The guy didn’t die fighting, right?
No, he drank poison.
Well, then he couldn’t have been all that committed, could he … he knew as much as us that when the line breaks, you turn and run and run and run.
Do you remember that time, the man with a mole asks, in the eastern campaign when we were green, when the line broke and we fled?
Of course, like an idiot you threw away your shield.
I know, for shame … you saved my honor then, whatever it’s worth.
I had to run back and get it for you … can you imagine me now, with this belly and these angry knees, trying to carry both our shields as we’re being chased down by a pack of Indians?
Was it Indians?
Was it not?
That far in the east, who knows.
Anyway, there you were, a twig of a man … I’ll never forget how fast you ran.
Cowardice is a part of life, you can’t be brave if you’ve never known fear.
You just said you don’t believe in bravery.
No, I said bravery is overrated … and for that matter, cowardice is underrated.
Spoken like a true warrior.
Better alive as a coward than dead as a hero … you know who said that?
Who?
Achilles to Odysseus in Hades.
Okay, I can’t read but I do listen, and that’s not what he actually said.
Then do tell, oh bard, what did Achilles actually say?
Better to be a peasant in the world above than a king in the world below.
Oh right, maybe he did say that.
See, it changes the meaning completely … would you rather be a peasant in this life than a king in Hades?
Of course not, I wake up every morning to say thanks that my mornings aren’t the mornings of a peasant.
Exactly … like so many princelings, Achilles had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.
Drums sound in the distance, horns blare. The ranks of the phalanx tighten. The midday haze fumbles over the armies, limning the jostling helmets with a kind of smoke. But you’ve always been a bit fond of our king, haven’t you?
Yes, the red-beard nods, I have … ever since that eastern campaign, when Antiochus was still young … he’d had many defeats, faced so many rebellions, and it looked like all the satraps would pull away and his realm would disappear, but he persevered.
Our first fight together was against the Medes.
Yes, and afterward we were in the front lines in Bactria … at the battle of the Harīrūd.
And then, Antiochus kept us at the siege of Balkh for three years.
I grew up during those years, the red-beard says.
You mean you stopped shaving then.
There is no fighting worse than fighting in a siege … that aged us. Do you remember how little we ate?
Yes, and worse, how little we drank.
When I was sick, you fed me from your rations.
And you did the same for me.
We did so much digging, digging latrines, digging earthworks, digging for water.
Digging graves, too.
We buried many brave comrades.
Almost none of them died in fighting, if you remember … it was all hunger and disease.
It’s still a soldier’s death, to die at the walls of some faraway city.
I forget their faces and names.
You shouldn’t.
It’s amazing to me that you call them comrades, the man with the mole says; everybody is a bastard and will steal your share of bread and soup without thinking twice.
Hungry men do hungry things.
Hungry kings do hungry things.
Well, Antiochus had the wisdom to give up, to be honest and say, “Enough is enough” … I respect that … he’d saved his kingdom from so many enemies, he put down every rebellion, and he still had the wisdom to let Balkh go.
And yet your Antiochus didn’t have the wisdom to say, “Let’s not piss off the Romans, let’s just hold on to what we’ve got.”
That’s different, that’s now … and he’s your Antiochus, too.
For the first time in this engagement, the phalanx must step backward. The two men search the ranks in front for panicked youngsters. As one, the tail leader yells, as one. Retreating too quickly gives the enemy a greater sense of forward momentum. Fall back too slowly and the phalanx risks losing shape, the front collapsing. The trick is in bending like a branch, absorbing the pressure without breaking, before snapping back again, pushing, pushing, pushing.
Arrows rattle against their outstretched spears. They can hear the Roman chants now, the invocation of alien gods and leaders and places. The lines are compressed at the front, many forward rows clumped into the battle. The two men imagine the whittling down of the phalanx, row after row deleted, till all that remains is the last line of men, bending their shoulders into the shields, bracing for the end. But it never comes to that. Being in the back of the phalanx allows them the certainty that they can run away well before they ever have to fight.
Cheers go up to their right. A war elephant barges into the Roman brigade. Through the dust, they can make out the tenuous shape of the combat, the monumental creature with its encrustation of turrets plunging into the Roman maniple, men scattering in gray silhouette. The phalanx pushes forward, regaining ground. When the Romans finally bring down the elephant, it has thundered so far behind enemy lines that its bellows are barely audible to the two men.
They call this the turning of the tide, the red-beard says.
No, it’s quite a dire stalemate … if it keeps going on like this, we might even have to get involved.
That would do you some good.
Do me some good … you know what would do me some good, a new pair of shoes and bread that’s not full of grit.
You should have just stayed with your wife.
That’s what she said.
I mean it … your home, that valley … what a spectacular place.
I’m glad you think about it that way.
I think about it all the time … how many years ago did you take me there?
It was when I was married off, so maybe five years.
The red-bearded man recalls that visit. They had been released in the early winter, with the generals unwilling to feed them through the season of peace. His own home was through the mountains, through passes already frozen shut. It made more sense to winter with his friend. When they came into the valley, he knew immediately that it was the kind of place that would be unbearable to leave. Snow dusted the terracing along the hills. A brook slipped into the green ice floes of the river. Thrushes dipped in and out of the frosted brambles, berries clutched in their beaks. They were greeted by the smell of woodsmoke and the dogs coming down the track to bark them home. He remembers leaving his boots outside the door of his friend’s house, walking with bare feet over the threshold straight to the central hearth, where he would sleep, bundled like a child, for blissful weeks. The mother washed his feet and those of her son, and dressed them in thick pairs of socks. She spoke a language he could not understand, so her hospitality never felt oppressive. They would talk anyway, safe in the knowledge that affection and gratitude need no understanding. During those days, he and the man with the mole would lend their arms to whatever needed doing in the village, the chopping and thatching and hammering and sifting and trapping and skinning and curing that people must do to rebuff winter. But more time was spent conserving energy. The cow was brought inside to share the nights with them. Uncles, aunts, and cousins—it seemed the entire village consisted of uncles, aunts, and cousins—would come before the second sleep to lie around the fire and tell stories and hear the stories of the man with a mole. The red-beard supposed that his friend adorned accounts of their bravery in battle, but he actually described places beyond the valley: the towering ziggurats of long-abandoned cities, the capitals of Persia bustling with the nations of the world, rugged Gandhara, where people speak Gre
ek from one side of their mouths and the local language from the other, the desert in between, whose inhabitants count water by the drop. When they grew tired of tales, somebody would hum a tune until everybody fell asleep. The red-beard stayed awake awhile, smiling at the snoring of these people and at the comfort that one need not be at home to feel at home.
Does your family know you can read? the red-beard asked his friend one day.
If I told them they’d expect even more from me.
How did you learn?
The man with the mole lowered a pail of snow to the ground. I ran away when I was still a boy, he said, to a city, where I learned everything I could.
It amazes me that you could leave this beautiful place.
If this was everything you knew, you’d want to leave, too.
My village was more rugged, the red-beard said, it had none of these charms … and to top it off, most of it was washed away during a landslide.
And yet you keep your family up in those same mountains.
That’s not my choice, it’s theirs.
Surely they’ll live where you tell them to live.
You haven’t met my wife … she won’t be budged from her people.
Same with mine.
You have a wife?
Well, a bride … is it so strange that a man of my age might have a bride?
No, it’s just … why haven’t I met her?
You’ll meet her at the wedding in a few days.
This is a surprise.
The man with the mole laughed. It’s an even bigger surprise for me.
The bride was a cousin, slender with an intelligent face and yellow teeth. It was not normal for couples to marry in the winter, but the village used the rare occasion of the visit to tie his friend to an unmarried girl. She drank so much wine at the feast that her smile flashed purple. At the end, the groom pulled his bride by the elbow to the hayloft set up for them. The red-beard kept on drinking and singing with people whom he did not understand and who did not understand him. Afterward he lay down by the hearth, listening to his friend’s mother talk to herself in her sleep. She reached out and left her fingers on his cheek. He didn’t push them away.
Don’t go back with me in the spring, he told his friend the next day, you should stay here.
Not a chance.
This is a place worth living in.
I’ve lived here.
Men get tossed around the world searching for somewhere to make their lives … you’ve had one all along.
I’m not like you, the man with the mole said, I don’t want to be stuck in place.
You’re a married man, you’re stuck now.
I could say the same for you, couldn’t I?
When I don’t need the money anymore, I’ll stop … I’ll go home.
The man with the mole snorted. You have the mind of a cabbage, he said, and cabbageheads like you will always need the money.
A few weeks later, after the first thaw, they left.
* * *
The battle continues. For a moment, the men are transfixed. To the left, they see the forms of horses emerging through the dust, one after the other, flanks streaming with blood, nostrils foaming. Men slump on some of the horses, but most are riderless, saddle and harness dangling from the side.
The king—the man with the mole points—the king … there goes the king. They watch the king tear past them, surrounded by his silver shields, fleeing to camp.
The Romans cheer. Hold, the tail leader cries. The men stay put and push against the nervous soldiers in front of them. We do not break, the red-beard yells, Alalalalalai!
The man with the mole looks at him. We should break, he says to his friend.
The red-beard sighs. It looks better if we first try not to.
Come on, what’s the point of it … if the bloody king has already left, surely we have license to follow.
Shut up, be a man.
Fine, but only for a bit longer.
The Romans, with typical shrewdness, rain bolts on the war elephants. These creatures are normally disciplined, used to the tumult of battle, sensible to the prodding of their mahouts. But the arrows bite down and spark rage in their hearts. In a frenzy, one runs into the neighboring phalanx. The mahout grapples with the reins in vain. He watches the terrible chaos below, men losing their bearings and running away. What remains of the phalanx is compelled to the sad task of killing their own elephant. The man with the mole and the red-bearded man stick their pikes again and again into the belly of the elephant. The creature sinks to its knees and before it gives them a chance, collapses onto them.
When a phalanx loses its shape, it is no longer a phalanx but a wild sea of shipwrecked men, clinging to flotsam, desperate for shore. The Romans surge through, hooting like jackals. The two men want nothing more than to flee, but they are trapped, pinned beneath the elephant.
Help me get up, the red-beard says.
I can’t, the man with the mole says, I’m stuck.
Oh, you, too.
Can’t even feel my legs.
Nor can I.
We should have run when I said so.
You’re blaming me for this.
No, of course not, my friend … you couldn’t have known that an elephant would die on top of us.
Not really a soldier’s death, is it? the red-beard says.
And why would that bother me?
They laugh, only a little. The battle leaves them in its wake. Far away, Roman trumpets peal in triumph. The groans of the wounded around them grow fainter. Even if they are still alive at nightfall, birds and dogs will pick at them. The scavengers that wait in the lea of all battles will strip them of their possessions. They will be two naked men, whose bodies will soon melt and fester, merging with the sad carcass of the elephant.
The red-bearded man strains to look at his friend and reaches out to touch his cheek. He is surprised how cool the skin already feels.
The man with a mole cannot move his hands. Blood sloshes within him like wine in a jar. He tries to smile at his friend, but can only think of a time a few months ago when billeted in a Syrian town. At a shrine, his friend purchased two amulets for his young twins. He took them to the stalls of the scribes. Would you wait outside? his friend asked.
Why?
Just stay outside, will you.
He watched his friend take a stool, look back over his shoulder, cover his mouth with one hand, and whisper into the ear of the scribe. The scribe nodded and engraved each amulet. What was that? the man with the mole asked afterward.
His friend had laughed and squeezed the back of his neck. I can’t tell you, his friend replied, you’re too close to me to know.
THE LOSS OF MUZAFFAR
The poison hid from Muzaffar’s body until his fourteenth year with the Celestinis, when it filled his arteries and flooded his aorta. Doctors said he died from a sudden failure of the heart, while Grandpère Celestini whispered of the unbearable guilt Muzaffar must have had to live with after pocketing the family sapphires, even though the Celestinis, such good people really, decided against accusing someone so stalwartly loyal to them. Others, surprised that such a lean and reticent man suffered from a heart condition, blamed the unpredictable nature of old age. But Etoile the maid, who slept in the back of the neighboring town house, suspected something else when she smelled grief in the aromas of Muzaffar’s irresistible cooking.
Etoile never ate the food from Muzaffar’s kitchen; few who knew of him in New York ever did. The Celestinis sheltered their extraordinary cook. His name became a rumor, his talent a legend amongst postmen and dog-walkers. Grandmère Celestini seldom shared Muzaffar with guests, anxious that one mouthful of biryani or lick of jasmine sorbet might cost her the family chef, for these were hard times, and even the proud Celestinis could not pay as much as their deeper-pocketed friends. Frequent visitors to the household, therefore, grew to understand the distinction between invitations to “High Afternoon Tea” and dinner. The latter were ra
re indeed, perhaps once a season, while the family held teas weekly on Thursdays at precisely 4:35 in the afternoon. Little brown-haired Leila would languorously stir the pot of ginger Darjeeling while her twin, Malcolm, with the gravity of ritual, would daub twenty-two cups each with a spoon of honey. He’d leave one cup unsweetened for Mariko the corner clairvoyant, who liked entering seven minutes late in a fog of scarves and omens.
The psychic always arrived first—punctuality was desperately out of fashion in their neighborhood. The Celestinis waited quietly for the publisher, the wine seller, and the self-referential artists, the Tibetan refugee with a meaty smile, the Jerrells, who floated back and forth from the Hudson to their Caribbean home, Alun the flutist, retired diplomats from Grandpère’s working days, Leila and Malcolm’s small, waddling friends from school, a journalist called Viorel, neighbors they liked and neighbors they disliked, and Cecil, who always seemed lost even when he strolled in last, carrying a bottle of brandy and reciting Persian poetry. Once all were snuggled in the red glow of the sitting room, Maman Celestini would pour the tea while Papa Celestini carted out trays of diamond-shaped egg sandwiches and loaves of pound cake he loved making himself. Everyone ate while babbling between bites and gulps about the latest openings, Malcolm’s recent soccer trophy, or the Chinese diaspora in Saint Kitts. Cecil recommended a jot of brandy for everybody, but after being repeatedly rebuffed, he fell into his customary wingback chair and grumbled at a wizened and deaf man (whose suit everyone admired but whose name no one remembered, not even Grandpère) about the stench of the distant Upper East Side. The old man would grin thinly, but kept his eyes on Alun the flutist’s dancing fingers. Few ever skipped Celestini teas.
Celestini “dinners,” on the other hand, were known for their scarcity and overwhelming awkwardness. Whenever the family particularly felt the overdue burden of social etiquette, Papa and Maman would decide on two guests and have Muzaffar prepare a slightly larger meal than usual. He also would make the table, trace with his long fingers and favorite calligrapher’s pen the names of the guests on place cards, straighten the mahogany dining chairs, light two candles, and then disappear into the kitchen to await the tinkling of Grandmère’s bell. She only used the bell on these occasions, as it allowed the family to avoid calling out his name. As Muzaffar flashed in and out with platters and bowls, the children remained stonily silent throughout, though any guest could hardly fault the two. Leila drooped in her chair, choked by a dozen layers of pearls, while Malcolm’s cheeks flushed the same color as his impossibly bright red bow tie. The rest of the family hurried through the meal, eyeing their guests. Her forearms wrung by glittering bangles, Grandmère sat up straight and let her hooked nose arch grimly toward the visitors. Grandpère talked little. Instead, he cast worried glances from the food to the bathroom in the foyer. Papa and Maman played the reluctant hosts, dully mouthing questions-about-the-job or indictments-of-Bush that faded quickly into a sip of wine or another nervous pause and did nothing to lighten the stifling mood of gloom. Visitors would take their leave abruptly after eating, breathing deep relieved sighs once they reached the sidewalk outside. Of course, these dinners were all choreographed to distract guests from the splendor of their meal, the incredible sensibility of Muzaffar’s cooking. Such was the Celestinis’ dependence on a man whom they found one winter afternoon curled on their front stoop with one palm cupped against his forehead, mumbling words they never understood.
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