by Mike Bond
Behind the overturned buses was a space with gleaming concertina wire and sandbagged positions with fifty calibers. A mujihadeen checked Rosa's papers and spoke on the radio while she sat quietly on a sandbag and it seemed as if the whole cool heavy night weighted down her neck and shoulders. She let it wash over her, told herself she would do this one last thing and no more. It would be enough and if it weren't, she'd tell them she'd given up.
The mujihadeen came back. “You really need to go?”
“My father's in a basement by the Sacre-Coeur.”
“There's surely people there...”
“The building's empty. He's confused, doesn't understand, won't leave.” She looked down, at the mujihadeen's dirty yellow-blue running shoes, how they wouldn't stand still on the ground littered with empty cartridges and cigarette butts.
“They're animals,” he said, “over there. Shot a Palestinian girl last night. Twenty-three, going over to look for food.”
“She looked up into his fair, troubled eyes. “You remind me of my brother.”
“How was he?”
“Very sweet.” She stepped round him past the barricade and down the middle of the wide, bludgeoned avenue. Now she was in Christian rifle range, a Muslim woman rushing toward them with a bundle of something.
She was almost running but it took forever, lugging the loaded bedspread, tripping on chunks of stone, shreds of metal, a dead cat, broken bricks.
The blasted chassis of a car crouched against the Christian curb like a chastised dog. The muzzles of the Christian guns followed her to the first line of smashed cars and concrete. Behind this barricade were Phalange who checked her papers and looked into the bedspread. The captain, younger than the others, with a burn scar across his cheek, took out the clock.
“It was my mother's,” she protested.
“You know I can't let it through.”
“It's for my father, to give him a sense of time.”
“Better having no time these days.”
“That's why he's so mixed up.”
“My mother won't eat,” he said, “because she's afraid we're running out of food. Things are hard but we have food … but she won't eat.”
“Make her exercise. We spend all day crouched in our basements –”
“If she'd just go up to Jounié. She has a sister there.”
“Can you lend me a flashlight? They took mine.” She pointed behind, at the Muslim lines.
He sucked in a breath. “I can't.”
“Please? As soon as I've seen my father I'll bring it back. And pick up my clock.”
“What about my batteries?”
“I'll charge your batteries.”
“How soon?”
She smiled, seeing his face light up. “Two hours?”
He unbuckled the flashlight from his belt. “I'll be here.”
She climbed the steep street past the Hotel Dieu Hospital and the Hotel Alexandre. It was so strange to see the buildings undamaged, cars in the streets, the fighting almost distant like a summer storm.
She went down l’Indépendence and across to Fouad Chehab at Tabariss. Now the guns were louder and she could hear the crack of individual shells against stone. The sky above the black buildings was pink, red, yellow. A rifle fired from a roof and she heard it hit on the Muslim side.
The big front gates of the Sacré-Coeur had been blasted open and there was nothing in the courtyard. She went up to the first floor and through the corridors till she found four nun's habits on knobs, stuffed one into the bedspread and went out through a side door into Youssef Hani, turning right toward the Life Building, the Place des Martyres three blocks on her left, across the Green Line, Mohammed and his men only three blocks further.
Unless they'd pulled back. If they had, it wouldn't matter what happened to the snipers at the Life Building. Mohammed would be beyond their range, beyond hers.
A Katyusha struck in the next block before she could cover her ears and the wham seemed to slice off the top of her head. She crouched on steps going down to a cellar, crying and clasping her ears till the pain dimmed. She took off her gown and put the black habit on. It was dark and confining, like wearing chains; her body couldn't breathe. She hid the bedspread under the stairway and went to Nahr Ibrahim, looking down it to the Place des Martyres where the gut-shot man had fallen, two hours ago, in the glow of the Amal tank.
Mortars were falling there now. She took the trench across Nahr Ibrahim, the habit cloying at her knees. There were Phalange in the basements going up to the Life Building and machine guns at both ends of the street. Bullets and rockets kept ricocheting down into the street. A Phalange grabbed her arm. “No more.”
“My father's in that basement, by the Life Building.”
“A 240 went all the way to the basement before it exploded. There's nothing there, sister.”
“He could have moved to the next basement … the Life Building. I've got to try.”
“I've been there. It's just storage.”
“Storage?”
“You can't stay here, sister. Please.”
She pulled the two halves of the crucifix from her habit. “See what they did? They broke the tree on which the Lord died. But we will join it back together. I swear to you, on this broken cross...”
He backed away a little, watching her, slightly raised the rifle. “I can't let you in, sister. You go home now. Back up to Sacré-Coeur.”
She scanned the Life Building, the other streets coming in, all guarded. With a chuckle another rocket left the top floor, swooshing toward Muslim lines. The key to Mohammed. She backed away. “You should have more pity.”
“Don't beat a dead horse...”
She went round the corner and halfway up the back street till she found a sewer manhole but she couldn't pry it open. At the corner of Nahr Ibrahim she was back in the view of the Phalange at the Life Building but here was an open manhole with steel rungs down into moldy cold darkness. At the bottom, ten feet below the street, tunnels led off in five directions. In one direction, toward the Life Building, was a tiny distant light. Not using the flashlight, she crawled toward it. Tendrils of mud and wire hanging from the ceiling dragged across her face, snatched her hair. The sandy muck at the bottom was jammed with plastic bottles and plastic bags in clumps of twigs and broken glass bottles and again something dead – another rat, she thought. Her fingers bumped a fat, soft, short stick that she tried to pull out of the way but it was someone's hand.
She pulled back in pure terror then realized it was swollen, dead. That was the smell. And the reason why she hadn't been able to see more light was that he was blocking it.
She lay trying to catch her breath, the top of the tunnel heavy on her back, cold muck soaking her chest. She could hardly breathe, her lungs wouldn't open.
She'd have to slow her pulse somehow and calm down but she was dying from no air. She had to breathe, let the thick cold air go slowly in and out. Slowly, she told herself, feeling the blood slacken, the arteries relax. It's just a bad idea that you're dying.
She crawled closer and tried to peer round the dead man. The light was from a wider tunnel beyond him, one that angled toward the Life Building. Taking a grip with her feet and knees at the sides of the tunnel she squirmed hard against him; pushing his shoulders, his blubbery face against hers.
He wouldn't move. She squirmed backwards, inched the habit up round her hips and finally over her shoulders, and crawled forward dragging it behind her. She jammed tight against him, forcing her shoulders forward along him, her belly against his, his soft slippery flesh rolling against her, bubbling gas each time she pressed herself along him, making her hold her breath against the horrible stink. It wouldn't go away and finally she just breathed it, squeezing herself along his wet bulbous mass, pushing the air from her lungs and
his to inch her way down him. She caught on his belt buckle and it was too narrow to breathe and she couldn't back up with his face in her crotch and hers in his and she realized someday someone would find them like this, two skeletons enmeshed, and the terror of it jammed her forward past his fat legs, free, gasping and free, dragging her legs away from him, down the tunnel into the light.
14
SHE SQUIRMED to the edge of the larger tunnel, lay sucking in air. There was a light up ahead, out of sight, and one far behind, barely glimmering. A black cable ran along the tunnel. She waited a few minutes longer but no one appeared and she squirmed into the larger tunnel, dirt tumbling down each time a shell hit overhead.
The light was a bulb pinned halfway up on one side. Beyond it was a wide faint corridor that led to an open chamber loud with the fighting above. Voices were coming down, boots thumping wooden stairs, a flashlight darting and stabbing. Four men came into the basement and in their light she could see a series of open-faced rooms stacked with artillery shells, rockets, jerry cans of fuel, crates of rifle cartridges. The men loaded rocket shells on wooden frames on their backs, slid tumplines up their foreheads, and climbed slowly, unsteadily, back up the stairs.
Had the dead man in the tunnel stunk also of cigarettes? It seemed that he had but she couldn't remember. She scrambled back up the lit tunnel and squeezed up to the dead man. In his shirt pocket were cigarettes but no matches. Again she squashed herself along him, wormed a hand into a trouser pocket. A box of matches that rattled when she shook it. She crawled back to the main tunnel, checked the matches in its light. Four, skinny and blue-headed in their little cardboard box.
In the main basement she unscrewed jerry cans and tipped them over, the foul liquid soaking her feet, rising up her socks, sinking into the soil and sliding out into the ammo rooms, and with each new mortar hit above she thought it was people coming down. Trying not to breathe the fumes, she lugged one jerry can back along the main tunnel, pouring it out, then up her side tunnel, squeezing past the man. She dragged the can behind her and all the way to the end, poured the rest of the gasoline down the tunnel, and climbed the steel rungs up to the street.
It was quieter, tracers departing and arriving, the skies darker. She went back down the ladder, lit a match and tossed it into the tunnel. There was quiet whuff then a hiss that slowly died out.
She did not dare to look for fear it would blow in her face. But when she did there was only darkness. She fell against the ladder, felt the sting of tears but they wouldn't come. She couldn't go down there again. It would explode any second. She'd done her best.
She opened the matches. Three. She tossed another in and it huffed and went out. She squirmed back into the tunnel toward the dead man.
It was faster this time, she kept telling herself. The man was easier to crawl past, most of the gas had been pushed out of him. The main tunnel was slippery with gasoline and she was afraid of knocking the light bulb down into it, which might blow it.
There was no one in the basement. She poured out part of another jerry can and carried it back to the main tunnel, cautious not to bump the concrete, cause a spark. She poured more gasoline in the main tunnel and the rest up the small tunnel and over the man.
This is it, she told herself. If it doesn't blow this time I'm leaving.
There was no change in the street. She lit the third match but the stem snapped and the match fell on the ground. She snatched it and tossed it into the tunnel but it had gone out.
Voices far down the tunnel. Someone yelling? She held the last match carefully, by the head, scratched it across the side of the box and tossed it in. A great tongue of flame roared out of the tunnel and leaped across the sewer main and seared the far wall. There was another roar, much deeper, growing, thundering – and again the tongue of flame lashed out, the far wall cracking. The earth shook, everything moving six inches one way – the concrete, the ladder, herself – then six inches back. Shells were going off like rocket launchers, the earth grumbling and banging. She darted back up the ladder and the whole first two floors of the Life Building were afire, trapped men screaming, pieces of the upper stories falling into flames with each new blast.
She ran to the stairwell where she'd left the bedspread, tugged the muck from her hair, changed her clothes for some in the bedspread, too large in the bust and shoulders, rinsed her hair in a puddle and tried to wash the gasoline from her hands and arms. She pulled on the habit again and went quickly back through the Christian side and down past the Hotel Alexandre and the Hotel Dieu Hospital. A Phalange truck was bringing in wounded, men wrapped in sheets. “Oh dear,” she called to a soldier. “What happened?”
He glanced at her habit. “An ammo dump. On the Green Line.”
“Oh, how I hate them!”
“Not the Muslims, sister. Accident, apparently.”
She dropped her head. “How many?”
“Thirty. So far.”
“May the dear Lord be with them.”
“All very well for you to say that, sister. These were all men with families. Wives and kids. You don't love anyone, just God, as you imagine Him to be. You're like those fedayeen over there – they think they're going to Heaven.”
“Don't criticize what you don't understand,” she snapped.
Before she reached the Christian side of the Museum she ditched the habit. Someone came out of the shadows by the big barricade and she saw it was the captain.
She handed him the flashlight. “I didn't even use it.”
“So my batteries?” He glanced up as a shell went over like a great bird, hit out in Dora somewhere. “They shoot at bloody anything,” he said.
“They think Allah's going to guide it.”
He nudged her toward the darkness, where a tank crouched.
“You'll let me through the line again?” she said, reaching her hands up round his neck. It was smooth and young and his hair was short in her fingers all the way up under his beret. Her breasts were itching to be against him and her nails wanted to rip down his back and she could feel him inside already, like he'd be, hot and hard and pumping faster and faster. She dragged him down beside the silent tank, shoving up his shirt as he tore his trousers open and she lay back and let him come in slowly then hard, deeper and deeper till she was sure he was there but he kept coming deeper and she exploded, saw the dragon's tongue of flame, heard the thunder and the screams, felt peace.
“FRÜHSTÜCK!” Knuckles hammered the compartment door; the light flickered, flashed on. The door snapped open, a steward put a breakfast tray on the foot of Neill’s bed.
He sat up rubbing the back of his neck. Dark cold shapes flitted past the window. He found his watch, put it on, forgot the time and looked again: five after six. Shivering, he drew the blankets round his shoulders, started to pour his coffee but it had not all run down through the filter, so he waited watching through the rain-beaded glass the cold, flat landscape, the few distant lights, imagined people getting up, farmers and their burly kerchiefed wives, the smell of coffee and coal fires.
It's the girl, he realized, that's why I feel so bad. He'd been with her in the dream. Ardent and slender and brown-eyed, long dark hair. Naked in the glow of the street lamp. Layla.
Was it losing her that had broken his heart? Made him such a cynical bastard who couldn't even love his wife and kids and had no friends? No, that's not entirely true. He set the filter aside and sipped the coffee.
The train's wheels wailed into a curve. And miles to go, he thought, wondering why. Something shone on the pillow and he brushed at it – a silver hair. Can't be mine, he decided, mine's not that gray. These aren't clean sheets.
But the sheets were newly washed and starched. He hadn't seen Layla for many years but in the dream they hadn't grown older, both of them beyond ecstasy to be naked together after so long missing each other, her skin, her li
ps, her hair, her sighs, the softness inside her, her passionate young lips seeking his. In his dream three men had broken into the room, tall and drunk, tripping over the bed and grabbing Layla. He fought them off, fought them into the hall and beat them one by one. But when he'd gone back, Layla was gone.
Blankets round his shoulders he sat drinking his coffee as Bratislava's ramparts took form against the day.
15
ROSA WAS breathing hard, a wildness in her eyes that made Mohammed want to protect and reassure her. Seeing her pretty, roundish face with its red high cheeks and olive eyes, her smooth young brow, her white teeth and red lips, her dark hair coiling down round her neck into the blush of her chest, it was hard to imagine what she'd just done.
Her breathing calmed. “Thought I'd die, that tunnel.” She closed her eyes, leaned back, air filling her lungs. “You never know what a joy it is to breathe till you can't.”
“I almost drowned once, when I was a child. Since then breathing seems almost holy.”
“What happened to the Christian snipers, on the top?”
“It was so hot up there their ammo was blowing.”
She shivered or shrugged, looked away.
“They were using the Life Building as a pivot and you took it from them, and now they've backed off their attack for fear we'll go round them. It was very brave, what you did.”
“Bravery's nothing. Only winning matters.”
He punched the side of his palm against the back of his neck, loosening the muscles, rubbed them. “You still haven't told me what you think that means.”
“Palestine.”
“And Lebanon?”
“You can tell Christians and Jews apart? After they've warred against us for how many thousand years?”
“We can't drive them all from Lebanon. From Palestine. Not yet.”
