“And who,” Timbor asked, “decides if the fear is justified?”
“We do,” the lawyer said gently. “The court does, based on its knowledge of the region from which you came.”
Zamatryna saw her grandfather squeeze his eyes shut in pain. “The court will have no knowledge of the region from which we came. To you, it never existed. To us, it no longer exists.”
The lawyer shook her head. “I don’t understand. Your village has been destroyed? But we keep track of such destruction; if you’re from a war-torn region, there will be records—”
“No,” Timbor said bleakly, “there are no records. Just as we have no papers.”
The lawyer sighed. “Mr. Timbor, you’re here. You must have come from somewhere.”
“Yes. But it is not a somewhere about which Americans have records.”
“Ask her,” came a strange voice from the back of the tent, “ask her what will happen to the family if we cannot justify ourselves.”
Zamatryna turned. It was Darroti who had spoken, Darroti who always hid in shadows now, who had said nothing in weeks. His voice sounded like wind blown through a hollow reed. “Ask her, Zamatryna. If we cannot justify ourselves and we cannot go home, what will happen to us?”
Zamatryna asked. The lawyer frowned and said, “If your request for asylum were denied, you would be deported.”
“And if we cannot be deported, because our home no longer exists, because there is no way for us to get back there? Ask her, Zamatryna.”
Zamatryna asked. The lawyer shook her head, and said, “If that were really true, I suppose you would have to stay in the camp indefinitely. But it can’t be true. You came from somewhere, and you can go back, even if you don’t want to. I understand that you don’t want to. We’ll do whatever we can to help you, but to do that, we need to know where you came from.”
“Tell her,” Darroti said, “that we do want to go home and cannot,” but Timbor frowned and made the slashing X for silence. Mim-Bim echoed it in Zamatryna’s pocket. This was what the Americans must not be allowed to learn.
No one spoke for a few moments after the lawyer left, and then the adults began talking all at once in low, guarded voices, even though they were speaking their own language, which no one else understood.
“So we are stuck here,” Erolorit said. “In limbo. We cannot go back home and we cannot leave the camp.”
“It is my fault,” Darroti said.
“We could invent a history,” Harani said. “Zamatryna and the cousins have heard enough stories by now of where other people are from. We can tell a story.”
“But we do not speak the languages of those countries,” Macsofo said. “We do not know the names of their cities. The deception would be discovered.”
“It is my fault,” Darroti said. “I am the reason you are all in limbo.”
“Darroti,” Timbor said, “do not speak nonsense. Our home, of which these people have never heard, is the reason we are all in limbo.”
“If I were not here, you could tell the truth and you could leave the camp. You could say you were being persecuted because of me. I am the criminal. I am the reason you could not stay in Léma—”
“No,” Aliniana said. “Darroti, did you listen to nothing that woman said? We would still need to be from a place whose history they already knew.” But Darroti had begun to weep, and gave no sign of having heard her.
Macsofo and Erolorit went to comfort him, and Zamatryna saw their weariness, and their fear. They were guarding him again. Perhaps they had never stopped. Mim-Bim traced its pattern in her pocket, and a great hopelessness descended on her. They would never get out of this camp, with its dessicating heat in summer and its brutal wind in winter, its stench and its deprivation. They would never see flowers again, never be able to bathe whenever they wished, never be able to go outside the wire fences. A great longing for home rose in her, and she crept to her mother’s side.
Harani held her and rocked her. “Sleep, Zamatryna. Everything will be all right. I don’t know how, but I promise you it will be. Sleep, child. We have made you do all that work of talking, too much work, and you are tired.”
She slept. She woke to find herself in her own bed, still in her clothing, Mim-Bim still pacing in her pocket. She propped herself up on an elbow and peered around the tent in the dim light from the lanterns, which they never turned off completely because Poliniana was afraid of the dark. Everyone else was asleep too, Timbor and Aliniana snoring. Erolorit and Macsofo had moved their cots to either side of Darroti’s. She lay back down, too tired even to unbutton her pocket so that Mim-Bim could roam beneath the covers, and slept.
She awoke again near dawn, pulled into consciousness by an unfamiliar sensation. Her pocket—there was a buzzing from her pocket. Mim-Bim was frantically vibrating its wings, trying to get out, trying to fly through the cloth. The beetle had never done that before. Zamatryna stuck her head under the covers and unbuttoned her pocket; Mim-Bim shot out and tried to fly out from beneath the sheets, which it had never done before either. “No,” Zamatryna whispered, catching it in her hands and stuffing it back into her pocket. “No, no one can know you’re here, or the Americans will kill you.” As often as she had wished to be rid of the insect, she couldn’t let that happen. Back in her pocket, Mim-Bim began tracing the X again, but jerkily, more quickly than usual. Dread filled Zamatryna. Something had happened.
She pulled the covers back and sat up, scanning the room. Timbor and Aliniana had stopped snoring; Erolorit and Macsofo had both started. Everyone else was—no, wait. The cot between Erolorit and Macsofo was empty. Darroti was gone.
Bile filled her throat. She got up, ran over to her father’s cot, and began to shake him. “Papa! Papa! Uncle Darroti is gone. Papa—”
“What, what?” He woke up groggily. “Zamatryna, what is it? Did you have a nightmare?”
“Uncle Darroti is gone! He isn’t in his bed!”
She saw her father’s face tighten, saw him glance at Darroti’s empty cot. But he spoke cheerfully. “He probably just got up to relieve himself. I’m sure he’s fine, Zamatryna.”
Mim-Bim was buzzing again. Zamatryna wondered how her father didn’t hear the vibrating wings. She began to cry. “I’m afraid.”
Macsofo was awake now, blinking, and soon Timbor woke up as well, and not long after that, everyone was awake. Zamatryna couldn’t stop crying, although she knew she was being a baby.
“Erolorit’s right,” Timbor said. “I’m sure Darroti went to the Porto-San. But I will go look for him, to reassure Zamatryna. Macsofo—”
“I’ll come with you too, Father.”
“I’m coming,” Zamatryna said.
Timbor shook his head. “No, child. Stay here.”
“I’m coming with you!”
Harani had gone to examine Darroti’s bed. “One of his sheets is missing,” she said, her voice curiously even.
“I’m coming with you,” Zamatryna said, and at last they let her; everyone went except Aliniana and the cousins. The family stayed very close together, moving through the chill darkness, and Zamatryna thought fleetingly of how they had huddled together after they came through the door from Lémabantunk.
Darroti wasn’t at the Porto-Sans, which were empty. He wasn’t in the food tent or the shower tent. They wandered about the camp in the first glimmers of dawn, calling him. “Darroti! Where are you!” They were answered only by grumbles from people who had been asleep. But then there was a shout from the nearest edge of the camp, and all of them began to run. Erolorit swung Zamatryna up into his arms, for she wouldn’t have been able to keep up with the adults.
They ran toward the perimeter, where they found a group of Americans, even paler than usual, gathered around something hanging from the fence.
“No no no no no no,” Harani said. “No. Oh, no.” Erolorit tried to cover Zamatryna’s eyes, but she pushed his hands away. She knew what she would see. She had known since she woke up to Mim-Bim’s buzzing.
It was Darroti. He had twisted his sheet into a rope and hanged himself from the fence.
3
Darroti
He’s out of his body now, bobbing in the air like a feathered seed-pod, watching the scene in front of the fence. Dying hurt less than he expected: a few awful moments and then it was over, blessed relief. Since that terrible night with the knife, living has hurt far more than his death just did.
He knows he should have done this in Lémabantunk, before the family went into exile. If he had been able to summon the courage to do it there, they would not have had to leave. But he was a coward. If the dead cannot speak to the living, still some of his people believe that the dead can speak to the dead, that the dead commune in their own world.
That is what Gallicina believed. “We will not always be apart, dearest. You will conquer this demon of drink and then it will be fitting for us to tell our families that we love one another. When you have won the battle with the demon, we will be together for the rest of our lives, and after our lives, too. Not even death will separate us.”
Not even death. That promise, the prophecy she intended as a blessing, became a curse; Darroti himself made it a curse, that terrible evening. And afterwards in Lémabantunk he did not dare to kill himself, even to spare his family from exile, because he could not face the possibility of meeting Gallicina. The very thought of her is an agony, even now.
Even now. Death has not released him from his crime; it will be his burden forever. He knows that. But now he has done what he needed to do. He has freed his family to leave the camp, freed them from the burden of his presence. He killed himself out of love for them, love that finally gave him the courage to put the twisted sheet around his neck. Surely they will be happy, as soon as they realize this.
They are not happy yet. The limp sack of his body leans against the woven metal fence; the Americans gesture in consternation, and his family howls and keens in rage and grief. Somehow, although he hangs above them, he sees them as if they are in front of him, too, sees all sides of them at once. Macsofo has collapsed onto the ground, beating at the dust with his fists. Erolorit, shoulders shaking, kneels next to Macsofo. Harani clings to the girlchild Zamatryna. Of all of them, only Zamatryna seems calm. He can tell that she was crying before the family found him, but she is not crying now.
Timbor stands apart from everyone, ashen, until the little girl breaks free of Harani and goes to comfort him, putting her arms around his waist and patting his stomach. He says nothing. His face is tracked with tears.
They should be happy. They will be happy, soon, once they have had a chance to think. If they cannot return to Lémabantunk, because Darroti’s fear kept him tethered to them for too long, at least now they will not be stuck in the refugee camp because he is a criminal. He wrote them a note to tell them this. The note, written in their own beloved language, is in the pocket of his tunic. They will find it soon, and then they will know why he has done this. Because he loves them.
They find it; an American soldier finds it, and gently hands it to Timbor, putting a hand on the old man’s shoulder. Timbor reads it. Now he will smile and be relieved.
He doesn’t smile or look relieved. He puts a hand to his face, over his eyes; he weeps and staggers and holds out the note in a clenched fist to Erolorit, who takes it and reads, who hurls the paper with an oath to the ground, and Harani bends and picks it up and reads, tight-lipped, and hands it to Macsofo, who is sitting up now, his face and front smeared with dirt. Zamatryna stands with her arms around her grandfather, watching wide-eyed as the paper passes from hand to hand.
Darroti’s note has not helped them, as he intended. It has all gone wrong. Everything he does goes wrong. That is his curse.
It is full morning now; a crowd has gathered to gape. The soldiers keep them back. Some people in white come, and Darroti watches as his empty body is cut down from the fence and gently laid on a stretcher, where it is covered with a sheet. One of the doctors closes Darroti’s eyes, which will never see anything again. Darroti finds it oddly touching, this quiet reverence from someone who does not even know him.
The doctor who closed Darroti’s eyes speaks now to Zamatryna, who speaks to Timbor and the others, who nod. Darroti’s body is taken away. Darroti’s spirit remains, bobbing above his family, and when they turn at last from the fence and, leaning heavily upon one another, make their way haltingly back to their tent, he is pulled along behind them, like a child’s toy on a string.
They are back inside the tent now, and so is he, watching as they tell Aliniana and the cousins what has happened. Aliniana becomes a wailing, crumpled heap of cloth upon her bed, and the children, lower lips trembling, rush to their grandfather, who collapses now too, wracked with grief. Harani rocks Zamatryna. Erolorit and Macsofo curse and rage and shout, and their fury buffets him where he hangs beneath the ceiling.
They hate him. He loves them, did what he did only out of love for them, and they hate him. He turns all love for him into scorn and rage. He wonders helplessly how anyone could ever have loved him: his family or Gallicina, the daughter of the third cousin of the second wife of the Prime Minister, who was far too good for the drunken youngest son of a carpet merchant.
Beautiful, brave Gallicina, who fought for the right to be a Mendicant, that she might have equal standing in the Temple. How she must hate him now, for his clumsiness and stupidity! How he hates himself! He cannot bear to think of it. He cannot bear to watch his family, whose pain skewers him. Impaled, he twists and tries to flee, tries to escape through the roof of the tent, but he is trapped here by their tears.
Americans have come now, to counsel and comfort: someone in green, someone in white, someone in black wearing a pendant of crossed sticks, the symbol for silence. The person with the pendant, oddly, talks most of all. Little Zamatryna looks bewildered as she translates for the others, who stare stonily at the speaker.
He wishes that he could hear what they are saying. All he can perceive is the family’s emotions, an oceanic expanse of loss. How can they grieve to lose him, who was only a burden to them? How can they hate him and so desperately mourn him at the same time?
It is unendurable; the feelings are unendurable. If he were still alive he would kill himself again, to be away from these feelings, but of course he would not be away from them, for he is not away from them now. He wonders what he would have done if he had known that, before he twisted the sheet. Is there no escape? He cannot leave the tent. Where can he go?
He goes into his memories; he goes into the past. He remembers the beauty of Lémabantunk, but it is only a pain to him, for he has lost that beauty and caused his family to lose it. He remembers the day he met Gallicina in the market, a day forever scented with cinnamon, but that, too, brings him no joy, for he must perforce remember also their terrible parting.
He remembers his mother, dead of fever. It is a comfort to remember Frella, for she died of fever before anything else happened, before she could know what a shameful son he was, before he had disgraced the family. When she died, he had not yet met Gallicina. When she died, he sometimes came home drunk with wine, but as yet it seemed nothing more than the foolishness of youth. She died loving her youngest child, believing him worthy of that love. How glad he is that she never realized she was wrong!
Delighted to have found solace, he wraps himself in his earliest memory of his mother; indeed, it is his earliest memory of anything. They are in the garden, at home. The air is rich with thyme and jasmine, and the soil is luxuriously warm under his bare feet; he delights in curling his toes into the earth, like little worms. Lizards run across his feet, tickling him, and he laughs, and laughs also at the butterflies, who are his friends. He has been toddling after Frella as she weeds and tends the vegetables; she has just picked some tender baby peas for him to eat, and now she is explaining to him why she must bless the peas before she pops them into his mouth.
“They might contain the spirits of the dead, Darroti.”<
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He peers in wonder at the peas, pale and shining, which look only like peas to him, precious green pearls. He knows they will taste wonderful when he eats them; he can taste them already. “How could they?”
“Anything could.”
“Anything at all?”
“Yes. That is why we lead lives of blessing.”
“But how do you know if the peas have dead people in them?”
“We cannot know; no one knows for sure. Once, very long ago, the spirits of the dead could speak to us to let us know exactly where they were, but that is no longer true.”
“Why not, Mama?”
And so she sits herself cross-legged in the dirt, pulls him onto her lap, and tells him the Tale of the Great Breaking, as the sun shines down on them and the butterflies frolic above the blossoms. “Once, at the beginning of time, there were four worlds. One was all earth, one all water, one all wind, and one all flame, and they were the only things in the cosmos, so far apart that none of them knew of any of the other three.”
Darroti frowns. “But fire needs air.” Even as a baby, he knows this. “To put the fire out, you put things on it to keep the air away. How could there be fire without air?”
Frella laughs and kisses him. “How smart you are, Darroti! You will hear the answer, if you listen. For indeed these worlds did not work like ours: for the Judges of each world decreed that everything on that world should be all alike, and that nothing should ever change, and the elemental creatures thought themselves content. But on each world one creature grew restless and desired change, desired to meet entities unlike itself. And the Judge of each world accounted this terrible rebellion, an infection that would make all the elemental spirits unhappy, and so the four were sent into exile.
The Necessary Beggar Page 5
