Dancing for the General

by Sue Star

  Anna sat in the quiet aftermath of the story’s spell, stunned for a moment by Priscilla’s change of thought. “It’s a type of charm, called a Saint Christopher’s medal. Some people believe charms of that sort will keep them safe when they travel.”

  “Do they?”

  “I’m afraid not. That is, not if a charm is the only precaution people take.”

  “Can Saint Christopher hurt you?”

  “No, of course not, honey.”

  “But that charm made you feel afraid.”

  “No. Surprised, perhaps.”

  “Well, you looked afraid. I think it’s an evil charm.”

  “It can’t be evil if you don’t believe in those powers.”

  “But it can be evil if it makes people do bad things. Like the way the gypsy was killed. I think he died because he had the charm, and now I’m going to die because he threw it to me. You’re going to die, too, because now you’ve got it.”

  “No, honey. We have to take control of our own lives. That’s the best way to stay safe. The princess in the story knew it, too. Want to hear the rest of the story now?”

  Priscilla yawned. “I guess so.”

  She wiggled closer, and Anna resumed the tale in her lulling voice. By the end of the story, red ringlets nestled in the crook of Anna’s arm. Finally, Priscilla’s steady breathing and silent form told Anna that the child had fallen asleep.

  Carefully, so as not to squeak the box springs beneath the mattress, she disengaged herself from Priscilla. She tiptoed toward the hall, then stopped. The sweet scent of whatever the soldier next door was growing lured her to the open door of the balcony. One quick breath of fresh air, she thought, then she’d settle down for what was left of the night in her stuffy attic.

  She stepped outside onto the wooden planks of the narrow balcony, half hidden under a canopy of leaves along the eastern side of the house. She leaned against the splintery rail and inhaled the night air. Leaves whispered overhead, and the fragrance of the garden intoxicated her.

  The chandelier still blazed across the way, but no one remained in the central hall where it hung. Soft light glowed from an upper window at the far end of the mansion, where Anna could see the tops of heads. A room full of men sat on the floor.

  She wondered about a gathering of all men—what they did, what they talked about.

  Then a crunching sound from the general’s garden pulled her attention away from the goings on inside his mansion. It was the sound of a footstep on pebbles, and it came from the same area where the asker had been toiling that afternoon, near the wire fence that separated their two yards. From the dim light of stars and the chandelier, she could see the paths that outlined planting beds of non-flowering rose bushes, leggy and sparse from thirst. One of their slim branches waved as a shadow skimmed past, stepping carefully on gravel.

  Wood scraped against wood. A hinge creaked, and the door to the asker’s shed opened partway. Asker stood there in the slit of the open doorway, leaking out light into the dark garden. Through the slice of the door, Anna could see in a flash the inside of the shed: a lantern sat atop a wooden table, and behind the table, a narrow cot.

  Outside, in the general’s garden, the newcomer was striding toward the light in asker’s shed. He moved with swift, impatient steps, turning his—or her?—back towards Anna. She assumed that he was a he, for he wore trousers and a hat pulled low over his face. But she couldn’t be sure. There was something familiar to his stride on long, lean legs as he darted into the circle of light. Anna dropped into a crouch, ducking low behind the railing of Priscilla’s balcony. Her shifting weight caused a board to squeak just then under her fuzzy house slippers.

  The newcomer stopped and whirled around, scanning the balcony where Anna hid. Between the slats of the railing, she glimpsed him long enough to recognize his profile and the distinctive outline of his crooked nose.

  Rainer!

  Chapter Sixteen

  Long after Meryem returned home, she lay sleepless on her pallet, listening to the dark as the narcotic of the evening slowly drained away. Through the open window she heard the whump of a hoof stomping on packed earth below. Each time one of the work animals shifted in the yard, it raised up a puff of dust to their window, making Meryem’s nephew, a sensitive child, roll over and cough.

  She stiffened. Something clinked below, beads rattling softly against each other. One of the animals was shaking its head. Not Umit’s donkey, who’d lost its beads. She hoped the animal would not awaken the children with its brays. None of them would sleep the rest of the night.

  Suddenly, she shot up from her pallet and raced into the other room, the all-purpose room of the apartment. She leaned out the window, but before she could tick her tongue against the roof of her mouth, she saw the outline of a man moving beside one of the three eşeks that shared the yard with an ox.

  “Hey!” she cried, before considering fully the wisdom of alerting the thief.

  For that’s what he surely was. A thief. Umit wasn’t even buried, and already someone was trying to steal what little remained to them of their livelihood.

  Except, this thief wasn’t running away. Her cry should’ve scared him off, but he remained standing still beside the eşek. His chin, lit by moonlight, tipped up in her direction. The skinny brim of his peasant’s cap pulled down low over his brow, concealing details of his face except for the moon-bathed chin. The way his pale flesh gleamed, Meryem thought at first that a jinn had come to her aid. Or Umit in the form of a ghost. Then she realized the smooth glow of his face appeared so because a beard did not speckle his jaw.

  Surely, he was the clean-shaven pretend peasant who’d lost his gun. He had found her. Slowly, he lifted his gun arm up the side of his black peasant’s coat, and Meryem gasped.

  Remembering her near miss with the gun before, she shrank back. Far enough into the apartment that she hid herself from his view. Not so far that she lost sight of him down there.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the apartment’s door, so thin that by day one could see light shining from the hall through the wooden slats. All was dark now, but if the gunman wanted her badly enough, that door wouldn’t stop him.

  Because he knew where she lived.

  Who had betrayed her, giving him that information? The butcher? The secret police? He and his kind were nothing more than a band of police thugs who scoured her streets until they knew who was who and who belonged where.

  She turned back to watch the man by the eşek. His arm continued to rise, slowly, until it stretched above his head. As if he aimed at her.

  No. He had nothing to aim, since he’d lost his gun.

  In the thin light of the moon, she could see something small glitter, something held tightly between his fingers. Coins! It wasn’t a gun. He offered her coins!

  He was waiting for something.

  Waiting for her. He’d come for his gun.

  “Auntie?” little Mustafa said from behind her.

  She whirled around. “Go back to bed.”

  Aside from rubbing his eyes, he stood still. Much as the visitor downstairs.

  At first she felt her heart jump in her chest, from fear, she supposed. Two men today, first the pretend peasant and then the secret police, had tried to fill her with fear. It had almost worked, but she’d outsmarted them both, taking the first one’s gun and taking away the second one’s identity. Now that the first throb of fear faded, she felt the pull of interest. Who knew what profits awaited her this time? She wondered how many coins the man downstairs held for her.

  She took Mustafa by the hand and pulled him to the curtain separating the two rooms.

  “But...auntie?”

  “Shhhh.” She pushed him through the door of gauze, then sped back across the room to the wicker baskets she’d unloaded earlier from the eşek. She lifted the lid of one. Her hand dipped inside, skimmed amongst the smooth pieces of copper, explored the shapes as a blind person might test them. Then her fingers recognized the cur
ved handle of the dipper. She pulled it out carefully, trying not to scrape it against the other pots and pitchers.

  Tucking the dipper under one arm, she hurried to the wooden door that led out into the hall.

  The apartment door creaked when Meryem opened it. Sucking in her breath, she flattened herself against the cool plaster of the wall and waited. Nothing stirred on the second floor landing, so she closed the door, giving off another creak, and paused again.

  Not even cats prowled the stairwell.

  She tiptoed down the steps, one by one, avoiding the boards that she knew from experience would always squeak. She lowered herself into the dark, into the usual smells of urine and dust and nearby animals. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  Three steps from the end of the stairs, she stopped. Below her lay a cobbled passageway, a narrow tunnel between the street and the animals’ yard. He would be waiting for her in one of the shadows down there, she realized. Her own foolishness flirted with her mind, but she chased it away as quickly as it had appeared. She’d outwitted danger many times before. She was a survivor, too.

  Umit hadn’t survived this time.

  The offer of coins was too great a lure. For a profit, she would risk her safety. And if she lost? In truth, there was nothing to lose, not with a life like hers.

  From three steps up, she leapt the rest of the way, as far into the middle of the passageway that her jump would carry her. She did not want to land in the thicker shadows along the perimeter of the passage walls. The cobbles felt cool on her bare feet, and she curled her toes around the uneven edges of the stone to give her better footing.

  The passageway was so narrow that the moon could not reach here. Which suited her purpose fine. She tucked the brass dipper beneath her arm so that the end of the handle protruded in front of her. With just the right amount of moonlight, it might be mistaken for the barrel of a gun.

  She crept forward, knowing that he awaited her, had already heard the soft thud of her landing, could probably see her outline slipping through the shadows even now. She did not like the idea that he knew her path while she could not see him. He might even stalk her from behind, having slipped through the passageway to the street while she’d tiptoed down the stairs. She did not know, and not knowing was a condition unfamiliar to her. She did not like the way her heart raced, either, or the sour taste in her mouth as if something wicked rose from her gut, a memory that filled her essence with instinctive hatred.

  Resolve steeled through her, as it had before, long ago in the Carpathians. Her hatred for the Nazi bastards drove her forward through the cobbled passage. Ahead, moonlight washed over her dead-end, the weedy patch shared by three eşeks and an ox. The animals, a silvery gray, stood silently, sleeping on their feet. The man she’d seen bothering Umit’s donkey was no longer in sight.

  But he was here. She could feel his presence the way the air shifted about her, as if it was his breath that moved the air. In. Out. Goosebumps tickled her neck.

  Pausing, she curled her fingers around the brass handle and scanned the dark lining of the passageway. A bulky shape thickened the shadows where nothing bulky should exist. It was he, hunkered against the wall. Beyond the edge of moonlight.

  She took a step backwards, toward the street. “Stay where you are, or I will shoot.” She clicked her nails along the brass handle of her dipper.

  He swore. “You wouldn’t.”

  “I would as soon shoot you as breathe the same air with the killer of my brother.”

  “Your...brother?” He laughed, a snort of laughter that resonated evil.

  “You killed my brother, and now I will kill you.” Meryem cursed herself for having hidden the gun across town when she needed it here, with her now. Instead of having to pretend with this dipper.

  She would’ve used the gun if she’d had it. There was never any doubt about that. Even though she didn’t really know how to use a gun and would probably only succeed in shooting herself. She did not care. What did she have to lose? Her life was nothing. Worthless.

  “Whore!” he said in his thick, non-peasant accent of superiority. A tendril of a shadow lashed out at her, but she sidestepped it with one of her deft dancing steps. His cap pulled down low over his face, but there was something familiar about the way he moved, lunging like a cobra. “Give me my gun!”

  “How much will you give me for it?”

  After a heavy pause, he said, “One hundred lira.”

  She spat on the cobbles in his direction. “You insult me.”

  “Five hundred, then.”

  “Bah! I can get twice that much on the black market.”

  “All right, one thousand.”

  She had no idea how much the gun was worth, but with the ease of his agreement, she suspected it was worth far more than that. She tried to imagine how far one thousand lira would go, and she couldn’t.

  “Hand it over,” he said.

  “Let’s see your money first.”

  She heard the sliding sounds of fingers searching pockets, clinking coins, thumbing through bills. Then, coins sprayed her feet, rattling across the cobbles. There weren’t enough rattles to add up to the full amount, but it was a start.

  “Hand it over now,” he said.

  “Okay, I’ll get it for you.”

  “You’ll what?”

  “You think I’d risk hiding it here? Where any thief could help himself to it, or worse yet, let the children find it?”

  He lurched at her, and this time he connected. His fingers wrapped around her throat, choking off her breath. “Where is it?”

  “If you want it that badly, I’ll give it to you. But I have one more condition—”

  His fingers tightened on her throat. “Where. Is. It.”

  “In...in...” The fingernails of her hand not holding the dipper dug into the flesh of his fingers that squeezed her throat. “Please...” She gasped.

  “Where?” He shook her by the throat, and what little breath she had left in her, shifted.

  “Kavaklidere,” she managed to say. Although the hollow stump where she’d left the gun was actually in the neighborhood of Güven Evler, one street over from Kavaklidere’s boundary.

  “You were on Yeşilyurt today. That’s where you hid it.” He gave her another impatient shake.

  “No!” If he knew that, then he’d followed her from the pasha’s tomb. Impossible! More likely, the secret police or the asker had reported to him.

  Or perhaps the red-haired American child.

  “You have it here tomorrow night,” he said, growling like one of the pitiful stray cats, “or else the kid upstairs is dead.”

  He gave her one more shake, then tossed her away like a piece of garbage to the ground.

  Massaging her neck, she scuttled away from his reach. “There’s one more thing I want in exchange for your gun. The amulet you stole from my brother.”

  “You’re in no position to bargain, whore. Remember this: you and your family cannot escape me.” He stormed away, striding along the passage.

  His shape bobbed against the circle of gray at the end of the passageway. The moonlight of the street finally swallowed him. She turned back to the cobbles and scrabbled amongst them in the dark. She picked coins out of the cracks and plucked clammy bills from the grit. She didn’t care who the pretend peasant was. She didn’t care who ended up with his gun, either. As long as she got the rest of the money. And the amulet.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Distant roosters crowed, awakening Anna. Memories of the night washed over her.

  It hadn’t been Rainer. It couldn’t have been. He was dead. The shadowy man in the general’s garden had only been someone who’d reminded her of Rainer. Or else it was his ghost.

  It was a trick of the mind.

  Rainer had been heavily on her mind since the events at the tomb the day before.

  She hadn’t left Priscilla’s balcony and returned to her bed until convincing herself this was true. And even after she’d fallen a
sleep, dreams of Rainer continued to plague her. She wasn’t so sure that she cared for such reminders. She’d come to Turkey hoping to move forward with her life. Not slip backwards.

  She washed and dressed for the day, trying to scrub away her exhaustion, then went downstairs to stir up pancakes for breakfast. Pancakes could fix anything. Their sweet taste could banish the residue of nightmares and nighttime prowlers under their bedroom windows. Most of all, pancakes offered a sense of normalcy and reminded Anna of home in Colorado.

  She wasn’t home.

  She wasn’t Rainer’s fiancée anymore, either. Their engagement had long been over. She needed to stop thinking about him. That’s why his Saint Christopher’s medal had felt heavy round her neck after Ahmet’s visit, and that’s why she’d taken it off. She’d been right to hide it in her purse but wrong not to hand it over to Yaziz last night when she’d had the opportunity. She would correct that today. Or soon.

  The pancakes did their job of chasing the sulkiness out of Priscilla and warming the air between them. They laid out plans for a fun day of exploring.

  When the taxi arrived after breakfast, she told the driver in the broken remnants of her college French to take them to the American Embassy. Henry had told her that French was widely understood here, and to her surprise, the driver understood.

  “Are we going to Daddy’s office?” Priscilla said as they pulled up in front of the embassy.

  “No, honey.”

  “They won’t let you in. Daddy always keeps his door locked.”

  “Then it wouldn’t do any good if I’d wanted to go there, now would it?”

  “But why are we here? You said we’re going to the covered bazaar.”

  “We will, as soon as I ask about another matter. This shouldn’t take long.”

  Anna told the driver to wait for them, and then she grabbed Priscilla’s hand and marched up the sidewalk. She stepped firmly in spite of the confusion that washed over her. She had no plan, really, but she had to do something. She couldn’t sit idly by, awash in memories of Rainer that were so strong she even imagined she’d seen him the night before in shadows. She didn’t know who had visited the asker’s shed, but it couldn’t have been Rainer.