Marshlands

by Matthew Olshan

  She counts the coins, taking only what she was owed, and hands back the rest. Then she returns to her folding, a great pile of soldiers’ fatigues.

  I watch her for a while. The rhythm is mesmerizing. Her hands are very precise. I tell her I admire her skill.

  She contradicts me with the slightest shake of her head.

  The pile of fatigues grows and grows until it looks ready to topple. I step in, but the only result of my intervention is to drive her nervously into the corner.

  I’m sorry, I say, I’ll leave you be.

  Then, with a movement so abrupt that for a moment I think she has tripped, she prostrates herself at my feet.

  What’s this? I ask, bending to help her up. My senses sharpen. Someone might walk in and see us this way. Come, now, I say, but she insists on pressing herself to the ground.

  Please, Master, she says. She stops for a moment, overcome by emotion. I would like to have my son back.

  I’ve heard about your loss, I say. I saw to the boy myself.

  She thanks me, but it’s the kind of thanks one might give a merchant who offers a paltry refund for some spoiled meat. I wait for more gratitude, but something else comes: a question, tinged with rage. Are you finished with him, then?

  Please get up, I say. You’re embarrassing me.

  I help her to her feet. She sighs. Her knees crack as she straightens. She isn’t old, but brute labor has already worn out her joints. She looks at me with defeated eyes.

  Perhaps I’ve misunderstood, I say.

  I would like to bury my son, she says.

  If it’s a question of money …

  She answers with supreme disdain. His body was taken away, she says. They came in the night.

  Who came?

  Soldiers, she says.

  What soldiers?

  She touches the stack of fatigues. From this tribe, she says.

  I try to take her hand, but she pulls back. I will look into it, I say.

  She doesn’t believe me. She thinks I’ve merely employed one of the empty phrases my people use to dismiss a claim, a phrase as formulaic as the ones the other laundresses probably used to acknowledge her grief.

  You will have your son back, I say. You have my word.

  She bows awkwardly, then steps outside and waits for me to leave.

  I’m as astonished by my impulsive promise as she is. I haven’t given my word in a very long time. I wouldn’t have thought I was still capable of it.

  3

  The palace has changed since my last visit. The new general has remilitarized it. My relic of a jeep, with its sandblasted hood and steaming radiator, is stopped at no fewer than three checkpoints. A fresh road has been laid in a defensive spiral that forces all traffic to circle the compound twice before coming to a halt at the main gate. The uncured asphalt causes trouble for the jeep’s nearly bald tires, which squeal as they negotiate the road’s constant inward curve.

  Inside the gate, the frame of a new building, a flat sprawling hulk with partitions for countless tiny rooms, rises from a sea of razor wire. The parade ground is jammed with camouflaged construction equipment. Jogging soldiers reach out and slap the giant tires to the rhythm of ribald exercise songs.

  The great columns and arcades of the palace are festooned with patriotic banners. The messages are fragmentary and oblique. THIS IS YOUR MISSION! says one. UNTIL WE’RE VICTORIOUS! says another. The fabric is something I’ve never seen before, a gossamer mesh that iridesces like a locust’s wing. I’m forced to avert my eyes when the desert wind lifts it to the sun.

  The general is out riding, which gives me a chance to cool off in the cavernous waiting area outside his office. It’s rumored that virtually every room of the palace, which was built atop the ruins of an ancient ziggurat, was used, at one time or another, by the torturers of the old regime. One imagines cries of agony echoing down the polished corridors.

  When I’m summoned, at long last, into the general’s office, I find a familiar face.

  “Administrator,” he says, pressing my arm.

  “Is that Curtis?”

  “General Curtis,” he says, tapping the star on his collar. The uniform is new to me; black and severe, the sleeves embroidered with the blazon of Protective Services. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Have a seat. Tell me, has it really been ten years?”

  He retreats behind the immaculate sandstone desk. His wavy blond hair is neatly trimmed—although longer than it should be, for a stickler for the rules—and the beard is gone, but he’s just as vital as I remember. If anything, with his cheeks flushed from the exertions of the ride, and his face a bit fuller, he looks even younger than before. I, on the other hand, feel like a tired old man. “Forgive the impromptu visit,” I say.

  Curtis smiles and repeats the word “impromptu,” shaking his head. “One forgets there are educated men out here,” he says.

  As I explain my purpose, he tries to give the impression that his attention is fully focused, but he can’t resist polishing his high leather boots with a thumb, which he surreptitiously wets from time to time.

  “An unhappy story,” he says, “although I’m not sure I buy it. It’s highly unlikely a random corpse would have found its way to our morgue. But you’re welcome to have a look.” He reaches for the intercom, then thinks the better of it. “Actually, I’ll take you down myself,” he says. “There’s something I want you to see.”

  A lurching service elevator delivers us to the bowels of the palace, where Curtis leads me through a warren of utility tunnels. It’s a struggle to keep up with his energetic strides. In the hope of slowing him down a little, I offer my congratulations.

  “What for?” he says.

  “Your promotion. This posting.”

  Curtis tilts his head, listening for irony in my voice. “Frankly,” he says, “I was surprised to hear you’re still camping on the border after all these years. A man of your talents, with those incredible language skills.”

  “I like running a field hospital. It makes me feel useful.”

  “Really, Gus,” he says, as if we’re old friends, “it’s a waste of you.”

  Then he stops in front of a pair of steel doors. “Well, here we are.”

  “The morgue?” I ask, but he merely smiles and opens a door for me.

  I hesitate at the threshold. The air is wet and musty. It’s pitch-black inside, but there’s a sense of vast space, as if the doorway gives out on a canyon.

  “The lights are just … here,” he says, throwing a lever. Arc lamps, some of them at a great distance, slowly start to blaze, illuminating a massive stone ruin at our feet.

  “My predecessor was excavating for a weapons bunker when the ground under one of the earthmovers gave way. That was how they found the first chamber. Took the better part of six months to clean the whole thing out.”

  “What is it?”

  “Guess,” he says.

  The intricate foundation reminds me of a picture from one of my old schoolbooks. “Steam tunnels, perhaps for the royal baths?”

  “Good guess! A very good guess. But no. It’s a labyrinth.”

  “A labyrinth? Here? Can we take a closer look?”

  Curtis nods indulgently and says, “I knew you’d like it.”

  As we climb down and pick our way, single file, along a tightly curving path, he explains that most people have the wrong idea about labyrinths.

  “The classical ones weren’t really mazes,” he says. “They were more like spirals: one way in; one way out.”

  He goes on to say that the labyrinth inspired the design of the new defensive road around the compound. “You see? I’m still capable of learning a thing or two from this godforsaken place.”

  There’s a surprising amount of regret in his voice. This may be as close as I’ll ever get to an apology.

  Long years among the marshmen have taught me to hold my tongue. In the old days, I might have lashed out at him: Save it for the child who lay screaming on my table! But there�
�s no point in saying such a thing to Curtis, a man so lacking in humility. Then again, perhaps I lack it, too, for presuming to stay in the marshes, for presuming to atone.

  I walk on in silence, trying not to turn an ankle on the uplifted cobbles.

  When we reach the center of the labyrinth, a clearing barely large enough to exercise a horse on a tight tether, Curtis tries again. “Things are different now,” he says. “We have new methods. It’s much easier. I can always use a good man, a trusted man. There’s everything here: books, music, wine. I even brought a chef with me, a miracle-worker with wild game. Surely you miss the creature comforts.”

  “I do, but I’d miss the hunting more.”

  “You could still hunt!” he says. “You could certainly hunt. So, if hunting were part of the mix—”

  He breaks off when he sees the expression on my face. “Fine,” he says, raising his hands in surrender, “do what you want. Maybe someday you’ll explain it to me.”

  In fact, we understand each other perfectly. He wants to keep me close, if only to ease his conscience; whereas I want no part of his methods, old or new. The very phrase “new methods” makes my gorge rise.

  “Well,” he says, “there’s no need to go back the way we came.”

  He leads me through a series of concealed doors that provide a more or less direct path through the stone spiral. Soon we’re back out in a modern hallway, where the way to the morgue is clearly marked.

  Curtis isn’t used to taking no for an answer. He sees my refusal as yet another misstep in a second-rate career. “Well,” he says, slapping dust from his trousers, “someone has to clean up this mess.”

  “What mess would that be?”

  He deflects the question with a roll of his eyes, as if to say, You have no idea.

  To change the subject, I ask about the new building going up inside the gates.

  “Finally, a proper detention facility,” he says. “Long overdue. Now watch yourself,” he adds, plowing through a heavy swinging door.

  The sudden drop in temperature is like a plunge into water. Curtis cranes his neck. “There’s usually an attendant,” he says. “But it looks like we’re on our own.”

  He slows to a funereal pace when we reach the storage area. It’s clear that he means the tragic rhythm of the drawers to arouse my patriotism, but instead I find myself thinking about the marshman’s horror of being unburied, which is considered the violation of violations. To abandon the body of a warrior on the battlefield—even a warrior of a rival tribe—is to cover one’s own tribe in shame.

  “In case you’re wondering,” he says, “these drawers are full.”

  “How is that possible?” I ask. “We haven’t seen combat casualties in a very long time.”

  “You’re privy to a tiny corner of this conflict,” he says. “And even that you don’t see with the proper vision.” He stops to open one of the drawers. The corpse is charred, its lips curled in a dry snarl. “As a matter of fact,” he says, “there’s been a steady uptick in insurgent attacks.”

  He opens more drawers. The bodies are riddled with shrapnel, the wounds packed with sandy debris. Some of the remains are tragically scant—a blasted jawbone, a bloodied sleeve. Many lack dog tags.

  “Are we sure these are ours?” I ask.

  Curtis tries to slam the drawer, but it wasn’t designed to be closed in anger. It recoils against rubber bumpers, then quietly slides home. “There’s a separate section for the enemy down at the end,” he says. “Knock yourself out.”

  In fact, the INSURGENT area is full to overflowing. I find two or three corpses crammed into each drawer, sometimes haphazardly, sometimes head to toe, their broken limbs woven together to save space. At first, I do my best to separate them, straighten their clothes, cover their desiccated eyes, but even these slight changes cause the drawers to jam. As I force them shut, the sound of cracking bone makes me think of the laundress.

  After an hour of fruitless searching, followed by another lost to the seemingly identical tunnels under the palace, I finally reach daylight. I’ve never been so happy to climb into my oven of a jeep. The spiral road winds me up and flings me into the desert. I don’t breathe freely until the jagged silhouette of the palace vanishes from the rearview mirror. Dust devils race me down the pitted road.

  This used to be a perilous drive, seeded with mines and improvised explosives. The surface has been patched but still gives a vehicle a good beating. As I near home, my wheels seem to gather speed. It’s like I’m driving down a ramp through the centuries.

  * * *

  That night, I wonder: Is there really a new insurgency? The question sits, indigestible, in the pit of my stomach, as Betty snores quietly in her corner. I may be a foreigner, but with every wound I’ve sewn, every child I’ve bathed, I’ve tried to come closer. I lie on a sweat-stained quilt, thinking, I’m bound to them, but are they bound to me?

  Eventually, sleep comes, but it’s disturbed by a vision of the laundress kneeling by my bed, holding a candle to her naked mouth. The guttering flame lights her face like a jack-o’-lantern, grotesquely hooking her nose, deepening her eye sockets, but above all, transforming the cleft in her lip into something huge and malignant. I’ve been thinking about a surgery, she says.

  Her words fill me with joy. I want her to be joyful, too, but her eyes are black and bottomless, as inscrutable as river stones.

  I wake to find Betty hovering over me. You’ve been blubbering, she says. You shouldn’t drink so much before bed. But don’t worry, she whispers, wiping my face with the sleeve of her shift, your secret’s safe with me.

  * * *

  A letter from Protective Services arrives by courier the next day, informing me that a claim of corpse-stealing is an ancient form of extortion in the marshes; that there have been many substantiated cases of insurgents perpetrating abominations while dressed as our soldiers; and that, in any case, the laundress’s son was a known insurgent with several atrocities to his name.

  I’m to cease my inquiries into this matter, to focus on the efficient management of the field hospital, and, in a final phrase that makes me wince, to “desist in the delivery of medical services to the insurgency and its shadow army of supporters, no matter the cause of injury.”

  In other words, I’m to stop treating marshmen.

  “Shadow army,” “atrocities,” “abominations”—the language alone is infuriating. Do the deskbound mandarins who compose these letters even know what the words mean? “Desist in the delivery of medical services,” indeed! If a child is brought to me whose leg has been blown off by an old land mine, I’m to refuse treatment? Is that refusal not an atrocity?

  I spend the day at my desk composing indignant replies, each more self-righteous than the last, but reason ultimately prevails. I’m already on thin ice with Curtis, and the thought of being transferred fills me with dread. Perhaps it’s selfish to wonder what will become of my marshmen when I’m gone, but I worry all the same.

  Evening finds me standing in front of a mirrored armoire, the brass buttons of my old dress whites winking back at me, a worn leather belt straining to cinch my gut.

  I’m all too aware of the ridiculous figure I cut on the long walk to the lean-tos. Dark patches of sweat blossom under the arms of my ill-fitting jacket. It’s not healthy for a man to feel such shortness of breath, such palpitations.

  I find the laundress fully absorbed in her work folding tattered tunics and leggings. Native laundry. The other laundresses have apparently stepped in and taken the soldiers’ custom. It’s cruel, but this is the way of the marshes. A woman, marked for punishment at birth, has simply been served another portion of her curse.

  Waiting for news has been very hard on her. In a voice barely above a whisper, she offers me a cup of river water, then turns back to her folding.

  I tell her about my trip to the palace, making more of my search than there actually was. Then I show her the letter forbidding me to look any further into her son’s c
ase. I read from it, translating as I go. I stop at the part about his being an insurgent, but in the end, I blurt it out anyway, then immediately distance myself from the allegation.

  She waits for more. Her hands stay busy with threadbare work clothes, folding them automatically, but eventually slowing, like a hall clock winding down.

  Ghilad was a good boy, she says.

  I’m sure he was, I say. It’s strange to hear his name in the solemn quiet of the lean-to, without the reassuring clatter of a typewriter or the rustle of an official form.

  The other farmers teased him because of me, she says, but they all envied his crops.

  Was he an only child? It’s an awkward question at this late stage, an oversight on my part that reflects a larger truth: the everyday life of this woman has no real significance in the occupiers’ bureaucracy.

  I had a daughter, too, she says. A talented seamstress. She was killed in the first days of the invasion, but they never told me how.

  Two children lost to the war; both unburied.

  I take her in my arms. She doesn’t fight me; neither does she melt into my embrace. She goes limp, a defenseless animal in the clutches of a predator.

  I whisper an apology, but it comes out in my language, not hers.

  My face is suddenly hot and wet. I feel her trembling. It isn’t grief, or anger, or even—heaven help me!—desire, that makes her tremble. It’s my tears. I doubt she’s ever seen a man cry, and surely not a foreigner. She’s afraid. Or perhaps merely embarrassed.

  I kneel before her, clutching her knees like a schoolboy, pressing my face into her damp skirt, and say, I made you a promise. I mean to keep it.

  Her hands eventually come to rest on my head, but don’t know what to do there. They flutter for a while, then are still.

  * * *

  The laundress waits outside my tent, squatting like a woman who wishes to be swallowed by the earth. Betty will have nothing to do with her.

  That creature doesn’t belong here, she says.