Farher Jean Moreau ran the mission of the White Fathers near Wargla. He had snow white hair and kindly eyes and weighed little more than a leaf. His mission consisted of an orphanage, an infirmary, and a chapel, all in a compound nestled in the shade of a large grove of palms outside the oasis. The mission was poor. The chapel had a single crucifix on the wall above an altar made of mud bricks. The orphanage had a straw mat for each child and woolen blankets for cold nights. The infirmary was a small room with two cots and a table, and a chest where Father Jean kept medicine. The mission was surrounded by an earthen wall with a large wooden gate that never closed. On one side of the compound there were vegetable gardens and pens for sheep and goats and chickens.
Father Jean pleaded regularly for supplies from Cardinal Lavigerie, the archbishop of Algiers and the founder of the White Fathers. The cardinal invariably responded with abundant blessings and no supplies. Father Jean pestered old friends in France, who sent medicines and tins of food.
The orphanage and infirmary were always filled to overflowing. The chapel was always empty. The people of Wargla were glad to have the White Father’s goodwill and medicine, but not his religion. In twenty years in Africa he counted just one convert. But Father Jean was a patient man. “The souls will follow if we tend their bodies and minds,” he said. He worked tirelessly from sunup to well after dark. The people of Wargla trusted him.
His one convert was Melika, a young woman who had been abandoned as an infant. Children normally left the orphanage as soon as they were eight, to make room for younger ones, but Melika stayed. She was a quick study. By the time she was ten she was helping teach the other children. At eighteen she knew almost as much about medicine as Father Jean. She had a wonderful manner with the patients. She was indispensable, looking after the animals and tending to the children. She taught them French and geography and sums. She cooked for them and tended to their lumps and bumps and infected eyes.
Melika worshiped Father Jean. She wasn’t a convert, really, for she had been raised by the priest. She didn’t believe in the White Father’s God nearly as much as she believed in him.
It was to this mission that Moussa brought Paul in the middle of the night. Paul was unconscious, tied atop the mehari. Father Jean had called for Melika and the three of them got Paul settled into Melika’s room. The infirmary was full and there was nowhere else to put him. Melika didn’t mind. It happened often. She could sleep in the orphanage on one of the mats.
Father Jean worked through the night. In his first life, before his vows, he had been a doctor. War in Europe had killed his wife and children and had turned his hair white before he was twenty-five. He had treated every injury imaginable. He had amputated limbs and patched mangled bodies. He knew as much about medicine as any man in the south of Algeria. So it was with some certainty that he was able to give the prognosis to the Targui waiting in the courtyard.
“The Frenchman will die. He is too far gone. Even without the bullet, I think the desert has killed him.” “He will not die, Father. He is strong and a good man. The desert didn’t kill him when it had the best chance. He is one of your God’s miracles.”
Father Jean smiled. “I forget myself. I have been a doctor too long. You say the words to me I should be saying to you. Of course I pray that you are right. I will do everything I can.”
Melika settled in to take the first turn with the patient. Near dawn the Targui left.
The wound festered and rotted around the edges. It smelled horrible. Father Jean shook his head.
“If he’d been shot in the arm or leg I could cut it off and stop the poison,” he told Melika. “But there’s nothing to do when it’s in his shoulder.”
He clipped away the skin and washed the wound with carbolic acid. He prayed. She cleaned it every few hours and changed the bandages. Sometimes Paul cried out when she did it. The skin came away in bits. There was a big hole where the bullet had gone in, and a bigger one where it had come out. When she turned him over he bled. She shooed away the flies.
In his delirium he talked a lot, mumbling of Moussa and St. Paul’s, of Flatters and Floop and Remy. She came to know that name well. Remy, Remy. An arm. His arm. Once the soldier jumped up, clutching his arm, shrieking that it had been cut off. She had said it, over and over. “Your arm is all right. Your arm is still there. Shhhh…”
She wiped his head and bathed him with a sponge to cool the fevers. She put goat’s butter on his swollen lips and rubbed it into his feet where they had cracked and bled. She read to him even though she didn’t think he could hear. She read from Father Jean’s Bible, and from a medical text he had. She read him names of places off the maps they used to teach the children, and from anything else she could find.
She was fascinated by him. She had never seen such a handsome man. His hair was thick and nearly white and ran to his shoulders, while his beard was full and the color of honey. As she took care of him she imagined who he was, imagined things about him. She knew he was a soldier, that his name was Paul. The Targui who brought him had said it. But she knew little else.
He shrieked at night, his forehead drenched with sweat. She held him and rocked him back and forth, whispering softly to calm him. She didn’t know what he’d been through. The Targui hadn’t said.
She fed him goat’s milk, nudging his lips with a spoon. He swallowed it without waking, his mouth moving for more. He was all ribs, and she gave him a lot. She sang to him, hymns she’d learned when she was the only one there for the services in the little mud chapel. She knew some Shamba legends and put them to verse, and put the verse to music, just for something to do. It was awful, she was sure, but the soldier was unconscious, after all, and didn’t seem to mind. Sometimes it seemed to her that a smile appeared on his face. Father Jean heard her singing too. He nodded and smiled himself.
She looked at his face and imagined the things he’d seen, the things he’d done. So much trouble there, so much terror in his cries. She couldn’t imagine. Life with the White Father was quite safe. She was glad of it, when she comforted him. She stroked his cheek with the back of her fingers. She touched the hair on his chest. It was as fine as silk and golden. She drew back the cover and looked at his arms, at his muscles, at his hands. She washed him, lifting his arms one after another, bathing them in cool water. Father Jean said it was good to keep him clean. She knew by the way it felt, that it was good.
She also knew that wasn’t what Father Jean meant.
She ran the sponge down his stomach and along his legs. She had never seen a man before, at least not like this one. She felt herself on fire when she did that. She flushed with shame. She was taking extraordinary liberties with an unconscious man. No one had ever taught her about any of this. Certainly not Father Jean.
On the fifth day he floated up toward the surface. There were voices there, and beauty. Music. A woman’s voice, soft and soothing. Pretty. He wanted to see.
“Who are you?” His eyes were wide and full of fear.
“Melika.”
“Melika… beautiful… welcome,” he said, and he drifted back down to where the mists swirled.
He awoke again the next day.
“Who are you?” His eyes were wide and full of fear.
“Melika,” she said again. She took his hand.
“Melika.” The fear passed. He smiled and squeezed her fingers. He drifted again through the mists.
The next day his eyes were wide but there was no fear. “Melika,” he said. “Have I died? Are you from God?”
She laughed. “You are not dead, Monsieur Paul. Close enough, perhaps, but not dead. You are near Wargla. You are safe.”
“Wargla.” He said it in wonder. Through his fog he saw soft brown eyes and dark hair and a warm smile in a round face. It was a lovely vision, perfect. He slept. His breathing became deeper, more relaxed.
She combed his hair. She trimmed it where it fell into his eyes, snipping at it with Father Jean’s surgical scissors. It hadn’t been cut in months. She hoped he wouldn’t mind.
She left the room only briefly, to pray for him in the chapel.
He drifted in and out. He remembered bits and pieces. He thought of his name. “Paul,” he said to her. “I am Paul.”
“Yes.” She nodded and touched his forehead. It made him cool when she did that, and it made him smile. He learned to smile often, so that she would keep touching him.
A storm came. Rain lashed at her room and ran down the mud walls. He awoke to the flash of lightning and heard the thunder and it took him to some frenzied place. He shouted and cried and she held him to her breast, helpless to offer him anything but her warmth and the comfort of her body. He clung to her desperately. His terrors passed with the storm and once again he drifted off, at peace. She watched him sleep and brushed away the hair from his forehead.
For two weeks he was half-in, half-out of conscious. His fever would not leave, and it troubled Father Jean greatly. For two weeks she sat with him, whispering, singing, talking, telling stories, cleaning his wound, bathing away the heat with cool cloths. Each day she drew closer to him.
One night she leaned over him for a cloth that had fallen from his forehead. Her breast brushed his cheek. She felt a rush inside, a tingling surge of beauty and longing that hardened her nipples and left her breathless and afraid. Embarrassed, she looked to see if he had awakened. He was quite deeply under, in the world between sleep and unconsciousness where he spent so much time.
She looked at the door. It was late at night. The compound slept. No one would be coming.
Heart pounding, she moved to sit close to him on the bed. Impulsively, without knowing exactly what she was doing, yet compelled to yield to her feelings, she raised her blouse, then the shift beneath it. She shivered, the air caressing her breasts. Once more she felt the fire inside, warm, delicious, and forbidden. She couldn’t believe what she was doing, but she was beyond caring, wanting only to follow her need. Trembling, she leaned forward and softly touched the tip of her breast to his lips, closing her eyes and drawing in her breath as the currents of pleasure coursed around her. Paul stirred at her touch, his mouth and tongue instinctively seeking her nipple, gently pulling, circling, exploring, but still he slept. Her nipple tightened and she let out a soft moan of pleasure. She was terrified he would wake up, and yet she wanted him to. She moved against him, and again he responded.
A noise outside the room brought her back. She bolted upright, hurriedly fixing her clothing.
Only a night sound. Nothing at all, but the moment had passed.
She looked at his face, bathed in the light of the candle. He was almost smiling, she thought. She wondered if he knew.
His consciousness gradually returned. A fever remained, and his shoulder still festered, but each day he gained strength. Each day he ate more, drank more. Each day the color returned to his cheeks. Now she knew he would live.
“Who are you?” he asked, long after he knew the answer. He liked to hear her say it.
“Melika,” she replied patiently every time.
“Melika, Melika, like a poem,” he said. If he remembered what had happened he gave no sign.
He sat up and was awake for an hour. Then two. Then five.
“You are back among the living,” she said as he ate. She gave him pieces of bread soaked in goat’s milk, and bits of fruit cut into little pieces. He couldn’t chew yet. He sucked on them.
“This is a wonderful place to be alive,” he said. He didn’t know for certain how he had come to be in this place, but he knew he was in no rush to change it. It was all coming slowly. He didn’t want to hurry. She was perfect. She was beautiful. He didn’t have to move, didn’t have to do anything. She did it all for him, unbidden, and he wanted it never to stop. She seemed to sense what he needed before he knew it himself. He heard her voice when he slept. He saw her face when he awoke. Saw her in his dreams. It was enough. More than enough. All the rest was behind him now. The others had died. He had lived. Somehow.
“What has happened to the others?” he asked in panic, when he could finally think of the question at all.
“What others?” she said. “You were brought here alone.”
“Brought here? Who brought me?”
“A Targui.”
A shadow passed over his face. It frightened her.
“I must speak to the commandant of the garrison at Wargla.”
“Of course, when you are well enough.”
“Now. There are others. They may still be alive. I have to tell them.”
“All right. I will ask Father Jean.”
The captain of the garrison came with other men. They trooped in on loud rude boots and filled the room. Father Jean made Melika leave. She was afraid they would take him away. But they only talked, until Father Jean made them leave too. They were quieter when they left. Their faces were grim.
He slept a great deal. Sometimes when he awoke and felt well he took the book from her, and read to her instead. She loved it. She sat back in the hard wooden chair and closed her eyes. He read to her about Pasteur and general surgery. “Wonderful stuff,” he said wryly, but she loved it.
“When it is you saying it, even anthrax and rabies sound appealing,” she said, and he laughed. She loved the rich sound of his voice. He read until he nodded off. She asked Father Jean for more books.
“More books! Is he the only patient left in the infirmary?” Father Jean grumped, but there was no hardness in him. He had never seen Melika so happy. He watched her and thought of his dead wife. His eyes misted and he busied himself looking after the things she had always tended. He could make his own supper and handle the infirmary alone. Just for a while, he told himself.
Paul got up. She held him while he draped his arm over her shoulder. He made five steps and fell hard to the floor. His shoulder opened and poured dark blood. She cried out and Father Jean ran to help. Together they got him back in bed. When she looked at his face, drained of color, she was sure she’d killed him. “Please live,” she whispered. “Please, please.” The wound got ugly and his body shook with fever. She dared not leave the room. She knelt by the bed and clutched her rosary and prayed.
On the second day his fever broke for good. Melika laughed and cried when he woke up.
“You,” she said happily, tears on her cheeks.
“You.” He smiled back.
His recovery quickened then. He began to eat by himself. He could hold the spoon, but they both pretended he still needed help.
He asked for a cup of tea. She brewed it carefully, borrowing the leaves from the White Father’s own sacred preserve. She would find a way to replace it.
He asked for an orange. She walked all the way to the central market of Wargla so she could pick it out herself. She got a whole box. The juice ran down into his beard and she knew the long trip had been worthwhile. He smiled at her, and touched her cheek. “I need a shave,” he said. She helped him with water and scissors and she wielded Father Jean’s razor. The result was bloody, “but not nearly as bad as getting shot,” she told him.
Next it was an apricot. “Hakeem loved them,” he said. He started to tell her about Hakeem, but his voice broke and he began to cry. She held his hand and he looked away, embarrassed by his weakness. She thought he was wonderful.
“Fish,” he said, and she panicked. There were no fish to be had within a hundred leagues. She bribed the second cousin to the first servant of the agha of Wargla, who produced a packet of dried sardines caught off the Barbary coast. She thought it awful but he clearly loved it.
“Tu es un ange,” he told her. You are an angel. No one had ever said that to her before.
He watched her coming and going and cherished each moment. She laughed often and each time it brightened his soul.
“I know nothing about you,” he said one afternoon. “Tell me of Melika.”
“There is little to say,” she smiled. “My life is this mission. It is what I know. It is what I do. I am happy here. I do not wear a veil like the women in Wargla. The marabouts leave me alone, and the White Father lets me do as I can. As I wish. Father Jean says he is going to send me to France someday to study, but I don’t think he will. There is more to do here in a day than there are hours. There are always too many children without families, too many illnesses. It was so yesterday, and it will not change tomorrow. I will stay and help.” She shrugged. “That is Melika.”
“Where are you from?”
“Not far from here. My mother was Shamba. She died when I was very young. She was said to be very beautiful.”
“It is true. I know it by looking upon her daughter,” he said, and she blushed.
Well after he felt strong enough to get up by himself, he didn’t. He preferred to sit in the little room and let her tend to him. He wondered how to make it last forever. She fed him couscous, lifting the spoon to his lips. He intentionally spilled it so that she would have to clean him. She was happy for the excuse. She longed to do it.
He learned to moan, to emulate pain.
She was there instantly.
He loved her smell. He loved her smile. He saw the concern in her eyes. For the briefest moment it made him feel guilty.
But mostly it made him feel wonderful.
When he was strong enough she took him for walks, little ones at first. She packed a small basket of goat cheese and bread and fruit and they sat in the mission gardens. In the distance he could see the richness of Wargla, with its flowers and date palms and gardens. He had wanted for so long to see that sight, and now had no desire to go the rest of the way. He picked a palm frond and presented it to her. She laughed in delight and hugged him.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and she clung to him, and he to her. She was his escape from the terror. She had brought him back from the abyss, and given him back his life. She was beautiful.
He was falling in love with her.
The walks grew longer. “I have a place to show you,” he said.
He took her to the top of a dune, a lovely place. “I stood here once, with a friend,” he said.
“You were here?”
“A lifetime ago,” he said, “with a man named Remy.”
“You spoke of him often, when you were unconscious.”
He changed the subject, and talked of another companion. She laughed when he told her about rolling down the dune with the dog. But he didn’t say what had become of the dog, either. His story came out only in fragments. She still knew very little. She let him talk when he wanted to talk, and left him in silence when he needed that.
Paul knew the time was coming when he should report to the garrison. It was already past time. He was well enough, really, or soon would be. He had much to do, in the matter of the Tuareg. But he couldn’t bring himself to think about all that just yet.
One day a visitor came. Melika greeted him in the courtyard, near the garden, and thought at first he was a new patient for the infirmary. He was a gaunt old man with graying hair. He could not walk unassisted. Two men supported him, lifting him by his arms. He was a light load for them; he looked to Melika as if a gust of wind might carry him away. He was sun blackened and his body was spent but there was great strength in his face. He was polite and his eyes were kind and she liked him immediately.
“Istanna,” she said, indicating a seat by the garden. “Rest there, please. I will get the lieutenant.”
He shook his head. “I have come too far to rest. I will accompany you, if it is all right.”
“Of course.” She led him to the little room and showed them inside. Paul looked up and for a moment was too overcome with emotion to react. His eyes brimmed with tears.
“El Madani.”
“Lieutenant.”
Paul rose to greet him. El Madani let go of the two men and stood alone on unsteady legs. Gently, trembling, they hugged, the old Algerian and the young Frenchman, and for a long time neither man could speak. They patted each other on the shoulders and held each other’s eyes, and just nodded and smiled. Paul helped him sit, while Melika and the two tirailleurs slipped from the room.
Paul scolded him. “You should not have come yourself. You are not strong enough. You should have sent word. I would have come to you.”
“When I heard you were alive I could not resist. I had to bring you the news myself.”
“How did you—”
“A shepherd found us.”
“Us? How many—”
“Twelve.”
Paul closed his eyes. “Twelve,” he whispered. Twelve out of ninety-eight.
“Thirteen counting you, Lieutenant. This is the second time you’ve come back from the dead.”
“Pobeguin?”
Madani shook his head.
Paul bit his lip and looked away, overwhelmed. He was the only Frenchman to have survived.
“I went looking for you, Lieutenant, after you ran off and Belkasem started yelling about a Tuareg raid. He said there were six of them, that they’d killed you. I found the body of the tirailleur, with a Tuareg spear in his chest. You were gone by then. All I found where you’d been was your blood. I guessed it was yours, anyway. And I found what I’d found before – one set of camel prints, out of place.”
He waited, but the lieutenant volunteered nothing. “I’ve gone weak in the head, I suppose. It took me a long time before I figured it out. The camel prints were never out of place at all. They were there, Lieutenant, for you.” El Madani looked at Paul, searching his eyes.
Paul didn’t know what to say. “I’ll explain it to you one day, Madani,” he said, “when I understand it myself.”
Captain Chirac, the new commandant for the Wargla garrison, arrived from Paris, and immediately paid a visit to Lieutenant deVries.
“You are a hero,” Chirac told him. “All France knows your name. There is certain to be a promotion.”
“A promotion.” Paul was incredulous and laughed bitterly. “For not getting killed?”
Chirac shrugged. “Better than a medal for dying. Most men would be content at the distinction.”
Paul knew he deserved nothing of the sort, but his mind was on retribution. “What is France going to do?”
“Do?”
“To the Tuareg, of course. I assume an offensive is being planned. I want to be involved, sir.”
“Unlikely, Lieutenant. I have received no official word, of course, but a friend of mine in the ministry has sent me accounts of the debate in the National Assembly. People are outraged about le mission Flatters,” he said. “It is a national scandal, a disgrace. But there is fear over outside reaction to an invasion of the Hoggar in force. The Turks, the Italians – it’s all very ticklish. And, frankly, there is considerable doubt that it can be done at all. Our garrisons are too far to the north.”
“Send me.” Paul’s eyes were intense. “I can do it.”
“As much as I would like to, it is not within my province to send a renegade force into the Hoggar. I cannot act without orders.”
“So there is to be no reaction then. None at all.” Chirac handed him a paper. “The foreign ministry condemns in the strongest possible terms the cowardly attack…”
Paul threw the paper to the floor, furious. “To hell with that,” he said. “We need to do something that matters.”
Chirac sympathized with the young officer, but in Paris he had seen all the grand talk of railway and empire collapse as completely as the failed mission. All the indignation was simply rouge for an embarrassing blemish on French pride. There would be no military response to the massacre, no response at all. France would soon forget the ugliness of Flatters and find a pretty bauble to occupy her attention.
“Be patient,” Chirac told him. “I know how you feel. Time will do nothing to make you forget, but it will take the edge off your bitterness.”
“Nothing but defeating the Tuareg will do that, Captain.”
“For now that is out of the question. Perhaps later. Sentiment may build as you hope. Who knows how the winds in the assembly may blow in six months? But never mind that. I am sending you home now. You can recover your health in Paris.”
“I don’t want to go home.”
“I am not giving you a choice, Lieutenant. As soon as you have recovered sufficiently to travel, you are to depart for Algiers. The governor wants to hold a reception for you. After that you are to go home, to France.” Chirac looked at the dejected officer. “Look, I sympathize with you,” he said truthfully. “The lack of response has been a blow to the morale of all the men here.”
“The lack of response is an insult to the men who died, Captain. I do not intend to forget them. I do not intend to forget the Tuareg.”
Afterward Paul brooded for days. “Is there something the matter?” Melika asked. “Have I done something wrong?”
“Of course not,” he said. “I’m sorry.” But his mind was in turmoil. He believed in his heart that he had been a poor officer on the march north. He had failed the men who had relied on him. So many things he could have done, that he had not done. To leave them unavenged would be to fail those men twice. He needed to go to Algiers, to see the governor, but not for a party. He needed to stir opinion, to buy back the honor of France with the blood of the blue men.
The rains had disintegrated a section of the mission’s wall, and Father Jean was laboring in the hot sun to rebuild it. One of the children brought lime and sand and they mixed it on a big piece of canvas. Father Jean laid bricks and troweled on the mortar. Paul watched him working, and volunteered to help. “Let me help you,” Paul said.
“Thank you, Lieutenant, but you are better off saving your strength.”
“I haven’t done anything for weeks now. I need to do something.” He began handing bricks to the priest, and lifted water. The exercise felt good.
Across the garden he saw Melika leaving to go into Wargla for supplies for Father Jean. The priest watched him watching.
“She is a special woman,” Father Jean said.
“Yes, she is. She adores you, you know.”
“She has little choice,” the priest smiled. “I’m the only family she’s ever known.”
“Where is she from?”
“Shebaba. Southwest of here, in the desert.”
“She told me her mother was Shamba.”
“Yes. She was raped during a raid. She died giving birth to Melika. After the mother died no one wanted the child. Melika might have been left outside to die, but she was lucky. A trader brought her here.”
“They would leave a baby to die?”
“A baby like her, yes,” Father Jean nodded. “The people of Wargla don’t care much for this orphanage. They need the infirmary, all right, but they don’t like barbarians raising their children. Sometimes we have no children at all here, even when there are many in need. Yet Melika was the child of a Tuareg raid. After she was brought to Wargla no one cared enough to take her, and she ended up here.”
Paul set down the bucket of water he was lifting and looked at the priest. “A Tuareg raid?”
“Yes, it was the Kel Ajjer. The Tuareg of the Tassili. Hand me that trowel, would you?”
Paul stood dumbly, not responding. Father Jean saw the color had gone from his face. “Are you all right, Lieutenant? Have you taken ill?” Paul stood mute, breathing heavily, struggling to comprehend what the priest had just told him.
“Melika is the child of Tuareg?” His voice was a whisper.
“Yes,” Father Jean said. “But more than that, she is the child of God.”
A Tuareg! Oh sweet Jesus!
Feeling suddenly dizzy, he stumbled against the new wall. He knocked part of it down, and a heavy palate of mortar fell to the ground.
The priest helped him up. “Here, here, sit—” he started to say.
Paul waved him off. “I’m all right, Father. I need to be alone.”
In shock he made his way into the garden, walking beneath the palms, blind to the beauty there. A cold wind had blown across his soul, and the flowers they had so enjoyed looking at together might as well have been dead. The air that had smelled so sweet now carried the scent of the Sahara, all the dark stench of his life.
God, how he hated the Tuareg! How could she be one of them?
He walked blindly and did not hear the birds or see the butterflies. His insides knotted and his head pounded with it all. He could not let her interfere with his duty. He did not trust himself with her, did not trust what she would make him do, did not trust his own feelings. His first duty, his only duty, was to avenge the men of the expedition. Honor demanded it; After that— there was no after that.
He could not bring himself to see her. He didn’t think he could tell her good-bye. He knew he couldn’t explain. When he found himself at the mission gate he just kept going.