Blue Damask (15 page)

     Sonnenby had not mentioned that they would be hostile to her.  But he had not been here for fifteen years.  She took another sip.  She could appear to be French, German, or English if she needed to be.  She looked carefully at the pages on the walls for a European language.  There seemed to be as much French as German.  Friend or foe?  She would know soon enough.  She hoped she was worth a ransom.

     She sat quietly with her empty tea cup.  The farmer’s wife sat near her, running prayer beads through her wrinkled fingers.  The doorway filled with men.  She counted five.  They all stared at her, some curious, some afraid.  Two were angry.  The face of the old farmer appeared among them, and after he entered, the rest filed in behind him and lined up against the wall opposite her.

     There was some noise and dust as they settled on the floor.  The farmer’s wife disappeared with her teapot.  No one spoke until the wife was joined by the two other women bearing cups.

     The farmer raised an arm but did not point directly at her.  He said something and she surmised he was giving a rendition of finding her at his well.  When he finished he looked at one of the men and nodded.

     This man looked at Elsa for a long moment before speaking.  He was in his middle years and thin and bearded as they all were.  His tunic and sash were of a finer material than the farmer’s, however.  He wore two gold rings on his fingers and his teeth were better.

     She returned his gaze with an expectant look.

     “
Fraulein
,” he said with a heavy Arabic accent.

     Elsa raised an eyebrow.  The farmer had recognized her German.  “
Ja, mein Herr
?” she answered.

     In fractured German he continued, “You are lost?”

     “I am.”

     “Where did you come from?”

     “A hotel in Damascus.  The one with the many colored awnings.”

     The man turned and translated this exchange with the others.  She saw them nod and relax.  They spoke rapidly among themselves and paused only when the women returned to refill their cups.

     The first one turned back to her.  “We can take you back to that hotel.”

     Elsa did not try to hide her relief.

     Then he asked her, “Did you come here in the black car?”

     Her back stiffened before she could control herself.  She kept her face impassive.  Carefully she answered, “I was their prisoner.”  This was true.  In a way.

     The man translated and there was another wave of murmurs and commentary.  The looks on their faces became suspicious.  One of the men said something angrily and waved a hand at her.  The others raised their voices and the women quietly left the room.  Elsa swallowed hard.

     One of the younger men got up and left the house.  After he was gone the others became silent and just sat, watching her.  The one who spoke German said, after a long pause, “What is your name?”

     “My name is Elsa Schluss.”

     He stared hard at her but said nothing more.  They all waited uncomfortably for what Elsa guessed was at least half an hour.  Then the young man returned, this time with another man in different clothing.  The stranger did not wear the tunic and sash and loose trousers of the farmers, but a western style collared shirt and buckled pants.  His beard was shorter and neatly trimmed and he wore round spectacles.  More importantly he was carrying a briefcase.  He greeted the farmer and his guests politely without taking his eyes from her.

     Elsa waited.

     “Do you speak English?” He asked. “You were with the English in the car.”

     “I do.”

     “Can you read it as well?”

     “I can.”

     The man sat down across from her with the others and rested the briefcase on his knees.  “My name is Emil Farmadi.  I was given this briefcase and two others this evening.”   He tapped the case with his index finger and said, “All these documents are in English.”  He stared hard at her.

     She frowned.  She had first assumed the briefcase was hers, recovered from the sedan, but her notes were in German, not English.  “May I see?” She asked, holding out a hand.

     He did not answer but opened the briefcase and removed several files.  “I can speak English,” he said, “But I cannot read it.”  He handed her a file and all the men waited expectantly.

     It was a document stamped with inter-office marks from the British Ministry.  She flipped through the pages.  This file concerned a man named Michael Brisby.  She looked at the other files.  “May I see the others?”

     These files were similar, each with a tab identifying a man by first and last name.  She lifted each one carefully until she found one marked “Henry Sinclair”.  She stopped, trying to keep her face still.  Farmadi noticed the pause.

     “What are they?” he asked.

     “Ministry files.  From the consulate.”

     “Are they files on the villagers?”

     She looked up, pressing her hand hard against the stiff cardstock folders to keep it from trembling.  “No.  They are files on British citizens.”

     He turned his head and translated this to the relief of all the men in the room.  They relaxed and two of them smiled.  The women brought in more tea and a platter of flatbreads and what looked like honey.

     Farmadi nodded.  He tilted his head and asked, “Why were you in their car?”

     Elsa slipped a finger between the files, separating Lord Sonnenby’s from the others.  “I was travelling with a gentleman.  We were separated and I was intended for the hotel.  We were sidetracked and the car stopped.  The men I was with were…”

     “I am aware of what happened to them.  There was no report of a woman in the automobile.”  He was still staring at her and the men chewing the bread and honey paused as if they, too, were waiting for an answer.

     One of the men asked something and Farmadi answered him.  Elsa fingered her files.  Farmadi turned back to her.  “We have disturbed Mister Ahmoud and his family enough for the evening.  It is time to go.”  He put out his hand for the files.  Elsa handed most of them back.

     Farmadi gave her a pointed look and nodded toward her hand.

     “Perhaps I can keep this one,” she said politely with a little smile.

     “Which one is that one?”

     “This one is for someone I know.”

     He blinked at her from behind the spectacles.  Finally he asked, “What is his name?”

     Elsa considered lying to him.  She glanced down at the neatly printed letters on the folder.  But a discovered lie would eliminate her credibility and perhaps her use as a translator.  Perhaps eliminate her use at all.  The British liked to say, “in for a penny, in for a pound.”  She took a short breath.  “Henry Sinclair.” She looked up from the file at Farmadi to see if he recognized the name.  He did.

     “Lord Sonnenby,” he said slowly.  “Your face has gone pale,
fraulein
.”

     Elsa cleared her voice.  “He is the gentleman with whom I was travelling.”

     “You are his wife?”

     She paused long enough for the negative answer to be obvious.  It would be difficult to explain.

     Farmadi nodded as if he understood the pause.  “You are his moll.”

     Elsa did not know that word.  “I am his
therapist
,” she corrected.

     Farmadi did not know that word.  “Is that the correct English word for it?” He asked. “Therapisht?  I will remember.”

     She frowned a little, wondering how important her role in Sonnenby’s life might be to the villagers.  Everyone had a role and a relationship to others.  If you had no place you were an outcast, a criminal.  “Yes,” she told him.  If one looked at the situation in a certain way, then she belonged to Sonnenby.  Like Marshall did, and Davies did.

     “Then you should be returned to him,” Farmadi said, “not to the British.”

     “Is that possible?”  Things were starting to look better.  “Do you know where he is?”

     Farmadi gave her a surprised look.  “Of course I know where he is.  Everyone knows where he is.

     The moon was bright and high in the sky when Farmadi and the other men marched Elsa to the road.  They walked along the dirt track towards the main road for almost an hour.  Elsa’s shoes gave out.  She stumbled along on the broken soles for a few steps before abandoning them.  Her stockings shredded soon after and the gravel bruised her soles.  She did not say anything.

     Farmadi had let her keep Sonnenby’s file and she clutched it tightly as they walked.  The other men murmured quietly in their language as Farmadi led them up the gentle hills and down again.  Elsa stopped looking at the deep shadows of the landscape and the scattered lighter shapes of the whitewashed houses.  She concentrated on her feet and avoiding the larger stones.  Her world narrowed to her feet and the file in her hand.  The stones in the road sent shooting pain up the back of her legs with every step.  As she slowed, the men in front of her had to stop and wait.  Only Farmadi seemed concerned.  The others expressed their annoyance with clicks of their tongues and impatient gestures with their hands.

     “It is not far,
Fraulein
.”

     “That is good to know, Mr. Farmadi.”

     “We will soon have a motorcar to take you the rest of the way.”

     “That will be welcome.”

     He gestured for her to walk in front of him and the other men turned to continue the journey.  She was relieved to see the whitewashed shapes of square buildings ahead as they crested another low hill.

     “I hope that is where the motorcar is,” she murmured.

     “It is.”  Farmadi’s voice came from behind her.

     “And the owner will allow us to borrow it?”

     “He will.  He is my father.  I often use his machine when I go to Damascus.”

     Elsa stood beside the automobile as Farmadi went inside the house to disturb his father.  The other men stood near enough to her to imply that she was under escort, but not close enough for eye contact.  She put the file folder on the boot and leaned on the car’s rear fender as she turned the underside of her foot to the moonlight.

     There were two open wounds on the ball of her foot, and her heel throbbed with bruises.  The cuts stung from the sand and dirt that had been ground into them.  She winced as she put her foot down.  There was nothing she could so about it now.  The other one felt as painful, and though it had not been cut by stones and glass, there was a raised bump where some insect had stung her.

     The door opened and Farmadi emerged with another man who was carrying something heavy.   The strange man opened the boot and put the heavy parcels inside and then returned to the house.  Farmadi passed her a bundle of cloth. She was elated to see two small leather shoes in his other hand.  They were more like ankle slippers or boots than the formed and soled shoes she was used to. These were made with soft leather that slipped over the foot and tied high around the ankle.  She spent some time putting them on before getting into the car because she needed the moonlight to see the laces and the bench seat of the sedan was too dark. Farmadi opened the back door for her and waited.

     “
Fraulein.
  We should leave soon.”

     “Yes, I am sorry for the delay.”

     “No, please finish, but hurry.  The only thing that travels faster than this motorcar is news.  I would like to be gone before the village learns that you were here.”

     Elsa looked up at him.  “Am I in danger?”

     Farmadi looked uncomfortable.  “There is some disagreement as to the proper handling of this situation.  Please get in the car.”

     Elsa set the file and the bundle on the seat and slid in beside them.  Farmadi said something to the other men before getting behind the wheel and starting the engine.  He let it warm up for a few minutes before slowly backing it and turning it toward the road.  Elsa sat back and tried to relax.  She fingered the bundle.  It seemed to be some cloth tied around something soft, probably clothing.  She didn’t bother to open it.

     “I hear you sigh,
fraulein
.”

     “I am tired, Mr. Farmadi.”

     “I understand.  You may sleep in the car, if you like.  I must get some fuel, but afterwards there is a long drive.”

     “To Damascus?”

     “No.  Lord Sonnenby is not there.  You did want me to take you to him, did you not?”

     She thought about her luggage at the hotel and her missing briefcase.

     “Miss Schluss?”

     She asked him quietly and in as calm a voice as she could, “Where is Lord Sonnenby?”

     Farmadi paused long enough to cause Elsa to feel some considerable doubt.  “I will take you to where he will be.”

     “And that is not in Damascus.”

     “No.”

     “My belongings…”

     “Is there something there that we cannot replace?”  The car took a turn to a well-graded road.

     She thought about her notes in the briefcase and her tickets home.  She thought about the file on the seat next to her.  Her fingers curled around the edges of the cardstock.  It was thick.  She imagined herself boarding the ship and then sitting on deck with a glass of wine.   The fresh Mediterranean breeze lifted her hair and fluttered her blouse.  And inside she felt sick.  She could not return to Vienna without completing her task.

     She smoothed her hand over the file folder. “My luggage is in a hotel in Damascus.  I hope it will still be there when I return, but my briefcase was in that car, Mr. Farmadi.  It is very important to me and I would very much like to have it back. But to answer your question, everything can be replaced. Already I have new shoes.”

     Farmadi chuckled and gave the engine more fuel.  The back of the seat pressed into her and she relaxed for the first time in hours.  She set the heavy file on her knees.

     “Go to sleep
Fraulein
Schluss, and soon we will be in El Zor.”

She did sleep, but they were not soon in El Zor.  A detour caused by recent downpour took them out of their way, and then a delay the next morning while the road was repaired by villagers with shovels and donkeys carrying baskets of gravel extended the journey.  There was a point near noon when the engine sputtered and died, and Elsa sat in the car alone for an hour while he tinkered with the engine.

     The desert wasteland was beautiful.  She had water and two handfuls of dried dates and some pistachios Farmadi had purchased from a local farmer.  She waited for Farmadi to finish adjusting something under the hood.  She watched the shadows of the small shrubs move with the sun.  Small lizards and large ravens moved across the landscape in intervals.  The air was dry and warm, but not uncomfortable.  Elsa took the time to open her bundle and put on the clothing she found inside.  A simple brown dress made of wool tied around her waist with a blue sash.  Her white scarf kept the sun off her face and covered her tangled hair.  Her feet were more comfortable in the leather slippers than in the heeled pumps that Mr. Marshall had given her what seemed like ages ago.  She blinked.  Only two days ago.

     Elsa scanned the landscape.  She welcomed the chance to finish reading Sonnenby’s file without interruption.

     The neatly typed pages informed her that Henry Sinclair had been an exemplary student in school until his fifteenth year.  The autumn of his sixteenth was fraught with disciplinary problems and mention of emotional instability.  She counted six documented instances of fighting with other boys that resulted in injury to both parties.  He was expelled from his school.

     She turned the page over and set it with the paper she had already read.  The file contained a handwritten note by the former Lord Sonnenby requesting a private tutor for his son.  She studied the elegant script, searching for something in the father’s hand that might explain his son’s behavior.  The loops and slants were perfect, like copperplate engraving.  There was nothing there about the man, except the idea of perfection.  She ran her finger over the script.  Even the ink was distributed evenly along the lines.  The old gentleman knew exactly when to dip his pen and when to blot and when to press the nib to paper.  And this sample was just a note. Not even a formal letter.

     Her own handwriting was not so beautiful, and she made serious effort to make it so.  Elsa turned the note over and picked up the next sheet.  This paper was a typewritten letter acknowledging the younger Sinclair’s entrance into a military school.

     There was nothing personal of Henry’s in the file.  No letters, notes or cards.  She found copies of citations as well as commendations, however.  His tendency to solve his problems with his fists continued in the army, though now it was more acceptable than in school.  There was a threatened lawsuit from the son of an MP who had been humiliated in a fight by Sinclair’s fists.  There was, however, no record that the threat was realized.  Another letter between government officials suggested the injured party had been compensated for damages.  She found three similar instances and then nothing more.  Perhaps Mr. Sinclair had developed a reputation.  She turned a page.  No one challenged him anymore.  There must have been no more taunts.

     She frowned, realizing she had made an assumption.  Perhaps the fighting was not caused by taunts.  What else?  She searched for something in the correspondence that might answer her question.  It seemed most of the writers were concerned with propriety.  There was a great deal said about the social positions of the victims and the responses from their families and the reputations of those involved.  But very little if anything was said about the causes of the fights.

     She tapped her lip.  Either the cause was already known to both parties, or the cause did not matter.  She had seen Sonnenby fight.  He was tall and his chest was broad.  His shoulders promised some serious power behind a jab or a punch.  It would be a foolish man or boy who would taunt him to his face.

     She closed her eyes.  But second hand.  Yes.  That must be it.  She flipped through the file looking for more letters about violence.  One letter suggested Sonnenby started the fight, and another that he strode into the mess hall and laid out another soldier, stone cold, without a word.  One punch and the meal was disrupted for everyone.  He had turned and walked away.  No one had tried to stop him.  Later the military police came and took him from his bunk and put him in solitary.

     Elsa tried to see this man in the Sonnenby she knew.  He had seemed uncomfortable talking about his parentage.  Granted, perhaps it had taken him years to come to grips with the truth of his mother’s infidelity.  He may have accepted it, or put it aside.  She remembered the twinkle in his eyes and the curve of his mouth when he told her about the young ladies and their mothers.  He had not seemed bitter or angry, only amused that he was not an acceptable suitor.

     She closed the file.  The other papers detailed his treatment in the asylum, miserable memos and disgusting documentation of experimental treatments.  She did not want to study them now.  She was familiar with most of the procedures.  Where was Sonnenby now?  Mr. Marshall?

     The hood unfolded and clanged shut.  Farmadi slid into the driver’s seat and cranked the engine.  There was a loud bang, some shaking of the whole car, and then the welcome purr of a healthy engine. She adjusted her scarf.

     “
Fraulein
, you are well?”  Farmadi spoke before putting the car in gear.

     “I am.  Thank you.”  She thought about the expense of this journey and wondered how she could repay Farmadi if Sonnenby were not found.  Mr. Marshall might compensate him for his trouble.  What if Marshall were not found in Deir El Zor either?  She rubbed her fingers.  It was awkward.  Farmadi had not intimated that he was working for hire, but the sound of the empty gas can and the quality of the nuts and dates he had given her spoke of her debt.

     “I have enough fuel to get there and back if there are no more detours.  We will be there tomorrow.”

     Elsa cleared her throat.  “Thank you, Mr. Farmadi, for all your trouble.  I am truly grateful for your help.”

     “It is nothing.”

     But it was.  Elsa welcomed the breeze from the open window.  “Is there a hotel there?”  She worried.  She had no money with her.

     Farmadi laughed.  “You have never been to Syria before?”

     “No.  I am afraid I have not.”

     “There is a hotel in Deir El Zor, Fraulein.  And shops.  But Lord Sonnenby is not going to be in the city.  I will be taking you somewhere just outside the city where there are no buildings or shops or hotels.”

     “Then how will you know when you have arrived?”

     Farmadi laughed loudly, but Elsa thought it had been a reasonable question.  Outside her window the low colorless landscape streamed by with regularity.  Distant mountains that were merely a dark line on the horizon seemed to never end.  Close to the dirt road wiry bushes and yellow gravel stretched out for miles.  She had assumed a cluster of low whitewashed houses, perhaps a hotel and a marketplace would appear as they crested one of the low hills and they would be there.  Water and food and a soft bed.  Like in Damascus.