More people began to fill the ravine. Woman and children, now, as well as a few goats and a donkey herded by small boys with sticks. Elsa made room for a woman and her baby next to her. The people sat or squatted and covered their heads. They had seen aeroplanes before. Elsa leaned forward to peer into the gorge to see what the men were doing. They had gathered at the wide end and seemed to be carrying on a noisy argument. The engine sound became louder, then faded as the plane banked away and circled Deir El Zor. More people rushed into the ravine. Some jumped from above while others poured in from the river side.
She looked at each one, old white-bearded men, covered women carrying baskets and pots and urns, older girls carrying babies, younger men with more goats and blankets and rugs. These were the people who were too far from their homes to take shelter inside. Then she saw a European man stumble into the wadi, bent over, a hand holding his sand-colored fedora to his head. He was wearing the familiar khaki safari bush jacket with the multitude of pockets but with the high laced army boots like Sonnenby wore. When he looked up to find an empty spot to shelter against, his eyes fell on her with a look of amazement and he broke into a hobbling run to reach her.
He said something to the woman cowering next to her, who got up and moved to allow him to fold himself in beside Elsa. He was in his early forties, she guessed, and had vivid icy blue eyes and sandy hair cut very short, his beard looked like he had hacked at it over the last month or so, then given up trying to rid himself of it. He was covered head to foot in pale chalky dust, and when he grinned at her his teeth were straight and white.
“Mademoiselle,” he said breathlessly, but anything else he might have said was lost in the screams of the women as the plane neared their hiding spot and banked sharply over the river.
The plane banked and Elsa heard the pop pop pop of the gun as it strafed the ground. The man beside her put a hand on her head and pushed her face into the clay side of the cleft and covered her with his body as the plane roared over the ravine and then faded to the north.
“Mon Dieu!” he breathed, then lifted her shoulders out of the dirt.
Elsa coughed and brushed the sand and clay out of her eyes. She looked up at the blue sky and asked in French, “Will it come back?”
The man stared at her. “You are a German woman.” He did not look so happy to see her anymore.
“Austrian.”
The look on his face meant the distinction made little difference to him. “It may,” he answered in a cold voice. “I believe it is more interested in tearing up Deir El Zor. Frightening the natives is only a secondary mission.”
“Why? How is it you know its mission? Is that a French plane?” She kept her eyes on the sky, as did everyone else in the ravine. Only the wails of babies could be heard. Everyone else was quiet, listening for the sound of a propeller.
The man snorted. “No. It is an English biplane. Churchill is sending scores of the damned things here.” But there was no sound of an engine approaching. Its low drone could be heard fading away.
“English!” She turned to face him. “It is the English in Deir El Zor now, with trucks and machine guns.”
“And just how do you know that, madam?”
“I was just there.”
He shifted in the dirt, sending little pebbles rolling to the bottom of the ravine. He turned his shoulders to look at her, and with one hand tugged at her veil until it dropped to her shoulders. Her long hair spilled out over her back and breasts, a tangled mess. She knew she must be covered with as much dirt and clay dust as he was. She blinked at him.
His eyes looked her over and he even bent a little to see her hands and her feet before he spoke. “My name is Jean-Philippe Descartes. No relation. Who are you, Mademoiselle, and why are you here?”
“My name is Elsa Schluss. I am a therapist--”
“A therapist? A therapist?” His mouth hung open as if she had said she was a gorilla. He recovered quickly, shaking his head making the thick dust on the brim of his fedora sift down over his face. “Then you have come to the right place, for everyone here is crazy.”
She stiffened, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and straightening the neckline of her dress. “I beg your pardon, monsieur, but I am not joking with you or telling a lie.”
“More importantly, are you a nurse?”
“I am,” she answered. “I spent the war in a military hospital.”
He nodded and tilted his head, listening. They both heard the rattle of the plane’s guns again, but this time from at least a mile away. The people huddled down in the ravine. The babies had quieted and the goats were kneeling in the sand and gravel and chewing their cud.
Descartes said, “I have a cut on my leg that is infected. It needs to be cauterized or sterilized, but I can’t reach it. None of these Arabs can do it. I’ve explained the procedure to them but they say I should pray to Allah instead.”
She frowned at him. He was serious. “Monsieur Descartes. We are taking shelter in a big ditch from an air attack…” she was interrupted by the sounds of machine guns in the distance, punctuating and underlining her words with the occasional boom from mortars. “…and you are requesting medical attention? Now?”
“It will do me no good to survive a military attack to die slowly from sepsis next week. You are a European, though regrettably German, and a nurse. I must welcome my good luck when I find it.”
She stared at him and he let her, meeting her eyes. His jaw was set with determination, and she read his truthfulness. She could also see that he was completely unrattled by the situation and guessed this might not be the first time he had taken shelter from an air attack in a ditch.
“I fear gangrene more than a bullet, Nurse Schluss.”
“I have nothing with me. Nothing.”
“I have what we need in my pack. As I said, I tried to do it myself, but it is behind my knee on my lower thigh. Can’t reach and can’t see.”
“And your pack?”
He leaned in toward the ravine and looked down to the river. “On one of my horses. But now maybe miles from here.” His voice was dejected. “I find a nurse and lose my supplies.”
The sound of the plane roared closer. The huddled people cried out before one of the men hushed them. Elsa squeezed harder into the clay cleft and Descartes covered her again. “They merely intimidate, fraulein. They will not waste bullets on women and children. They prefer to kill them with bombs and gas.”
She couldn’t tell from his voice if he were trying to comfort her with lies or telling the horrible truth. She ducked as the plane flew low over the ravine, banked and returned to buzz the people cowering at the bottom and pressed against the sides. A short blast of bullets raised a length of dust along the top edge, making her press her hands over her ears. Descartes leaned into her until she couldn’t breathe. He was warmer than normal. Fever. She held her breath, and when the sound of the engine died away to the north again, Descartes let her up. He brushed some of the sand off of her again, and stood taking her elbow as though he would help her to her feet.
“He will come back!” she cried, trying to take her hand back.
Descartes let her go and used his hand to pull a silver pocket watch from his dusty trousers and flip it open. “No. I know how much fuel he holds. He had twenty minutes of fly time here, and now he must return to Palmyra or risk landing in the desert. No pilot would land anywhere near the tribes. They would tear his limbs from his body, behead him, then dismantle his plane and feed it to their camels.”
She blinked at him a few moments then extended her hand. “Very well,” she said. He pulled her to her feet and helped her slide down to the floor of the ravine. The tribesmen watched them carefully, but none moved from their hiding places.
Descartes nodded toward them. “It will take them an hour to come out again.”
“Why don’t you tell them it is safe?”
“It probably isn’t. Anyone with a machine gun will look twice before shooting at us, but
not a man in a caftan and turban or a thobe and keffiyah. They are better here until nightfall.” He still had her hand and was dragging her toward the river. She could detect his limp now. He favored his right leg and when he stopped to look around before they emerged from the ravine into the open, she saw the discoloration of his trousers behind his knee. Her mind immediately began to plan treatment.
“Merde.” He tugged at her arm and she followed. “I knew they would run off, but not disappear.” His head turned right and left as he searched for his animals.
“I will help you Monsieur, but I must then rejoin the men who brought me here.”
“Who brought you here?”
Elsa knew better than to point rudely. She nodded toward the men who were watching them closely.
Descartes raised his voice and said something in Arabic. He had no qualms about pointing his finger at her.
“I told them I needed to borrow you for a few hours. They are Mehmet’s cousins. They know me.”
“Why are you here, Monsieur Descartes?” she asked him as they picked their way to the edge of the desert where the land fell away to the flood plain of the Euphrates. She kept an eye and an ear on the sky, but only the sun interrupted the blue expanse.
“I am a geologist for the French government.”
“I see.”
“There they are,” he blew his breath out with relief. “Below.” He pointed down into the river valley. Two dark brown horses stood near the bank of the river, grazing on the green grass that covered the banks for thirty feet on each side. One was saddled, the other piled high with canvas-covered parcels.
Chapter Thirteen
They made their way down. Elsa tugged at her hand, but he refused to let her go. His grip was not that of a gentleman helping her out of a motorcar, or a jailer keeping her in custody. He held her like he might hold an unruly horse intent on escape.
“I promised to treat your leg, monsieur. You do not need to worry that I will run off.”
He released her hand, but looked back at her over his shoulder. He did fear the gangrene. She glanced down at the back of his leg. What colored his trousers was not blood but what wept from a raw wound after many days without treatment. She started itemizing what she would need.
They reached his horses. The pack horse did not interrupt its grazing as they approached, but the saddled animal raised its head and pricked its ears and came forward with a nicker. Descartes patted its neck as he lifted the reins and handed them to Elsa. “The medical supplies are in the satchel over his rump.” He reached for the other horse’s halter rope and threw it over his shoulder as if he had done it a thousand times. He tugged at the leather straps until a large pack fell away. He caught it and lowered it to the ground.
“Are we going to do it here?” she asked, looking around. They were on the banks of the Euphrates in lush grass with plenty of water, soft damp soil, but no shelter. This was obviously a flood plain, no buildings could be placed here, and only a fool would pitch a tent. She looked up the rise they had just descended. The land was dry there, and firm. One could build a fire up there.
“I will need to heat water,” she started, looking around for driftwood or anything that might burn.
“No fires, fraulein. Where would you get firewood? There are no trees here. I have water and,” he made a sad face, “some Talisker.”
She touched the bottle he indicated in the pack, “but I will need a fire to sterilize my scalpel if there is necrotic tissue that must be debrided.”
He grimaced.
“No scalpel?” She asked.
“I have a knife,” he moved sideways so she could see the sheath buckled to his right upper thigh. It was a long hunting knife. The tip would work if he had a whetstone. She opened her mouth to ask and he said, “I have a whetstone.”
“I will have to finish before dark, then.”
“You will. It is nearly noon. We can start now.” He led the packhorse closer to the edge of the ravine that edged the river valley.
Descartes hobbled the pack horse which immediately lowered its head and began on the grass again. He unsaddled the riding horse and tethered him as well. Elsa dug through the satchel looking for everything she would need. The bottle of Talisker whiskey she picked up and examined. “One hundred and fourteen proof” the label read proudly. She set it carefully against a clump of grass. Descartes had some rolled bandages and some handkerchiefs that had obviously been used and washed and dried several times. When he was finished with the horses he came over to her and handed her the knife. He dug around in a different satchel for the whetstone.
“Sit down and take off your boots,” she told him.
He did, then stood and looked around the valley. They both listened before he obeyed. He cocked his head at her as he unbuckled his belt. “This is not the place for a man to be caught with his pants down.”
She laughed despite her anxiety about the plane. “I should say not. But you seem confident we will be undisturbed for at least an hour.”
“As I said, the plane must go back to Palmyra.”
He lay down on his belly facing north, toward El Zor, and raised himself on his elbows. Elsa positioned herself on the ground near his right knee and turned it to catch as much of the sunlight as possible. His thighs were well-muscled, the skin above his knees was fair and healthy. But the entire surface of the back of his thigh was abraded with scabbed-over scrapes and small cuts. Just above the back of his knee gaped a tear in the flesh that was an angry red and was swollen and discolored. He twisted a little to look back at her.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
She used one of the handkerchiefs dipped in his whiskey and wrapped around her index finger to probe it. The muscles tightened and the wound oozed more pink and cream-colored fluid that tricked into the hollow behind his knee and puddled there. He sucked in his breath as she moved the lips of the wound to see how deep it went. “It is not good,” she answered truthfully, “though I do not see signs of necrotic tissue. How did this happen?” She asked in order to distract him while she looked inside his little medical kit for a pair of tweezers. It was obvious how this happened. He had somehow slid down an embankment or a cliff and rubbed a goodly portion of his skin off the back of one leg, and then something sharp had gouged him for about ten centimeters...she found the tweezers and pressed them into the wound…and four centimeters deep.
He arched his back and bent his head down over his arms gritting his teeth, but he didn’t move the leg. He groaned long and loud as she probed it. Something was in there. She shifted her weight to improve her leverage and repositioned his leg to get a better grip, then used the tweezers to grip what she assumed was a shard of stone. She pulled on it carefully, so not to lose it and squeezed the tweezers as hard as she dared. She did not want it to snap in two.
Descartes entire body went stiff from his shoulders to his toes and he blew through his nose like one of his horses. His leg began to tremble, the thick muscles were like cables. “I have it, monsieur. One moment,” she murmured. The shard emerged with a final tug and she held it up to the sun and turned it. It was thin like a wafer with a jagged edge on one side. It must have been very painful to walk with that behind his knee. She dropped it in the grass and inserted the tweezers again, looking for another. Descartes hung his head. Through gritted teeth he said, “It was a stone, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Though I am no geologist and cannot tell you if it is granite or sandstone.”
“It is shale,” he answered. “I have been taking my hammer to rock for years, and this is the first time a rock has hammered me.”
She smiled grimly and went back in with the tweezers. She found smaller bits that the tweezers could bring out, but there was also fine sand and some gravel driven into the wound that could only come out with a long soak. She looked at the river. There was no way that water could clean his wound without being sterilized first.
“Monsieur Descartes, I am going to need gallons of boiled wa
ter to clean this wound properly. It is full of sand.”
“Oui. I tried to clean it after it happened, but had no water. I could not get that damned rock out.” His shoulders heaved with a great sigh. “Thank you,” he finished.
“I am not done dressing it.” The wound began to weep since she had disturbed it, and had torn bits of flesh that had tried to heal around the rock fragment. She bent the knee to encourage the drainage, and used his other handkerchiefs to catch the fluids. “Well water is better than river water, certainly, but I could use a great deal of your costly whiskey and it would still need work.” She pressed the handkerchief into the wound and he shuddered again. “How far to a well?”
There was a long pause before he answered, so long that Elsa leaned to the side to try to see his face. He had gone beet red and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead as well as several veins along his temple. She asked him again. “How far to a well?”
“At least,” he took a deep breath, “a kilometer.”
She did the calculations in her head. “I will be back in an hour or less if I take the horse. Point to where it is.” She set his knee down gently in the grass and gathered her feet under her to stand.
“No, you can’t go.” He put a hand on her knee to keep her from standing. “You don’t know where it is, and one of the Bedouin might find you. In fact, I’m certain of it. They will take the horse and then take you. There is some water in a bag in the pack.”
Elsa had really wanted to take a detour towards Deir El Zor to see what had happened. The gunfire and air attack had lasted less than twenty minutes, as Descartes had said, but that did not mean there would not be terrible devastation. She wondered if Sonnenby had been on one side or the other, or, as is often the case in this kind of conflict, distrusted and punished by both sides. She reached for the whiskey bottle, pulled the cork and took a good swallow.
“Let me have some of that,” he said, reaching behind him with effort and opening his hand.
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