She opens her eyes and puts a hand on my cheek.
“I don’t know, Jay, but it’s a good face.”
“Why should I believe you?You’ve got me sitting along a dead river.”
“A pretty river with no fish. Sleep with me tonight?”
“Sleeping with you is like being on a river with no fish.”
“You don’t mind the way we do it?”
“We don’t do it.”
“But you understand, right? Jay, let me tell you the story tonight.”
“Where’s it going?”
“You’ll see. But it won’t finish tonight. It can’t.” Brian slogs through the river toward us.
“Any bites?”
“A few. The lures must be wrong.”
Alija laughs.
“Looks like sheep again. I’m tired of eating sheep. Alija, you guys gotta get some more animals on this land.”
Night. A breeze tugs from the west, and clouds slip across the moon. Voices. The creak of the last donkey cart home. A boy giggles, and the lights go out in this village we have found. Fires in stoves, white smoke curling through the sky. It is a good night, the villagers think. The day has been fine, and the darkness is crisp. The guerrillas are hiding, and MUP will not come tonight. No, they will not come. Even the MUP need rest. Maybe tomorrow they will come. Someone may die tomorrow. But not tonight; there is just the feeling that this night will pass quietly. Men with rifles gather. Their cigarette embers glow. One patrols there, another there. Nothing moving. The roads are still. The fields are quiet. I told you nothing will happen tonight. The children sleep. The wives wait in beds for their men, shadows pulling back covers; skin touches skin and it seems like a moment long ago, before all this, but then a distant soundjust a muffle really, but it hangs out there and the men say, no, no, not tonight, maybe tomorrow but not tonight. Alija forgets to tell me her story, the one of cuts and bruises, the one that never ends. She sleeps on my shoulder. Her body runs alongside mine as if in a Klimt painting; her breasts brush my arm, her belly skims my hip, her feet glide along my calf. Our bodies, two countries, enmeshed, folded, curved at a border of bone and skin. How do you cross such a border and do no harm? Borders are long and there are many places to breach, but where, you wonder where, if at all? Down the hall in this little house we have found for the night, Brian sleeps in a scattered storm of notebooks, papers, maps, and at least one bottle of raki. He is fish-less but filed, his story sent across invisible miles to the computer of an editor who doesn’t read.
Out the window, beyond the cool fields and checkpoints, where the flatlands begin their ascent, Milan is sleeping too, or maybe he’s perched on a ridge and peering through an infrared scope. There is little starlight. Not much to see. But snipers look for shimmers in the terrain, and some can spot a breath when it’s not even winter. Rolo, where is he on this night? Camped and in a sleeping bag. A stone hidden in a pocket. So many restless creatures out there. Atoms spinning. And ghosts. Maybe the Romans are crossing the perfect bridge that spans Alija’s dead, pretty river. They have their masons and their stone cutters, their generals and their plebes, and they move with the slight clatter of swords and shields, lanterns dangling before them and leading the way. The real or imagined dateman, where is he? In the mountains above the cloud line, he sits in small firelight hidden amid rock. This is what I think. He scratches his beard and waits. It is cold, but he has patience. He senses new energy. What does he want? How will he stir the pattern of things? But the village men say nothing will happen tonight. They say it under the covers to their wives. Nothing will happen. The land itself sometimes demands slumber. The most violent wars have unpredictable moments of peace, as if the world has said enough. Enough. Such pauses are few and brief, the trance passes and men and armies re-gather their hate and the columns move along the crooked roads and into the wheat. But you remember the quiet night. It is the only thing you can say is yours, even though you know it is only borrowed.
I cannot sleep. I can only imagine what I cannot see. My nights go by in hours like this. I am a restless scribe. When this began I don’t know. Pills don’t work, and booze is not the trick. It is only near dawn that my body finds its heaviness. I drift. You know that blissful drift, the one when you realize your next conscious thought will be in a room of morning light. You cross over, disappear from the world. When I was a boy, I tried to capture that moment. I forced myself to stay awake, hoping I could transport my waking mind into the sleep world. I could study it. I could live alongside the goblins and eroticism of a boy’s dreams and touch that woman roaring by in her Cadillac and then stopping in front of me as a high heel clicked on the sidewalk and a long leg curved out the door. I walked toward her. I never saw her face. She hasn’t come back in decades. I miss her. They say that when you die, the hidden faces in your dreams become known. They’re your heaven or hell. I drift, and the night recedes. The gray light of dawn speckles the walls. Alija turns and curls away from me. I trace her spine with a finger. Our borders widen. The donkey cart is in spin again. The village men with their rifles have returned, tiny spoons clinking in their tea. The wives are happy. The fires lit. The wheat fields are dewy and slick. The night passed as promised. There’s a bang on the door.
“Yo,” says Brian. “Time for some breakfast.”
We splash water and dress and soon are on the road.
“Let’s go see Vijay,” says Brian.
“I can’t handle him this early.”
“He knows shit, Jay.”
“He’s a boor, but I like him,” says Alija.
“He talks — “
“Incessantly.”
“Yes.”
“He’s got a few rebel contacts.”
“And when has he ever provided them?”
“Jay, you gotta work the dude,” says Brian.
Vijay’s a good man; he’s just a yakker. He edits a small weekly. The MUP shut him down every three or four days, and, when they’re not doing that, they’re kicking the shit out of Vijay’s reporting staff His English is British aristocracy washed through American street prose. Words flying and wisping, sharp-edged and rounded. Vijay wants a reprieve from this place and is hoping for a fellowship in the States, some “Ethics and the Press in War-Torn Countries” euphemism sponsored by journalist foundations looking to get academic with the world’s nastiness. Why did my profession start taking itself so seriously? Fellowships are good to a point, but they spawn self-indulgence. I don’t want to get too academic here, don’t want to fall into the trap or become the canard myself, but hyperbole is killing the essence of simple, dogged reporting. Look at all those chattering people on all those talk shows all jousting one another and saying nothing. Nothing. Sunday morning in the States is a Revenge of the Journalists movie. They’re everywhere doing everything but journalism. They speculate, they ponder, they prattle in polemics. A monkey with a thesaurus can do it. I’ve never seen these hacks and pundits in the places I am. I only see them in TV studios, hair stiff as frost, pulling on their baritones, waddling around in makeup, talking about the places I am as if they know what they’re talking about. You have to laugh. It’s so grand and absurd to listen to these poodles whine breathlessly on because they’re too lazy to do any real reporting. What happened to the purity? Muddled and corrupted. I am not bitter, though. This is the way of things, an evolution, I suppose, disturbing in the disturbing kind of way that suggests the premonitions of banshees to come. Yet, I must admit, I’ve written Vijay letters of recommendation to a few East Coast institutions. He’s a hustler, and he deserves a break from the bullets and the burnings. Let him walk among the ivy, eat cold danish and drink weak coffee, let him spill his horrors and his secrets and perhaps bed a few academics before his stipend runs out.
“Jay, Brian, Alija. How wonderful to see you again. What is going on? What is happening? Two American journalists such as yourselves in my office at the same time. Am I missing something, Jay? Where should I dispatch my staff? The tin
y war is growing with new secrets every day.”
He laughs and his eyebrows dance.
“Nothing’s going on. We’re here to chat. What’s news?”
“Jay, please, a little foreplay, huh? My office is dreary today. Let’s go next door for a drink.”
He slaps my back — “Ahh, Jay, it’s so good to see you again” — and we funnel out his door. “Jay, I’ve heard from the Kennedy School. There may be something for me in the spring. Do you know that fellowship? It’s a good one. I have friends in Boston. The home of the Tea Party. Jay, Jay, Jay, so good to see you, and we’re having our own little Boston Tea Party right here in these mountains. Historic things, Jay. Historic things.”
I can see Brian mimicking Vijay from behind. Alija joins in. He rattles on. A touch overweight, with flecks of gray in his goatee, Vijay moves in gentle, almost separate, rhythms as if the grid of neurons connecting his limbs and mind is slightly off kilter. It’s barely noticeable, but Vijay never seems to walk in sync, yet he yaks so much that it all somehow comes together and he glides forth like a gregarious sailboat in spotty winds. We cross the street to his favorite cafe, and Vijay heads for his table. It wobbles in a crack of sunlight beneath a speaker playing a hybrid of techno-pop and Turkish funeral dirge.
“Let’s have espresso and brandy.”
“How are you, Vijay?” says Brian.
“I’m well, considering. The MUP come too often and smash up my office.”
“Why don’t they shut you down?”
“Haven’t you heard? This is a democracy. A free press is welcome. There’s a sheen of respectability over this madness, Brian.”
“Jesus, Vijay, you are ready for Harvard.”
“How many dead in the last two weeks?”
“Nobody knows. But there’s a lot of freshly turned earth out in the villages. Alija, any word from your brother?”
“Nothing.”
“If he is in the mountains, he’s safe for now. The rebels aren’t good fighters yet, but they know the land.”
“We watched them ambush a MUP checkpoint the other night.”
“They want a war of body counts. If one or two MUP are killed every couple of days, that begins to add up, and maybe the MUP will get tired of fighting what they cannot see.”
“Or burn down a lot more villages.”
“The more likely outcome.”
A reed-thin kid in an apron brings our drinks. Vijay swirls his brandy and sips his espresso. One, two three, four ... I count the seconds. Vijay often departs from events at hand and reminisces over his first brandy. Five.
“I danced with a countess once,” he says. “I was a child. Very small. Things were prosperous, and my father took us on vacation to the Croatian coast. A beautiful coast of scattered islands. We were at a little restaurant eating cala-mari and looking at the sea. As a child, Jay, I loved calamari. Isn’t that odd? After I ate, I whirled around the floor to the tune of this tiny band. I must have been very cute, because suddenly a woman appeared and took me by the hands and danced with me. She was beautiful. Her hair pulled back, her skin brown, and gold on her wrist. She laughed and hugged me when the music stopped and went away. My father later told me she was a countess from a country I no longer remember. I had a picture, but I must have lost it.”
“The closest I got to royalty was a homecoming queen,” says Brian.
“How about you, Jay?”
“I only ever danced with girls. Unadorned but lovely girls.”
“I never danced,” says Alija. “Between religious customs and the MUP, Friday nights aren’t much fun.”
“Jay will dance with you,” says Vijay. “When all this is over, Jay, you must promise to dance with Alija.”
“I’m sure Alija would rather dance with someone younger.”
“You’re not so bad,” he chides. “But there is a bit more gray in your hair. Am I right?”
“You have a cruel eye, Vijay.”
“Yes, I do.” He laughs.
“Vijay, what’s happening out there? Don’t be coy.”
“Has talk of countesses and homecoming queens run its course? Another brandy, huh?”
“Vijay.”
“There are new personalities.”
“Official? Unofficial?”
“I would say more freelance.”
“Mercenaries?”
“In the mountains. A few retired Special Forces I’m told. They read those Georgia magazines you Americans have with stories about bullets, hardware, and trajectory. They’re paid well.”
“Training?”
“What else?”
“How many guerrillas?”
“Five, six thousand.”
“That’s not enough.”
“Not to win a war, but to provoke a larger one.”
“NATO,” says Alija.
“Kaboom.”
“The West can’t have the Balkans go nuts again. Poor Europe would have a collective heart attack. Remember Sarajevo. No one was paying attention and death was piling up, and then a mortar lands in a marketplace and there’s bodies all over. TV swooped in and people had to take notice. Suddenly Bosnia went prime time. It’s like slowly adding weights. One day, the scales tip.”
“They didn’t tip in Rwanda.”
“Leave Africa aside.”
“Naturally.”
“One day there’ll be one village burned too many.”
“You’re stating the obvious,” says Brian. “We know this. We’ve seen the Chevy Suburbans. The people at the U.S. mission here say they’re just monitoring things. That’s bullshit. They’re more active. Have you seen these guys?”
“Not personally, no.”
“How do you know, then?”
“My guerrilla friends. Don’t be so naive, Brian. I grew up with many of the armed men in the mountains.”
“Why aren’t you with them?”
“We each have our special task. Jay has a friend in the mountains too, don’t you, Jay? I keep waiting for that story. Jay knows a secret man. What does he say? So many new personalities in the mountains. Official. Unofficial.”
I look into my espresso. Alija glances away. I wasn’t going to talk about Rolo here. I wasn’t going to talk about Rolo any where. Vijay is one of those wonderful creatures of war, those guys who navigate chaos and somehow survive and even prosper. He’s a chimera, a man of grafted allegiances, spread out and playing a game, watching characters flit across his landscape. He could be your best friend and be sleeping with your enemy at the same time. I don’t want to get too cynical or paranoid, a most annoying trait among hacks, but Vijay, as much as I enjoy his nostalgic asides about countesses and seashores, is as shifting and elusive as smoke. Indecipherable.
“I see we have come to a lull in the conversation,” says Vijay.
“Hey, where can I fish around here?”
“The best rivers are west toward the mountains.”
“What else is in the mountains?”
“I think you mean who, don’t you, Jay?”
“You’re so precise in your English.”
“It’s a crafty language. So many little alleys.”
“So?”
“There is a guest from far away.”
“You sound like a parable. This guy real or imagined?”
“Terribly real.”
“Terribly?”
“The MUP aren’t the biggest problem. The MUP are doing what they’ve always done. But their ideology is gone. They hate, but they’ve lost the poetry of why. The MUP are working designs of the past world. They don’t fit into the new one, and there is a new world, Jay. This man has ideas. He wants war against a way of life, not against an army. He and others like him want your soul. These little mountains are a proxy diversion for him. He’s looking for followers. I love the word proxy, the way it slices through the mouth. Proxy.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Only a few have seen him.”
“Where’s he from?”
> “There’s much speculation. I really don’t know.”
“What about the dates?”
“I love that allusion. The bearded man and his dates.” “Is it true?”
“Always looking for that nice bit of color, huh, Jay? It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It’s part of the new mystery. I was in some villages the other day. This man is all people are talking about.”
“So,” says Brian, “let me get this straight. There’s some whack job out there with a beard and a bag full of dates who’s decided to stir up a little mischief here? This is good. I like this. Much better than the MUP. I agree with you, Vijay, the MUP have become passe. Their massacres have the taint of redundancy.”
“I like your facetiousness, Brian.”
“Jay was holding back on me.”
“I was going to tell you.”
“Cancel my Fiji vacation. We have jihad in the mountains.”
“It may not be religious. But guys with dates tend to speak immortality.”
“Masquerade religion.”
“Who makes such distinctions? People are inspired by generalities, not specifics.”
“The Muslims here won’t go for it. Holy war won’t sell.”
“This is a land ready for any kind of war, Jay.”
“Vijay’s right,” says Alija. “Why not? Everything else has failed. You tell people they’re part of the West, but you don’t give them the rights of the West. You tell them to be patient and peaceful, but all they get is beaten. Why won’t people look elsewhere?”
“Why haven’t you written about him, Vijay?”
“He’s too dangerous to write about now. Too much still unknown about him.”
“Can we get to him?”
The waiter appears, and Vijay waves him off. Brandy shines in Vijay’s glass. He leans back in his chair. Brian makes some notes and Alija combs her hair and then she and Vijay whisper things. The cafe is filled with young men and girls. They look at one another across sticky tables. Hands hold hands, hands rub cheeks, clicks of brief kisses, smiles and giggles. Cigarettes and espressos and Camparis. This is foreplay for Muslim girls whose fathers want them chaste. The techno-pop-Turkish-funeral-dirge music veers into Blondie, and the cafe taunts the young couples with forbidden sexuality. They are so pretty, and war is upon them. The fighting in the countryside will come to the city, and all the virgins will be scattered, and all their young men, these boys in black leather jackets and scuffed shoes, will have to choose the rifle or the grave or both. Let them linger. Why not? Vijay collects his papers and snaps back a cold espresso. He rises, and we follow his jangled gait out the door and up the sidewalk.
Promised Virgins Page 6
