We spent the next days traveling east. All the Turks we met at gas stations and roadside chi shops were friendly and seemed to want to take us home with them. The men, solemn and hard, broke easily into tooth-scanty grins. The women, jabbering and mostly in packs, in scarves and ankle-length robes, shyly came forward to touch my red hair and Tupelo’s blond locks.
Then one day there was some trouble because of our hair. Some village women were angry. Chartreuse told us we’d better cover our heads.
“I’m an American,” I snorted.
“Really, darling,” Isolde said, “it’s awfully gauche to be patriotic in this day and age.”
“I don’t cover my head.”
“You will if you don’t want to get us all in trouble,” Chartreuse said. I’d never heard him use that tone before. He who’d been a little slippery in Munich had become assertive—more of a leader—as we traveled. I was just about to ask him where he’d
put his fancy new acquisition and put him in his place but then Wolfgang came over with his soppy face and said gently, “Look, Claire, we’re in their country now. What right have you to enter it and aggravate the women?”
I supposed that made sense. I did as I was told. I covered my hair with a scarf. Reiner even put away his gold watch. I washed the dishes in the stream without complaint. I actually donned a voluminous skirt. Better to be hot than be hassled. It was funny, because how kind the peasant women were to us when I followed their code! So poor and yet they’d slip us extra grains of coffee and tomatoes from their green fields.
At the chi shop in Enzurum, some French travelers pulled up like pirates: dirty, smelly. They warned us not to take “ze sheet ovair ze border.”
“Yeah,” Wolfgang said, catching my eye. “We figured that. We’ll throw it all out before.”
“And don’t take ze short cut,” they warned. “It’s dangerous. These people, they’re not people! They’re savages. Not the same as these peasants. A different tribe. Very bad.”
“Ho ho.” Blacky laughed. “je n’ai pas peur.”
I stirred my tea, certain now that we would take the shortcut. There was something about Blacky. Always daring the gods. Tell him he couldn’t and he would.
As we traveled east, children began to appear along the sides of the road. They were brown-toothed and pinheaded, sprouting overgrown crew cuts. Many of the children were cross-eyed and most of them barefoot. They had their arms outstretched on the road for us to throw them filter cigarettes in passing. If we didn’t throw anything there were rocks in their other hands for our rear windshields. We’d heard it was a sort of unwritten law of the road—our fault if we didn’t comply.
We bathed with Blacky’s antiseptic German soap and as far away from villages as possible. My fingers were toughening up, what
with water so seldom available. We were in abject horror of all things communicable, from athlete’s foot to herpes. (“Don’t even touch the faucet!”) We stayed away from grungy camping places and waited for fresh water. And then, we reached the point where there were no faucets anywhere. Outhouses were our best bet and some of them were so filthy we chose to go behind trees and rocks.
Outside Arzinshan, we found a stream dragging with willows. I waited for my chance. When everyone was busy I went to bathe in it. Blacky came upon me as I floated in what I’d imagined was privacy. I jumped, not sure how long he’d been standing there. “You startled me!” I yelled.
He pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes, and smacked a French newspaper against his thigh. “You wouldn’t believe all the devastation in south Vietnam.”
I wasn’t going there. I put my head underwater. When I came up he was still there.
“I see you’ve graduated from Agatha Christie in German to Satsang with Baba,” he remarked, looking at my little pile of stuff.
I kept my body well under the water. “It’s not bad,” I lied. I turned my face and watched a grasshopper, small as a fingernail and pale as milky jade. I wouldn’t look at Blacky. He’d done to me exactly what Tupelo had. No doubt they laughed about me behind my back. My heart pumped with fury and wounded pride.
He crouched beside the stream.
I said, “Aren’t you afraid someone will see you with me?”
“What do you mean?” He kicked at the mucky bank. “I have nothing to be afraid of.”
“I mean, I’m beginning to understand that fearing something will draw it closer.”
“I hope that doesn’t mean that you’re fearing me.” He lowered his chin and pulled me with his green eyes.
“Is that in the hopes that we stay apart or that you don’t want to be feared?”
“Hmm. Does it have to be one or the other? Can’t it be both?”
A flagrant warmth had slid between my legs despite the cool, deep water. I thought I mustn’t let him notice this and paddled to the other side of the stream. “I’ll have to think about that,” I called across.
“You do that,” he said, giving up, turning away.
I’d irritated him and I was glad. And why did he think everything I thought would be about him? Even if it was true. The truth was, I didn’t know what I’d meant. What I’d really wanted was for him to come looking for me. So when he’d done just that, why hadn’t I responded with acceptance? Because Tupelo stood between us. My jealousy stood between us.
Wolfgang appeared at the end of the path. “Afraid you’d get into trouble,” he explained. I didn’t know why he thought he had to look after me. We dispersed.
At night, I kept the bunch of them entertained with stories of my family in Queens. They loved to hear about my loads of cousins and relatives. I didn’t have to embroider at all to make them laugh.
“Really, Claire,” Harry would say, “there’s no end to the lot of you.”
“It’s true,” I would agree. But I was tired of the same green hills. We all were. We pulled up stakes and continued on. There was that shortcut over northeastern Turkey that the Frenchmen had told us about. Wolfgang was very keen to use it because the people who lived in that region—if you got to see them—were enormously photographable. Chartreuse was wary. He’d heard stories, he said.
“We’ll save two days,” Wolfgang pointed out.
“Oh, come on,” Blacky urged us on. “What fun is it without a little adventure, eh?”
“All right,” we finally agreed. There were so many of us. What could happen?
And so we ventured toward the shortcut. The landscape changed quickly from lush to rocky and barren.
On the second day the sun beat down with no mercy, even early on. I wiped my lip, beaded with sweat, with my wrist and smelled myself—that salty familiarity. It was something I hadn’t done since grammar school. “Hello,” I whispered.
“Do you know,” Harry read from one of his obscure guidebooks, “that this Valley of Araxes is supposed to be the site of the Garden of Eden?”
“Really?” I tried to find some trace of the Armenian River. But all was parched, sucked out and left to dry. I’d taken to writing down things as they happened into a small blue notebook. I had a feeling Wolfgang lost track of the sequence of things.
We were saving lots of time by detouring this way, Reiner kept assuring us. He gave a toot on his whistle. There was only one catch. The road wasn’t a road but varying heights by now of a foot or two of dust.
Everyone seemed edgy, nervous. We stopped for Chartreuse to refill the gas tanks with a canister and funnel. He looked over his shoulder at the sunburnt hills.
There were no children on the road, which was odd.
“Get back in the van!” Vladimir shouted at Isolde when she squatted quickly behind a boulder. “Mach’ schnell!”
“All right, all right,” she said and climbed back in the van.
I took some water from the thermos. Even that was hot.
Russia was far off to the north on our left. The Iranian border ten hours in front of us to the east. Off in the distance, Ararat, honored mountain where the ark of Noah, legend has it, still lies unfound, petrified beneath the ice and snow.
It was weird, this terrifying bleakness. The dust on the road got so deep that our vans became like boats, swaying as they went.
Harry, beside me, was perspiring, his clothes soaked through. He squinted his eyes to concentrate. The road was hardly navigable.
A figure loomed up in the distance.
“What is it, Harry? A man?”
“If it’s a man we’ve hit a time warp. Look at his clothes!”
He carried a staff, wore sackcloth britches and a turban of violent colors on his head. A biblical vision. Sheep darted up, then ran off into caves along the road. Road? It wasn’t a road, it was a dust channel, endless. I waved at the vision and smiled. The vision stared then turned away.
“Jesus, Claire,” Harry cried out, “the van won’t steer. We’re actually floating along.”
It was like being on the moon, this pitted surface. No this or that in either direction, just the dust, behind us an unfathomable cloud our spunky wheels kept churning up.
“If we ever get through this,” Harry sputtered, “I’ll never buy anything but a Volkswagen. I can’t believe we’re still moving!”
The dust had coated our bodies, our faces, our teeth. We tried with the windows closed. The dust seeped in the vents. Hurriedly, I wrapped my camera in two scarves to protect it.
A blind curve in the road led past a precipice of boulders. Until now we’d moved in a sort of straight if undulating line. We were moving at two kilometers an hour. Harry shifted down to one. It was horrifying. You couldn’t get the feeling you were in control. Up ahead there was no clearing of gravel. We kept going. I think all of us were clinging to the sides of the vans or the steering wheels. The tires couldn’t grip the road at all.
“Will you look at that,” Harry said, “a village!”
“It’s just another mess of boulders.”
“No,” he shouted. “Look there!”
“I’m looking, I’m looking.” And then I focused. Colors moved. We swooped closer and the colors turned into clothing, like the shepherd’s we’d passed. People, living like ants, bedecked in vibrant
colors, scarlets, indigos, and purples against the powdery gray. They scattered and ran into what seemed to be the sides of hills. A spray of rubble came down on our roof, sounding like rain. A dog, not far away, barked furiously. I shot again. Whatever we shot we shot twice and, whenever possible, with two different cameras. You never knew when the film was faulty or the depth of field off.
Just then we hit some sort of solid terrain. “Claire!” Harry called out with relief in his voice. “Land ahoy!” Gravel at last. It felt as though the danger was past. All the people we’d seen fleetingly had disappeared. Unfortunately, the stones here were so jagged that Blacky’s van immediately got a flat tire. We all stopped and disembarked.
It took no time at all for the men to remove the tire. Reiner lived for just that sort of moment. Out he trotted with his tools, his energy, his rolled-up sleeves. Grudgingly, I was beginning to admire his capabilities. Isolde, Tupelo, Daisy, and I sat on boulders, watching them change the tire. We looked pretty funny, covered in soot. Nothing moved. I slipped out my camera and took everyone’s picture.
“Tupelo,” Isolde said. “Look at your hair. What you’ll be needing soon is a root job.”
She looked levelly back at her. “I don’t bleach my hair, Isolde.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” She laughed, still coughing from the dust. “I’m from Estonia, not America.”
A man appeared from behind one of the boulders. Isolde jumped. He’d come from nowhere.
At that moment other men began appearing. They were the same biblical-looking men in robes the color of the landscape and with vibrant headgear. I wasn’t frightened at all. I was charmed and poised my camera.
“Don’t.” Chartreuse stood between me and the men I’d wanted to shoot. “They’ll kill us.”
“Kill us?” Daisy shrieked.
“Shut up,” Vladimir said in a low voice, stilled by the growing number of men.
“Get back in the vans, will you?” Blacky said. “Hurry up.”
The men—there must have been eighteen of them—stepped closer. They moved with long, sideways steps, stopped, then moved again. Their shoes were puffy, like muffins. They carried glinting sickles.
We scrambled into whatever van was nearest just as Vladimir and Reiner finished bolting the tire. Chartreuse stood guard, his arms crossed, while the last of us moved to our vans. “Drive!” he called out between grinning teeth. “Go!”
One of them picked up a rock and threw it. It hit one of the windshields and made a nasty crash. That was Reiner’s van. Another crash alerted us that Chartreuse’s rear window was now history, too. Reiner, hit by a stone and terrified, jumped into Wolfgang’s van. Vladimir and Daisy clambered into Isolde’s. We all of us turned on our engines. I’d climbed into Isolde’s van because she was already at the wheel.
Chartreuse stayed exactly where he was. He remained in that one place, still grinning and not moving.
Before any of us knew what was happening, one of the men—he was younger, smaller than the rest, his brown teeth bared, his long robes tripping him—came rushing from behind with a raised, glinting sickle.
Chartreuse stood there knowing they were coming for him. He waited until we were all in some van or other. Then he took off at a run. I saw his eyes. He was measuring the distance. He wasn’t going to make it.
I watched a stinging rock fly past, just missing his head. As it was he got one on the hip and I heard him cry out with a yelp. Isolde, her mouth in a square and her teeth gritted, swirled the van around, making a shield of it between Chartreuse and the
oncoming man. I struggled to open the side door. The centrifugal force was holding me back. Finally it slid open with a merciful groan of rolling metal and he flopped in. Daisy and I dragged him across the floor and we floated away in a pelting of stones.
Reiner’s and Chartreuse’s vans remained aground where they’d left them. The men kept coming toward us, their sickles raised in throat-slashing gestures. Daisy and I groped to our seats. The dust behind us rose up thick as a curtain. We could make out just one of the men now, still following us at our own miserable pace, his brilliant colors and the glint of his sickle, unbidden, a blurry star in the muck of our rearview mirror.
Daisy kept crying out, “But the vans! They’ve got our vans!”
Nobody answered. Nobody cared about the vans.
It was then, for the first time, that I realized our caravan might be catapulting into terrible danger. Trembling, I reached into my purse and grabbed hold of my Queen of the Holy Rosary beads. “Mother of God,” I prayed to the one I’d so long ago deserted, “protect us on this journey to the unknown.” There are no atheists in foxholes, at thirty thousand feet, or hightailing it out of the Garden of Eden.
It was four hours until we reached the main road once again, six until we sighted the wasteland comfort of the seedy shack and desolation that was the Turkish border. The border was nothing more than a shack, a ramshackle patrol outpost in the middle of nowhere. It didn’t look very official at all. It actually looked more like a den of thieves. Some sort of crap game was taking place. Out trudged an entity in army clothes. He was hiking up his suspenders, tromping in unlaced, mud-caked boots and the filth of unwashed weeks-old stench. He took one look at us and waved us through with his rifle and we, relieved, rode the mysterious distance of no-man’s-land for some minutes before we caught sight of the Iranian border.
This border bore at least a resemblance to someplace official. A couple of broken-down vans were parked along the side and
we jumped out. Chickens scratched in the dust by ugly little buildings with real glass windows, barred; announcements and a picture of the stern and handsome shah and his family watched us from the wall. The realization that we would be safe left us trembling with fatigue. It was by now late in the day.
We tried to report what had happened but we were all speaking at once and in so many different languages, the official slammed his window shut and the guards at the door refused to let us pass.
Daisy raised up her formidable little self and told us all to be quiet. She’d come up with a plan. She covered her head with what I recognized as my pillowcase and approached them. She spoke to them in her polite Farsi. At last the guards parted their rifles and they let her in. She was in there so long we were beginning to wonder if she would ever come out again. At last she emerged. She sat down on the wooden step, disheveled and exhausted. We gathered around.
“Why were you in there so long?” Wolfgang cried. He lugged his camera with him but he didn’t point it at anyone. He didn’t dare put it down. He was terrified of something happening to it.
“He gave me tea.” She loosened her head scarf. “Somebody give me a smoke, will you?”
“Daisy,” I said, “you don’t smoke.”
“I do now,” she said.
“Just give her one,” Reiner said.
Chartreuse lit a cigarette and passed it to her.
She kept shaking her head. “Well,” she said, “it seems we weren’t the first Europeans to pass this way this week. Three days ago two truck drivers—a Swede and a Frenchman—made their way through the area as well. They were shortcutting, too, but from the opposite direction. From Van Gölü. That place is a village, if you can believe it. Those people actually live in those caves. Anyway, the truckers were stopped in their tracks by fallen boulders blocking the
road. The men—the very men we saw, no doubt—came out to give them a hand. The truck drivers let the villagers clear the boulders. They stood there leaning on their trucks, smoking, watching them work. Their mistake, as it happened. The villagers finished the job, cleared away every last boulder, then, when the way was cleared, they chopped the truckers’ heads off with their sickles.”
“No!” we all cried out at once.
“Yes. And that’s not all. They put the Frenchman’s and the Swede’s heads on sticks, or poles or something, and put them out on the road. The Australian van—remember the Australians we ran into in the Pudding Shop?—well, they came through yesterday and saw the heads like that up on poles. You can imagine. They practically flew here! The officer’s men just returned from retrieving the heads.” She took another drag of her cigarette. She didn’t even cough.
I looked over at Chartreuse. His poor old van was gone. He sat in the road on his haunches shrugging and muttering “I told them so”s to himself in a mixture of French and Afghani.
“What about their trucks?” Blacky said.
“All gone. That was the last anyone will ever see of them. As with our vans. They took them apart in no time flat. He says we’re lucky we got out alive.”
“Where are the dead men?” Tupelo cried.
“Well, the heads are in there.” She pointed toward the office. “Right next to the typewriter. In two lunch Styrofoams. He was pleased to lift the lid and show me! Oh. I thought I’d—” But she couldn’t go on.
Reiner sank to his knees. “There, there.” He patted her hand gently. “They won’t get you. I’ll see to that.”
“But I don’t care about me! Your lovely cameras!” She touched the side of his cheek. The remains of her bright Munich manicure stood out in still partly pink shreds.
“As long as you’re safe.” He gazed into her eyes.
Isolde and I looked at each other at once. Reiner and Daisy? It couldn’t be.
“Reiner, you can use my camera,” Blacky volunteered.
“Oh, I couldn’t.” Reiner sank to the ground in exhaustion and dismay.
“Yes, don’t give it a second thought,” Blacky pushed generously forward, “I’m a dreadful photographer anyway. You’ll be doing the world a favor!”
Reiner dropped his head. “Well. For the good of the cause, I accept. Thank you, Blacky.”
There was a long, crowded moment while I, too, thought about offering him my camera. But if I did, who would I be then? A girl along for the ride, that’s who. He would always be a photographer, camera or not. He’d made his bones. And Blacky would always be a doctor. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, trying not to let them read my mind.
Wolfgang said, “Pity we weren’t prepared to shoot.”
“Yes,” Vladimir said, “shame you didn’t have any film in.”
“I was just changing film,” Wolfgang lied. “The dust would have ruined the quality at any rate. Film’s in now, though.” He flashed a look at me, walking in a circle with his camera, demonstrating his preparedness.
None of us brought it up that Wolfgang had been too frightened to film. Nobody dared. We weren’t as backbiting as normal because we realized at last we were all in this together—and each of us had been just as terrified. Not one of us had thought to aim a camera.
Wolfgang said, “Do you think they’d let us in there to film the heads?”
“Good God!” Blacky threw down his cigarette. “What sort of film are you intending?”
“I was just thinking out loud,” he said, frightened by Blacky’s
innate moral rectitude. Blacky was the only one who did frighten Wolfgang, I’d no idea why.
“Actually, I think it would be foolish not to try,” Vladimir said.
“If you do,” Harry stood, “you can count me out for good.”
“Oh, all right.” Wolfgang caved in. “Forget it. I’m just grateful it wasn’t my van they got. All the equipment! That would be the end of any film at all. The end of the whole trip.”
Tupelo looked off into the distance. “This trip isn’t about just the film anymore.”
“We’re looking for enlightenment now, are we?” Wolfgang said sarcastically.
“I just mean that there is an intensity to life when it’s not taken for granted.” She blushed with a shyness not typical of her.
I sort of loved her at that moment. And I liked Wolfgang less. I said, “It isn’t right just because you think you knew someone so well that they dare not move ahead of who you think they once were.”
“Aren’t we the philosopher,” Vladimir retorted snidely.
I remained stubbornly thoughtful. “Philosophy is love of wisdom, so, yes, I hope I am.”
“Pfhh,” Isolde pretended to stifle a laugh, “the American philosopher. An oxymoron.”
I was speechless. As much as they loved the States, they hated the U.S.A.
“Look,” Blacky said, “we’re all overwrought! Don’t listen to Isolde, Claire. She’s great in the pinch and then falls apart when things calm down.”
Vladimir raised Isolde’s chin with a finger. “Na, little mouse, it’s all been too much for you, eh?”
They threw back their heads and laughed.
“I can’t believe you wanted to photograph people’s cut-off heads!” Isolde charged convivially as they walked away together toward the trees.
“Ach,” Vladimir looped his arm through hers in an easy, married familiarity, “these people have no sense of the absurd.”
“Come over here.” Isolde turned and instructed us with a wave. “There’s a little shade. We might as well eat. Bring those crates. We can use them for chairs.” Fully recovered, she kicked away the smattering of chickens and arranged the larger bunch of crates into a picnic table. “Come on, Claire,” she called. “Don’t be hurt.” She stamped her foot. “Vladimir, we hurt Claire’s feelings!”
“You started it,” I accused her.
Vladimir said, “Oh, rubbish. We all consider you more European than American, Claire. Come on. Let’s have some food.”
Some germ of my father’s indignation should have irked me but, to be honest, I was flattered. I let them get away with demeaning me because they let me share their incredulity.
“How could you eat?” Tupelo exploded.
“Don’t be silly.” Isolde hoisted open a madras blanket for a tablecloth. “I could eat a horse. I’m not going to waste my lovely goat cheese.”
“And we’ve got pickles.” Harry moved closer.
“How can you think of food?” Tupelo held her head and her stomach and reeled in a dramatic swoon.
“Now, now,” Blacky said calmly. “Isolde’s right. We must fortify ourselves. Come on. I brought along that flat bread.”
Harry peeled himself a banana. “Do you know they bake it in ovens fueled by camel dung?”
Tupelo pretended to faint.
Reiner wrung his hands. “Those savages! They won’t have a clue how to use my beautiful equipment. Gone.” He shook his head wearily. “All gone.”
“How are we going to divide up now?” I asked. I noticed I was still trembling but I pretended to have moved on, thinking of the future.
Blacky said, “Wolfgang can take Reiner and Chartreuse. Daisy can come along with us.”
Tupelo sat up, livid. “Oh, no, she can’t!”
Reiner was attaching Swiss knives and flashlights and things to his bullet belt. “Daisy comes with me.” He thrust out his already pronounced chin. “And I think it’s time we bought a gun.”
“No guns,” Blacky said.
Reiner turned on him fiercely. “It was your idea I put away my watch. If you hadn’t butted in, I’d still have it!”
A tear slid down Daisy’s cheek. “Your lovely watch!” she sniffled. “Not to mention your van.”
Reiner threw back his shoulders. “The van has gone the way of all good, noble steeds. To van heaven.”
“Well done,” Harry remarked to everyone, flopping onto the ground. “He’s taken the obvious and carted it off to the ridiculous.”
Wolfgang said, “Why, they can drive with me.”
Isolde whispered to me, “I didn’t see that coming. Daisy and Reiner. Did you?”
I was setting the red plastic plates around the makeshift table. “God, no!” I whispered in return, relieved to be back in her good graces. “What does she see in him?”
“Excuse me, darling, but she seems to have made a better choice than you.”
“What are you talking about? He’s so condescending toward women!”
“He’s only condescending toward you!”
We looked over at the two of them. Daisy was indeed newly pretty. And you couldn’t say he wasn’t kind to her.
“Yes, but—”
“No buts. If it works out she’ll be rich.”
“Tch. He’ll work her to death.”
“Na? And? Isn’t it better to work for your own? Better than working for someone like me!”
“That’s true,” I said and we both laughed. She went on.” Daisy’s clever. She could watch his books. Go on all those exotic trips with him. Book the models.” She brushed herself off. Clouds of dust rose around her. “And love suits her. You can’t say she doesn’t look well. It wouldn’t be a bad life.”
Chartreuse raised himself and struggled over. “Where can I go?”
“You can come with us, old chap,” Harry said. He looked at me. “You don’t mind, do you, Claire?”
“Mind? None of us would be here talking like this if it weren’t for your bravery, Chartreuse! Why, if you hadn’t stood up to them! Mind? You can have my sleeping bag if you want.”
“No, no, chérie,” he tut-tutted. “I need one blanket. This is all I need.”
But everyone realized that what I’d said was true.
Wolfgang chewed his lip, considering. “Perhaps we ought really to have a gun.”
“Look,” Blacky said. “Weapons beget violence. We’ve come so far with no mishaps.”
“No mishaps! Oh, brilliant!” Daisy cried. “And what would you call all Reiner’s expensive equipment lost forever!”
I could hardly believe this, Daisy sticking up for Reiner. He was horrible. And she was actually falling for him. She was completely not his type.
Blacky was earnestly pursuing his point. “No, I mean human mishaps,” he was saying. “We’re all here in one piece. I’m only saying that weapons, any weapons of destruction, carry with them a vibration which might attract that same vibration—like a magnet.”
“You mean like carrying your white light around you?” I asked. “Imagining it there so that it is? And it protects you?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
“That’s rot!” Wolfgang threw up his arms. “Hippie drivel. I’m surprised at you, Blacky.”
Blacky gave a short laugh. “I’m surprised at me, too.”
Isolde said, “Well, it is true that we stand here all alive. If someone had pulled out a gun, who knows how it would have turned out.”
“I’m so sorry about your van, Chartreuse,” Blacky said with sincerity, putting a hand on Chartreuse’s shoulder. “You saved our lives.”
Chartreuse looked away. “I don’t even mind so much the van,” he admitted, “but my guitar …” He looked out to the distance, bereft.
“Chartreuse!” I cried and ran to Harry’s van. I came back carrying his guitar. I must have been grinning ear to ear.
“Oh!” he cried. “My beloved!” He took the instrument and kissed it ardently. “Claire! How good of you to steal it away!”
We gathered together with gratefulness. Isolde, God love her, crammed some weeds into a jar and made a pretty table. Wolfgang brought out some of his clandestine and precious bottles of lukewarm beer and Harry even came clean with his last Italian salami. Daisy went and got the guards and the official to come out and join us. They skulked over but they loosened up quickly enough. The one in charge brought some delicious plump figs and a basket of eggs. Not only that but the roof of the outpost was covered with vines. One of the guards, a poor fellow with one ruined eye and a beautiful smile, climbed up and brought down some melons. They were warm from the sun and sweet as sugar. Isolde made some omelets in her wok. Chartreuse strummed his guitar. We sat in the shade of that straggle of trees, the sky very blue, and we sang out long-forgotten passages of a song Daisy and I, between us, had taught them: everyone’s latest favorite, “Molly Malone.” The guards hummed nasally along. Blacky and Tupelo sat close together, leaning against each other. Blacky
couldn’t sing, but that didn’t stop him. I was singing so hard, I didn’t have to think. I suppose the moment to declare I’d be leaving the group had passed, but I didn’t want to leave anymore. I might be odd man out, but I wasn’t the only one in this motley crew. And we were a crew; my heart warmed to the thought.
Harry cut the melon open, blotted some of the seeds with a handkerchief, and put some of them into an envelope, for the future. What I liked about Harry was that he went for the broad scope. “I was just thinking,” he said, gazing dramatically into the distance, “one day sooner … it could have been us with our heads on the poles.”
“That’s true.” Vladimir shivered.
“No,” Chartreuse objected, “we would have helped them clear the boulders from the road. Those lazy fellows won’t be going home now.”
We all sat there looking at him.
Isolde sucked the juice of her melon with greedy lust. “Dead is dead,” she pointed out.
I saw Daisy signal Reiner with her eyes. They stood up and walked away to a spot in the trees. He was much taller than she. They had their arms around each other, hers only reaching his waist, and they were walking in step. Chartreuse shuffled cheekily behind them on one knee. He shimmied his shoulders in an affectation of innuendo. They didn’t seem to care. My heart, for some reason so full a moment ago, felt alone as could be.