by August Arrea
“Why?” Jacob heard himself asking out loud without meaning to pose the question.
It was the question burning most inside him since they had left Cain’s Corner: Why would an angel, who knows without question the existence of everything humans—or civilians, as Gotham was fond of calling them—struggled to believe in, turn against it? Yet it was one he had been most afraid to ask, perhaps out of trepidation of how the angel would react to being asked.
Jacob watched as Gotham’s eyes closed, not because of rest or sleep he did not need, but as though he had long anticipated the inquiry.
“There is not enough track beneath this train required to properly answer your question,” answered the angel.
Gotham’s brow then furrowed, and it appeared to Jacob in that moment the question had somewhat wounded the angel and he was suddenly filled with regret for asking it. He turned his eyes back to the battle frozen in the page of his book and he knew he would not be greeted with the answer he sought.
~~~
The forty-hour train ride to Tatvan wasn’t the most pleasant of journeys. And it didn’t take long before one felt the wear of every single mile traveled as night gave way to day before at long last being consumed by night once again.
In sunlight, the Turkish countryside, spread out in endless vast open spaces of mostly dry flatness framed in bland, uninviting colors, served as a constant unchanging backdrop rolling slowly past the car windows as the train limped its way along. It was almost a welcome relief when the skies would begin to darken and the sun would slowly be wrestled to the horizon by the return of night to blot out the monotony.
When the walls enclosing the small compartment seemed to move in tighter and he could no longer stave off the always present cabin fever, Jacob would venture out and walk the train’s narrow passageways. He would go from car to car peering through the windows of the couchettes and scouring the rows of seats in the economy section investigating ways the other travelers staved off the boredom of the long, tedious ride. Many had their attention buried in books they had smartly stuffed into their carry-on bag. Those without books tiredly stared bleary-eyed into the small bright window of whatever high-tech gadget they clutched in their hands, their dour faces basking in a bluish glow of light that only served to illuminate more prominently the weariness of the long trip seen in their vacant, checked-out looks. Still others chose to surrender to the long hibernation a blanket and a pillow brought. And for a select few, hibernation chose them.
Such was the case for a small group of Turkish soldiers. From the moment the train left the station in Istanbul, the passengers in the car had suffered the drunken presence of the five men who were returning home from their holiday leave in Bangladesh. Now it was with a sense of long-hoped-for relief that the passengers were able to bask in the quiet when the effects of the soldiers’ weekend of debauchery finally caught up with them and left them passed out in their seats. As Jacob made his way slowly past the men, his nose caught the strong stench of stale alcohol and cigarettes that hung in an unsavory pall over the soldiers’ snoring, unconscious corpses corroborating the tales they shamelessly boasted of earlier at obnoxious decibels.
It was always with a sense of dread when eventually Jacob would reach the end of the last passenger car. It meant turning around and retracing his steps leading back to the compartment and the window next to his seat looking out onto the sleep-inducing view. Sometimes if his stomach demanded—which most times it did—he would stop at the dining car and find himself a table. The same Turkish waiter would always be there to greet him. He was tall and lean and his face seemed to always come dressed with a pleasant smile. Each visit would begin with the same question asked in heavily accented English, “There will be only one for you?”
The answer was always the same.
Quietly, Jacob would sit and eat, with the rhythmic hum of the train’s wheels grinding along the rails serenading him as he filled himself with a variety of delicious foods depending on the hour of day: eggs, bread, jam, cheese and olives for breakfast; grilled meats, kababs, salads and meze for lunch and dinner. Oftentimes, when his appetite had been satiated and the empty plates had been cleared away, the thought of returning to the stagnant confines of the compartment, whose walls he’d come to memorize down to the smallest nick in the paint and where the remaining hours had a tendency to stretch themselves even longer, proved too torturous for Jacob to bear. Instead, he’d quietly sit staring out the window focusing once more on the familiar scenery floating past. His mind remained elsewhere, replaying over and over the events of the past few days, and pondering what the days ahead might have in store for him. Frequently, he would find himself inconspicuously reaching over his shoulder and allowing his hand to roam across his upper back and caress the hard mass of bone protruding from beneath his skin that seemed to be growing more pronounced with each passing day. While it no longer felt to him as the horrid disfigurement he had for so long sought to rid himself of, the idea of a pair of wings waiting to sprout from his back didn’t offer much comfort either.
Wings…
How was this possible? Was this some kind of cruel cosmic joke being perpetrated upon him? Sure the idea of flying was a requisite fantasy every kid in the world entertained at one point or another growing up. Yet there was a major difference between staring into a cloud and day-dreaming the impossible and looking into a mirror and having reality reflected back in crystal clear clarity. After all, this wasn’t just some cape he could put on and shed at will like some comic book superhero; his body was literally evolving physically before his very eyes and conforming to some unreal image that was, well, very comic book-like. What kind of life awaited a boy with wings that didn’t involve a circus sideshow or a residency on the Las Vegas strip? He could almost hear the familiar tune of an organ grinder accompanying a baritone announcer wearing a black felt top hat and flaming red coat with tails enticing a wide-eyed crowd gathered in front of a stage on the midway of a traveling carnival: Step right up folks, and see a most fantastical and bizarre sight—Jacob, the Winged Wonder of the World.
~~~
The Turkish soldiers could be heard even before Jacob reached the train car that housed them on one of his walks back towards the front of the train from the dining car. Much to the displeasure of the other passengers, the group of disheveled soldiers had finally risen from their alcohol-induced comas putting an end to the short-lived peace that had briefly settled inside the car. A round of fresh beers was quickly served up and ribbons of smoke from an ashtray shared by four smoldering cigars rose to form an obnoxious-smelling haze of gray above where four of the soldiers sat lazily slumped in their seats engaged in a game of cards. With their greasy, black, uncombed hair, unshaven faces and heavy, bloodshot eyes, the men looked more like a band of mercenaries than officers of an elite army.
As he slowly walked past the group of men, Jacob couldn’t help but shoot a passing glance at the lone soldier sitting across the aisle appearing quite bored as he looked on at the card game while a coin spun like a top upon the table between the man’s drumming fingers. When it finally tired and toppled motionless upon its side, it was instantly picked up by the soldier and spun back into motion with a flick of a finger.
Just ahead of where the soldiers were leisurely spread out, Jacob spied a couple seats left vacant by its occupants who were likely taking advantage of the length of the train to stretch their legs, and escape the noisy nuisance of the card game taking place right behind them. Still not ready to return to the compartment where Gotham no doubt was beginning to wonder what was keeping him, Jacob slid himself into one of the empty seats before scoping out the rest of the passenger car. The other travelers were all doing their best to divert their attention from what was taking place in the rear of the car. The only one who seemed not the slightest bit intimidated by the annoying group of soldiers was a young Armenian boy, who looked to be no older than seven or eight with straight dark hair and eyes to match, sitting with his
mother a couple seats ahead across the aisle from Jacob. The boy had a coin in his hand and was watching intently the Turkish soldier who was sitting off by himself slouched down in his seat and absent-mindedly spinning his own coin. Jacob looked on with amusement as the boy clumsily tried to mimic the soldier, attempting over and over again to set the coin spinning on its edge like a top and failing each time.
Watching as the boy grew more and more frustrated, Jacob reached into his own front pocket and pulled out a handful of change from which he picked out a quarter. He then pulled out the makeshift table which unfolded from the back of the seat in front of him upon which he placed the rest of his loose change and made a grab for the boy’s attention. The boy looked on curiously from his seat as Jacob proceeded to demonstrate the art of the coin spin by taking the quarter and sending it pirouetting across the top of the plastic table. It took several tries until finally, with a look of great satisfaction, the boy managed to spin some life out of his coin. The boy seemed dazzled by his accomplishment, watching without blinking his eyes once as his coin wobbled awkwardly on its edge, but spun nonetheless, before finally tipping over and sputtering to a stop. Jacob then picked out another quarter from his pile of change and held up both silver coins for the boy to see as if he were a magician preparing to perform a trick. Placing the two quarters side by side against one another, Jacob grasped them tightly between his forefinger and middle finger and his thumb. Then, with the young boy’s eyes fixed firmly on him, Jacob released the quarters with a subtle flick of his wrist as if he were snapping his fingers, only there was no Snap. There came a sound similar to that made when dice are rolled when the quarters hit the table in spinning fashion, not independently of each other, mind you, but together. That is, the two coins were spinning as close to one another as possible without hitting, and as they spun, they rotated together in a clockwise fashion like a couple waltzing gracefully across a dance floor.
The gleeful reaction from the Armenian kid, who giggled quietly as he watched, brought a satisfied grin to Jacob until, almost immediately, he was struck by a strange and overwhelming sense of Déjà vu. Suddenly, he found himself visited by a memory long lost to the deep recesses of his mind. It came rushing forward, like light pushing its way through a door being opened, and it took the familiar shape of his bedroom back home in Cain’s Corner. Jacob found himself in the room, only now he was much younger, like the Armenian boy he was watching. He was sitting at a small desk with a pair of scissors in one hand and carefully cutting his way through a folded piece of white paper clutched in the other.
“What is that you’re making?” a familiar voice was suddenly heard to ask.
“A snowflake,” the young Jacob replied without so much as a glance at the shape of a man suddenly found to be seated next to him but whose face was obscured by the bright sunlight filtering into the room.
“Do you know the one thing snowflakes and people have in common?” Jacob was asked.
“No two are alike,” answered Jacob without hesitation.
“No, they are not,” agreed the man.
The young Jacob continued with his cutting before commenting offhandedly, “The kids at school tease me for being different.”
“Yes, I know,” the man replied with a lilt of sympathy in his voice. “It’s an unfortunate price to be paid when others recognize how unlike themselves another is.”
“How different am I?”
The man was quiet at first, as if carefully considering his words. “There was a time once not so long ago when you were no more than a folded piece of paper, like that which you’re holding. The great pair of hands above which cut forth your image did so with impeccable precision and meticulous design, and what was sent to float down into this world was the rare snowflake so different it manages to catch the eye even when set adrift in a snow flurry, and capable of extraordinary things.
“But,” the man was quick to stress, “in this world which strives to celebrate and embrace all that is different, yet fails miserably to do just that, you must always be vigilante to keep hidden all that which makes you so uniquely unlike other boys. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
Jacob set down his scissors and proceeded to unfold the paper he had been carefully cutting random shapes and patterns into to reveal his snowflake, and while it was as beautiful as a newly knitted doily, it failed to bring a smile to his face.
“What if I don’t want to be different?” asked Jacob.
“Maybe the trick is not to see yourself as different,” said the man, recognizing the heavy look in the boy’s face, “but as something more than what first meets the eye.”
With that, the man revealed the castaway paper trimmings in the shapes of triangles, diamond and half-moons he had scooped up from the top of the desk which he now held in the palm of his hand before leaning in and blowing them like dust into the air. Only what came floating back down was not bits of paper but, much to the young Jacob’s astonishment and joy, actual snow—not just a few flakes of ice but a constant stream falling like glittering diamonds as if the bedroom had suddenly been encased inside a shaken snow globe. However, it wasn’t the sight of snow falling indoors that stayed with Jacob as the memory slowly began to fade, but the revelation of who the snowmaker was when the man leaned in and blew into his hand giving Jacob an unobscured look of his face.
It was Gotham.
~~~
“Do you mind?”
The sudden voice in Jacob’s ear tore away the memory like a bandage being quickly ripped off a scabbed-over cut. Jacob turned his head and saw it came from one of the Turkish soldiers wearing a very noticeable gold ring with a black onyx stone upon his finger.
“It’s most annoying,” said the soldier, still engrossed in his card game.
At first, Jacob wasn’t sure the soldier was speaking to him until he caught the quiet yet noticeable scratchy humming being emitted from his quarters as they spun on the table, and he quickly silenced them.
“Sorry ’bout that. Just trying to kill some time by entertaining the kid with a little trick,” said Jacob, flashing a friendly if not awkward smile.
“Some trick,” the soldier with the coin seated off to the side mumbled under his breath with a snide snicker.
Not the friendliest group, that was for sure.
“Yeah, well…I was kinda building up to something much more showier,” said Jacob. “You see, there’s this little trick I do where I spin two quarters—”
“Yes…I saw,” said the soldier curtly.
“No, not that. There’s another one where I spin them together, but in a different way.”
It was obvious the soldier was no longer paying the boy any mind.
“One on top of the other,” Jacob threw in under his breath. He began to turn back around in his seat when the soldier’s gaze was once more on him.
“You said one on top of the other?” questioned the soldier, mimicking with his hands the placement of two coins joined as described while repeating back the words carefully as though to make sure he not misheard the boy. “Two coins?”
“Sometimes three.”
The soldier turned to his card-playing comrades and wrangled their attention by speaking to them in their native tongue. A quiet hush fell upon the back of the car for a brief moment. And then laughter. Loud, raucous laughter that erupted first from the soldier with the coin whose hardened face proved finally it could be malleable to lighter moments, and then the other men.
“Did I say something funny?” asked Jacob when it became more than a little obvious the laughter was being directed his way.
The only one who showed no signs of amusement was the soldier with the ring who slowly got to his feet and brushed his way past the roaring soldiers to the seat where Jacob was sitting. He was a tall man, lean and unimposing in his stature. Yet what he lacked in brawn, he made up for with an unseen aura of intimidation that moved alongside him like a ghost companion instantly quieting the other men.
> “Perhaps you will understand when I politely explain how your presence is interfering with me enjoying a nice game of cards.” His voice, thickly accented like the other soldiers, was thin and kind, but in an uncomfortably deceptive way. “So may I express, politely, for you to turn around in your seat and indulge yourself with silence, before you make Enes here angry with your blatant falsehoods and then we have unpleasantness that maybe could have been well avoided.”
“Fine,” said Jacob. “But for the record I wasn’t lying.”
“It’s impossible!” insisted Enes. “If you were able to do what you say then your name like mine would be in the Guinness Book of World Records stating such a feat could be done, and I know it is not.”
“You’re in the Guinness Book of World Records?” asked Jacob. “For what?”
“Enes here has broken the world record three times now for the longest spinning coin,” another of the soldiers playing cards declared in boisterous spirit while raising his half-empty bottle in congratulatory fashion to his comrade and inciting a cheer from the other men.
“Really? I didn’t even know there was such a thing,” Jacob said to Enes whose serious expression remained unbroken by the sudden burst of praise. “And what exactly is the record, if I may ask?”
“Thirty nine point thirteen seconds,” answered Enes.
“And he has held that record now for more than three years,” added a voice from the card table.
“Thirty nine seconds,” Jacob repeated softly.
“Thirty nine point thirteen,” corrected Enes quickly and pointedly.
“Of course, thirty nine point thirteen,” Jacob repeated apologetically while pondering the feat silently in his head. “Is that it?”
He had not meant to demean the accomplishment held in obvious high regard, but it instantly incited a roar of offense from the other soldiers, a roar which was quickly silenced when Enes slammed his fist down on the table giving bounce to the still-spinning coin in front of him and causing it to falter and abruptly fall motionless on the table.
