. She is different, updated, her hair short, the dark makeup so common. She is dressed all in black. Her skin, too, is darker, as if the rigors of the trek have marked her. But it is she.

I say nothing. My mouth moves, syllables half forming. I am back in the ambulance with the tumor’s arrival, the first wisps of dream coming, but, no—I am here. I shift my feet. A word—the word—winds up through my throat.

“Araxie.”

The girl looks down. “She is dead,” she says softly. “It will be four years in May.”

We stare at each other.

“I am Augustine, her granddaughter. And you . . . are Ahmet Khan.”

Her granddaughter. My name. My voice of its own accord, rumbling. “Yes.”

She flips her hair. “Ahmet Khan,” she says again. “She said you would come.”

Things weave in and out. I am there, I am here. At the end the past is so great it intrudes like an army. I find myself in a chair, though I do not remember sitting down. She is seated, too, speaking, but I am only looking, thinking. Granddaughter. I think to touch her. So alike as to be one.

“Grandmother lived here for forty-two years, then my mother. My mother died six months ago.”

“And your father?”

“He died when I was two.”

Her fingernails are short and black. She gnaws on her forefinger.

“Do you have other relatives?”

She shakes her head, defiant, almost. Even this, this gesture . . .

“What did your grandmother tell you?”

“She told me you saved her life.”

I spin again, through a world raw with violence. The women at the fire, the men on their ropes, the mother and the child and the horse’s hoof. Mustafa.

“What life did she have?”

The girl nods, older in this way—maybe eighteen? Nineteen? “She had a remarkable life.” The blue eye flickers. “She lived a long time. She was blind, at the end, but still vital. So vital.”

“What . . . what happened to her?”

I think she will not know this. Why would Araxie have remembered, recounted to her these old, death-filled horrors? But the girl—Augustine?—only nods and clears her throat.

“She was taken,” she begins. “A man, Hussein, abducted her, took her by force from the house where she stayed.

“Another man was there. Mustafa. He wanted to rape her, but Hussein wouldn’t let him. Instead, Hussein ripped the necklace from her neck, and told Mustafa where to find you.”

The memory swims back. She is reciting, but yet . . . The pain swells in my ear. My nose is crushed, my teeth broken.

“They stayed with his sister for some time, maybe a year. Grandmother worked at a new hospital. She tried to escape once, but was captured. She married him—Hussein—after that. She was given no choice.”

I am dizzy, suddenly. Falling. She is . . . she is . . .

“It was either that or die,” she continues. Her voice is like a bell. “He made that quite clear. And, although I considered the latter, the will to live proved too strong.”

I . . . I . . . She is speaking, this descendant, but I hear only Araxie. Her voice! Even . . .

“We lived for several years in Aleppo. I bore him a son. We called him Hossan. Hossan died when he was two—an illness shriveled his body to only paper and bone. Hussein died two years later.

“I never loved him—Hussein.” She pauses. “I tried. He was not wholly bad. But in the end it was I who killed him.”

She wipes at her face. I rock as if on a ship.

She looks away, in the direction of the shaded window at the end of the room. Colors are switching, reds now, and greens. Her hair is thick. It is
she
.

“After the war, a number of Armenians returned to Turkey. I waited, but eventually I, too, wished to go back, to find people, to see if any of my relatives had been spared. Hussein would not leave. Eventually we did travel, but to Der Zor, to see his relatives. In those days, traveling was dangerous. There were brigands and bands of outlaws that preyed on those on the roads. A day or two after we left Aleppo we were attacked. Hussein was injured—he suffered a broken arm, as well as a serious head wound. After the bandits departed, with all of our money, Hussein took out his frustrations on me. He had this club, this hardened, petrified woodlike thing, and he beat me with it, using his one good arm. I can still hear the grunts of his efforts. I lost several teeth, suffered broken ribs in the process. At some point something snapped within me, and I responded.” She pauses, her face still turned to the window. “I pinned him down, grabbed one of the blankets from our bed-roll, and pressed it into his face. He fought, but I was stronger, given his wounds. I suffocated him.” She pauses again. “I left his body by the side of the road.”