by Boston Teran
DELUGE OF people crowded the horsemen. They helped the weary dragoman from his saddle as they would a cherished uncle. The men around the priest wept and the women touched the hem of his filthy robe as if it were a sacred vestment. The young begged for the flag and he passed it to their outstretched arms. They ran with it in a pack across the street. There it was lifted to a world of grasping hands that reached out from a balcony railing. It hung there momentarily in their arms before it rose up again to where a boy had been lowered from the ledge, his legs gripped tight by others. And when he had it firmly, they hoisted him up then there it was on the roof for all to see.
Those around John Lourdes patted at his legs and fought to shake his hand. He had no idea what they were saying and he repeatedly asked if anyone spoke English or Spanish.
“I speak English . . . a little.”
He looked behind him. Standing atop the rubble of a destroyed building was Alev Temple.
“You,” he said.
“Kismet,” she said.
She came up beside his horse.
“You said that word once before. I don’t know what it means.”
“Kismet . . . Fate.”
“Fate,” he said.
“Do you remember at the boat, I asked—”
“If we should ever meet again . . . I remember, Alev.”
She was pleased. She put a hand out and he leaned from the saddle, and they shook, and she held his hand a long time and put her other hand over his also.
The people began to talk to John Lourdes through Alev Temple, who now served as his official interpreter and biographer with unswerving admiration and sincerity.
“You made many friends today.”
“I need something to balance the ledger,” he said.
He glanced toward the direction from where they’d come, and she understood.
“I want you to look. Up the street. That hill.” She pointed. “With the two-story hospital and wall. That’s the American Mission compound. Doctor Ulster. Go there. I will see there’s a place for you. I have to leave you now. For a friend.”
She pointed to the priest and walked off.
The doctor offered John Lourdes a small room in the mission residences that opened onto a covered porch. The room had a bed with a frame and a pillow. Against the far wall was a Shaker bureau with a mirror and porcelain bowl for washing. Through the open door he could see the hospital and school buildings and part of the church roof beyond.
Everything suddenly just breathed home. Even the still air was Texas. And yet, home felt far away, farther away than miles or distance. His heart said home was fleeing him, receding into the frontiers of memory. That the ropes and ties of his birth were coming undone, beyond his will or power.
“How the hell do I get away from here?”
John Lourdes looked up quickly. In the doorway stood a man with a gruff face and large teeth and a bushy moustache clipped at the upper lip.
“How do I get back to a god damn steak and good scotch and telephones and movie houses and women who dress like women but drink like men. Mr. Lourdes . . . I’m Harmon Frost.” He pointed through the doorway. “May I?”
“Of course.”
John Lourdes stood, and the men shook hands. Frost looked the room over, John Lourdes’ belongings over.
“That was quite an entrance today. That’s all the good citizens are talking about.” Frost reached into his suitcoat pocket. “Cigarette?”
He took out a pack, kept one for himself then handed it to John Lourdes. “I have a steady supply coming in. That and good pilsner beer. Keep it.”
He lit John Lourdes’ cigarette and then his own. “Does that character on the porch belong to you?”
Frost meant the guide. Hain had taken a blanket and propped it up to make a tent.
“He was my guide from Trebizond.”
“How’s his English?”
“Good enough to pass bad checks anywhere in the States.”
“We can’t have that.”
Frost closed the door.
“That was quite a feat getting the priest out of the Cyclops.”
“Cyclops? What is that?”
“It’s what the rurals here call the prison at Erzurum. The tower . . . the light . . . like a single eye. How was it coming down country?”
“I kept a running report in my notebook. What they call deportations are actually exterminations. I’ve seen dead on the Black Sea . . . outside Erzurum . . . to the north and west of here.”
“Tell me about the priest.”
John Lourdes went over to the window and looked out. “He’s committed. He’s rock hard tough. And smart. He knows what he wants, and he’s on a course to get it.”
“And what does he want?”
“You saw today.”
“I was not there.”
“The flag.”
“He wants a country.”
“Yes.”
“Of course. I was wondering what he wants on a more practical level.”
“I don’t think the priest and the word ‘practical’ spend much time together.”
“Well. Is he workable?”
“Workable?”
“Yes.”
“Workable how?”
“Manageable.”
John Lourdes flicked his cigarette ash out the window. “To what end?”
“I think you understand what I mean.”
“I know what you mean. I just don’t know what it means.”
Harmon Frost ignored this. He started for the door. “Stay close to Malek for the next few days. Keep me appraised of his movements. I’ll be convening a meeting with him soon. You’ll be there.”
“Sir?”
“Yes.”
“Money promised to the guide.”
“Ah . . . a practical man.”
At the door Frost hesitated before heading out. “I want you to understand something. We are not here as liberators. This is about . . . The term I . . . We use . . . is resource control.”
“Sir?”
“Resource control. Everything and anything that can be manufactured, shipped, mined, grown, merchandised, including order and good will.”
He stood watching Harmon Frost exit the compound. John Lourdes’ superior at the Bureau of Investigation, Justice Knox, had a world view that he defined as “the practical application of strategy.” A major tenant of this philosophy—man’s central need and desire was for bureaucracy. Not freedom, not rebellion, not individuality. Man craved effective bureaucracy, the ultimate expression of which was order. And to accomplish this, dispassion to events, situations and people was mandatory.
Resource control—there was an energetic leanness to the phrase, and an intellectual ingenuity fraught with interpretation. It seemed to John Lourdes a determined extension, if not the inevitable evolvement of—the practical application of strategy.
He had wondered if the heart of the world was hardening over centuries. His friend and ally Wadsworth Burr answered, “The world has been the same since Scripture. The only thing that changes is our ability to describe what the world truly is. Peace teaches us nothing, tells us nothing. Peace is the nap between wakeful hours of war. That’s where man presents his true nature.”
John Lourdes stepped out of the doorway. At the far end of the porch sat the guide. By him were his tent and belongings. He drank tea and smoked, and seeing John Lourdes he raised his cup, “The people here kindly gave me tea, and they smiled. Then they told me I had lice.”
John Lourdes leaned against a post supporting the roof, “You were listening, I bet.”
The guide glanced at Harmon Frost, who was walking out the compound gate.
John Lourdes took from his vest pocket an envelope. He tossed it to Hain. The guide quickly went to work counting the lira. “Does he carry that much money on him all the time?”
“What are you gonna do with it?”
The guide raised his cup in a sort of toast, “I’m going to put it in the Bank
of Hain.”
John Lourdes understood and grinned. “Where, of course, you are the president.”
His companion grandly waved a hand, “President . . . cashier . . . And I also wash the marble lavatory.”
“We get you dry cleaned and into a nice suit . . . And goddamn . . . you’re an American.”
At the far end of the compound John Lourdes saw the priest and a number of Armenian men follow Alev Temple into the sunlight between the dispensary and hospital.
“That relief worker and the priest are very close. Families very close. I heard.”
John Lourdes squatted down next to the guide. He took a cigarette from the pack Frost had given him, then reached for Hain’s pipe.
“I have a job for you.”
He used the burning tobacco in the pipe to light his cigarette.
“There will be money.”
“The job?”
John Lourdes’ eyes went toward the hospital. “The priest.”
“You have suspicions?”
“I have concerns.”
“I am to be your eyes, then.”
“When I cannot be.”
“I understand, efendi.” He then pointed.
Alev Temple was walking back up from the hospital alone. John Lourdes stood and walked down from the porch to meet her.
“Malek wanted to see the wounded . . . and the children.”
“I’m sorry,” said John Lourdes.
“Why?”
“For not being honest with you at the boat.”
She put a hand on his arm as a way of saying it was all right. “By the way, you are invited to dinner at Doctor Ulster’s.”
“Are you to be there?”
“I invited you.”
She then took John Lourdes by the arm and walked him off to where she felt confident they would not to be overheard.
“After dinner . . . men will come. Friends of the priest. They will want you to go with them.”
“You are asking me, for them.”
“Yes.”
“And do you know why?”
“I was not entrusted with that.”
e i g h t e e n
ITH DARKNESS, AGAIN came the artillery bombardment. The lightning from their barrels marked the night. A grove they shelled was burning out of control, row upon row of branches crackling into extinction. John Lourdes studied the exchanges as he shaved. Most of the shooting came from the Turkish quarter, the Armenian offering only occasional and controlled counterfire.
Before entering Ulster’s cottage, he undid his shoulder holster and hung it over a bench on the porch. His shirt was wrinkled but clean, his hair combed. As grace was said, he stared at the table, at the plates and silverware and napkins neatly folded. When the doctor had put an amen to the prayer, his wife said, “Are you all right, John?”
What he truly felt he did not express. “I haven’t sat at a table with plates and forks and—”
He stopped and just sat there.
“May I?” said Alev to their host.
Dr. Ulster nodded.
She rose and went to a makeshift breakfront and from a cabinet took a bottle of whiskey and poured a glass. This she set before John Lourdes.
“Thank you,” he said.
After dinner, Alev Temple joined John Lourdes, who sat on the porch as he awaited the arrival of the men who would come for him. He smoked, and sipped the whiskey left in his glass. An occasional volley of gunfire overtook the stillness. They sat at the edge of the light from a lamp inside a window. Their shadows fell about their feet only to slip away into the dark. It was she who spoke first.
“I had this dream. I’ve had it a few times. I catch a firefly. You know . . . fireflies. I have it cupped in my hand and I peek at it through a little space I create between my two thumbs. Its tail flashes on and off. It is like a tiny heart beating in this cave of my making.”
He listened. He went to sip from his drink, but did not. “Coming down country,” he said, “was very bad. Very bad.”
They were quiet again. She watched him smoke, he found comfort in the watching. In her eyes the lamplight caught like the firefly she dreamt of in her hands. She again was the first to speak.
“They say nothing is promised, but it would be wonderful if it were.”
“My mother used to say ‘the deeper the burden, the higher the beauty.’”
“I was sleeping at the German Mission orphanage the other night. And lying in bed I thought of my parents. And how I was now an orphan.”
“I thought of home today.”
“You mean that large state near California? Texas is near California?”
He looked into her unmarked smile. She had made him laugh. And she laughed also. As he drank the whiskey, she pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them. There they sat in the finely cast shadows until John Lourdes spoke, “I need to solicit your help.”
He took from his shirt the pocket notebook. He opened it to a page where he had the letter tucked away.
“We took this from a Turkish soldier on route to Van. I had it translated. And there are notes I kept of all that happened or we saw. I would like you to make copies of it. Keep at least one. If anything should befall me, send my notebook to this gentleman.” He had written Wadsworth Burr’s name and address on a page he included in the envelope with the letter.
“Would you do that?”
“You knew you were giving me this before you came to dinner.”
He did not get a chance to answer. “They’re here,” he said.
She looked across the compound. Three men in black coats stood near the gate lamps. John Lourdes rose and finished his whiskey. He walked over to the bench and took up his holster. He slipped on the shoulder strap and belted it.
As they walked to the gate, she said, “I’ll make the copies, John.”
“Yes,” he said, “I had planned to give you the notebook.”
The men kept to the shadow side of the gate and spoke to Alev Temple in Armenian. Two carried rifles. The young man who happened to be in charge, a Mr. Zadian, did not. He had a bony, hard face, and he was already bald.
“I am the one who organized with Mr. Baptiste in Constantinople to get the priest here,” said Mr. Zadian. “Will you come?”
The streets were a warren of shadows and incoming shells and riflefire and Mr. Zadian kept close to the building walls for protection. They proceeded down a narrow causeway of alleys making themselves as much of the dark as possible. They were a few dozen yards from the barricades and John Lourdes could make out that most of the gunfire was from the military barracks on Toprak-Kala Hill.
The passage of every corner posed its own threat, and when they arrived at a long, empty lot that had to be crossed Mr. Zadian had the party halt. He then whistled and from the ruins of a gray warehouse across the way appeared a small and angular boy leading a pointy headed dog.
The boy answered with a whistle and Mr. Zadian said to John Lourdes, “When we start across do not stop no matter who might fall.”
He then whistled again, and the boy kneeled. He had the dog by the neck and he patted him hard then he let the beast loose.
The damn thing took off like a shot across that field with tin cans tied to his neck by long ropes. A wall of gunfire tried to chase that rattle and clang as the dog darted past rubble, his legs moving so they hardly left puffs of dust in their wake.
Mr. Zadian gave the signal and the men sprinted across that open lot, keeping low to the ground and behind the gunfire. When they made the next street there was the dog with a squat fellow in a long coat. The creature’s chest was heaving, and damn if he didn’t look like he was near ready to have at it again.
Just up from the corner they approached a shed door where armed men stood guard. Mr. Zadian turned to John Lourdes, “Tomorrow . . . people will come and look for the bullets, and we will melt the lead and brass to make our own. That . . . and the dog. What is the word in English to describe these things?”
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There was a lot he could have said. Being at the wrong end of the hill, for one. “Improvising,” John Lourdes told him.
They entered the building. It was dark except for a light emanating up through a hole in the floor where Mr. Zadian started down a set of rickety stairs. John Lourdes was motioned to go next, then the two men with rifles followed. He found himself in a tunnel tall enough for a man to stand in upright.
The tunnel went off in tangent directions. At the bottom of the stairs was a kerosene lamp that Mr. Zadian picked up. John Lourdes followed him down a hacked-out corridor that had been cut so narrow his shoulders scraped the sides of the tunnel. It was damp, and every time a shell landed nearby the earth shuddered and the men stopped. They stood close around the dusty and trembling light until the dirt seeping from the roof above their heads went still. It was then they resumed breathing and followed the jiggering light into the darkness.
They came to another roughly hammered together stairway and John Lourdes was ushered up it into large room the light filled. It was mud brick, with a second-story loft. There was a table in the room with a lamp on it. About a dozen men, including Malek, sat in chairs or on the floor, or stood with their backs against the wall. Mr. Zadian pointed to the table and offered, “Help yourself.”
On the table was lavash and cheeses and gata bread and wine and cups and a bottle Mr. Zadian held up. “Vodka made from cornel berries . . . If you have such a taste.”
“Vodka sounds about right.”
They poured him a polite but lethal glass, which he raised in toast. “Gentlemen . . . To your health, and your future.”
Mr. Zadian translated. The men nodded, and they raised their glasses.
John Lourdes took a healthy swig of their home brew and the men watched to see how he’d handle it. It had that same clear and wonderful burn that came from hard-core tequila or mescal. John Lourdes wiped his mouth. “Tell your friends here they ought to come to Texas. And bring the recipe.”
He put the glass down. He took out a cigarette. He looked at the priest. “Now that the pleasantries are done . . . Let’s talk why I’m here.”
Mr. Zadian translated. The priest said, “Was I right about him?”
