Blue Damask (34 page)

     “That’s nice. 
Sehr schon
.”  The hard floor was feeling more comfortable.  She realized how exhausted she was.  It was time to sleep now.  She needed to wipe everything from her mind.

     “I was sent to find out if the locals were hostile.  Gold made them docile, but the gold always ran out.”  He took a deep breath and rolled so he was face to face with her.  The two of them lay on their sides, bodies nearly touching.

     She tried to open her eyes and look at him.  It was difficult.  It would be rude to fall asleep while he was talking.  He needed to shut up.  She blinked and made a half smile to show she was being polite.  His arm reached over and he ran his hand over her shoulder and ribs.  He moved his fingers down the curve of her waist then up again across the top of her hip.  She was too tired to object to his familiarity with her body.

     He said, “I spent three days talking to the
sheikh
, trying to convince him to stop attacking the English.  Three days, Elsa.  Three days.”  He was speaking slowly and with effort.  His words were slurred.  She wanted to sleep but he just kept on talking.

     “Gold did not matter to him.  He hated the English.  He hated the French.  He hated the neighboring tribes.  He was currently engaged in a blood feud with the Hashemites.  He was causing us a lot of trouble and costing us a lot of money.”

     Sonnenby was looking at her now with a sort of desperation in his dilated eyes.  Elsa felt her cheek twitch.  She was following him with effort. He was talking about his mission in the Levant after the war. He was talking talking talking.  Talking too much.  She nodded.  She hoped it would be a short bedtime story.  She needed to sleep.

     He continued, “
Sheikh
Abdullah grew tired of my entreaties.  He gave me his oldest son…”  Sonnenby’s eyes darkened even further.  There was a catch in his voice now.  “He gave me his son, a thirteen-year-old boy, to act as liaison back in Cairo.  Abdullah didn’t trust me to tell the truth, but he trusted me with his son.  He wanted his son to talk to the general and report back to him.”  Sonnenby was blinking at her and his face seemed to fall apart. Elsa frowned.  He had been saying something about a child.  She took a deep breath and tried to clear her head.  This must be important because now tears were running down his nose and dripping to the floor every time he blinked his dark eyes.

     She reached out to him and touched his shoulder, then gripped it hard.  “What?” She asked.  This was not a bedtime story.  She tried to ward off the whiskey.

     He continued, faster, as if the words were tumbling downhill and could not be stopped.  “We were a week in the desert.  I was going to march him into headquarters.”

     Elsa felt the effects of the alcohol start to fade from her blood.  Adrenaline sobered a brain faster than coffee.  She realized he was telling her about the Cairo trauma. She sat up and gripped him harder with both hands and gave him a little shake.  He must keep talking, now.  It took everything she had to overcome the whiskey haze and focus on him.

     But his mouth stopped moving and his eyes became dull and started to roll up.  The whiskey was working on him as well.  She got up on her knees and pushed him over onto his back and leaned over him.

     “Henry,” she said. “No. Keep going.  Tell me what happened next.”

     His throat moved up and down.  He croaked at her.  “They killed him.”

     “What?  Who killed who?”

     His eyes filled with tears then spilled over the edges and rolled over the sides of his face and into his ears.  She brought her face very close to his.  “Who did they kill?”

     She turned her ear to his mouth to hear him. He whispered, “The boy.”

     Elsa softened her face to express all the sympathy she felt.  She settled next to him, leaned over his chest and put both hands on his face.  “You didn’t kill the boy,” she murmured.

     “I killed him by bringing him to them.”  His whole face was wet now.

     Elsa rubbed the tears with her thumbs.  “How could they kill a child,” she wondered aloud.  Nothing men did surprised her anymore.

     “He was the
sheikh
’s eldest son.  He refused to be told to wait.”  Sonnenby was searching her eyes to see if she could really understand what happened.  “He drew his dagger and tried to push past the sentries into the General’s office.”

     “
Mein Gott
.”  She could understand.

     Sonnenby took a deep breath that raised her up and down with it.  He said softly, “I held him in my arms as he bled to death.  We had become friends.”

     Elsa leaned over him and kissed his forehead and stroked his hair.  There was nothing to say.

     His voice rumbled in his chest beneath her.  She felt the vibrations in her body.  “When the men in the office heard the shot they came out, pistols drawn.  I leaped up and had my hands on the General’s throat before I could think.”

     “Ah,” she shook her head slowly, seeing the cluster of men in her mind.  “
Das Ende
,” she whispered.

     He nodded in agreement.  “Yes.  The end.  I don’t remember much after they shot me.”

     His face crumpled and she put her cheek to his and whispered in his ear.  “It wasn’t your fault, Henry.”

     He put his hands on her and turned her face so he could kiss her mouth.  She permitted it.  The kiss faded quickly.  Now he could sleep.  His whole body went limp.

     Behind them a man’s voice barked loudly, “
Mon Dieu!
  We have entente!  England and Germany have made peace!”  Then a moment later she heard, “But by God, what has happened to my Talisker?”

     Descartes had brought a bundle of clothing, more medical supplies and some delicious flatbread and hot rice spiced with cinnamon and cardamom from a street vendor.  He and Elsa ate quietly without fuss while they watched Sonnenby sleep.

     Descartes spoke first.  “He is better?”

     Elsa shrugged.  “You must know he is not whole,
monsieur
.”  She licked her fingers. This rice was very good and she wanted some more.

     “I do,
cherie,
but I am too polite to pry.”

     “Are you prying, now,
monsieur
?”

     “I am curious.  Marshall contracted with you to accompany him.  I did not understand it.  But then I saw it for the first time at the Army headquarters.  He was so wild.”

     Elsa was not at liberty to discuss a patient with anyone.  She was sympathetic to Descartes’ concerns, especially since he had walked in on a very unconventional and unprofessional therapy session being held on the floor of their lodging house.

     He offered her a newspaper.  “I have brought a paper to get news about the train schedule.  It looks like the tracks have been disturbed again.”

     She took the paper from him.  He pointed to a photograph on the front page.  “Now there is a man who could use a therapist,” he took a drink from his bottle.

     Elsa looked at the image he indicated.  The article was about the recent conference in Cairo concerning the British and French-backed governments of the new Levant.

     “Winston Churchill?”
     He laughed, “No the little man there.”  He leaned in and indicated another face.  A photograph of a European in Arab dress was below the fold.

     “Mr. Lawrence,” she said.

     Descartes nodded.  “He is off his rocker, as they say, but unlike your Sonnenby, no one has cared enough to give him a pretty therapist.”

     She examined the photograph carefully.  “Yes.  I can see it here.”  She pointed to the  brilliant white
thobe
Lawrence was wearing.  “Do you see the rectangle creases here?  This outfit was unfolded like a costume from a packing case and put on him without ironing it first, and then he was carefully arranged for the camera.  Look at his sad eyes.  Look at his hunched shoulders.  That is not a real smile. He feels humiliated in that photograph.  Do you know him?”

     Descartes took the paper back and looked at it.   “Yes.”  He shook his head.  “This land can destroy a man without a bullet,
cherie
.”  He lifted the fifth of whiskey and held her eyes for a long moment before he took a sip again.

     “Perhaps you could use some sleep, too,
monsieur
,” she said kindly.

They set off the next day with three riding horses and a pack animal.  Descartes said that immediately north of Baghdad the tracks had not been completed.  Work crews were busy, but the train stopped for local Baghdad traffic between the city and Mosel at a makeshift station.

     The camels of the dead Ruwallah and everything else they managed to consolidate was enough to supply them for the short trip.

     Elsa had a new suit, a full skirt for riding and a white blouse and a jacket.  Her new boots were not as comfortable as those she received from Farmadi.  She could not discard the soft leather shoes, though they were worn and dirty.  Just like the blue damask, she could not bear to part with them.  She rolled the disintegrating silk gown and leather shoes together into one of the satchels. 
Souvenirs
, she told herself.  Descartes had instructions from her to eventually find Farmadi in Damascus and thank him appropriately for his kindness.

     Sonnenby also had new clothes, though he looked uncomfortable in the khakis Descartes had bought for him.  The two men were dressed identically, though Sonnenby’s outfit did not fit him as well.  The jacket was tight across the back of his shoulders and too short on his waist.  He kept adjusting it and twisting, trying to relieve the pressure of the cloth over the wound on his back.

     That morning he had been unable to lace his boots and it bothered him.  He did not ask for help, but sat staring at his hands until she knelt before him and laced them.

     “Your fingers will be painful for at least a week,” she had told him.  She thought the largest knuckle on his right hand had been damaged.  The index finger had been dislocated and she had set it while he slept off the phenobarbital and the whiskey.  The metacarpal behind it might also be cracked.  The skin above the bone was swollen and darkly bruised.  She had wrapped that hand tightly.  His left was swollen, but not as badly.  He could use it after a fashion, but he was clumsy with it.

     She ran her hands up and down the leather boot, making sure she had tightened the laces evenly.  He leaned over and touched her cheek with the back of one of the fingers of his left hand.

     “Elsa.”

     She glanced up, knowing what he was asking.  She tugged at the knot and re-laced his left boot.  She couldn’t seem to get this one right.  He had not awakened from his drugged sleep with amnesia as she had hoped.  He had come awake that morning searching for her in the blanket with his hands as though he expected her to be sleeping curled up beside him.  Elsa had watched from the bench where she had spent the night.  This was dangerous.  Everything she had been taught, everything she knew about her profession made this development a morass of failure.

     The proper thing to do would be to refer her patient to another psychologist.  She grimaced.  She was not going to find one in Baghdad.  Not only that, but Sonnenby would see the referal as a rejection.  Not a professional one, but a personal one.  This would cause more harm and undo all the work she had done with him already.  All the trust and understanding they had generated in the last few weeks would melt away.

     She felt guilty.  She had permitted him to kiss her several times.  She lowered her head.  She could not understand why she had permitted it.  At the time it seemed reasonable.  Only afterwards did the memory send shooting pangs of regret through her, making her tremble with the imagined disapproval from Doctor Engel.  It would ruin her career and make everything people said about women doctors true.  She shook her head.  It was not true.  Yet this was different.

     Now she looked up at him.  He was waiting for something in her face to tell him that last night’s revelation and embrace was not a therapy session.  She felt sick.  She finished tying his boot.  She could put his body together with catgut and tincture of iodine and firmly laced boots.  She wished she could heal his mind the same way.  Her cheek twitched with the strain of keeping her face impassive.  He saw it and his eyes hardened.  He moved away from her as he stood and tested his boots.  He walked back and forth and stretched out one of his legs.  He rotated an ankle to loosen the leather, then went outside to help Descartes with the horses without saying another word to her.

     He did not look at her or speak to her as they made their way out of Baghdad.  He did not check to see that she followed closely nor did he seem to listen for her horse behind him.  Descartes noticed and shot her a few puzzled looks which she refused to acknowledge.

     They trudged along the road to Samarra with dozens of other travelers.  The plan was to get to the station, load the animals in the cattle car and their supplies in another then try to ride the train to Istanbul as far as the tracks permitted, riding the horses through the detours where the tracks were damaged or unfinished.  It would be a long journey, made longer if she could not reconcile with Sonnenby.  She did not think she could bear his bitter silence for the entire route.

     On the train both men were absorbed in newspapers.  Descartes’ fedora bobbed behind the French paper and Sonnenby’s wavy hair was visible every time he brought the pages together to turn them.  Elsa did not want to know what had been happening since she left Vienna.  The news of the world seemed pointless and immaterial to her now.

     The train stopped at Adana.  The tracks ahead were damaged and the tunnels through the mountains had not been finished.  Descartes took care of getting their animals off the cattle cars.  Sonnenby inventoried the luggage and supplies.

     She waited for them, and when all was ready, mounted and followed.  Descartes had his map and the local Turkish railway men pointed and gave directions.  The detour would take them alongside the river on a well-travelled path through a pass in the mountains and then pick up where the tracks were whole again.  Other passengers were making Adana their last stop.  A few others got on busses.  They were the only passengers on horseback.

     “Three days,” Descartes told her.  She nodded absently.  The weather was pleasant, the mountains were beautiful in the early spring and though they might be chilly, there would be no snow.  There would be plenty of water and fodder for the horses.  The revolts were not as widespread in Anatolia as they were in Mesopotamia and Syria.  According to the papers, rebels were farther north toward Ankara and the border with Russia.  There should be no cause for alarm.  She told herself all these things, but could not shake a feeling of dread.  Sonnenby still had not spoken to her.

     He brought up the rear, so she could not watch him ride.  Instead, she studied the landscape that spread out before her with its long grasses and tiny wildflowers.  They had left behind the scent of sage and sand and dust and now water and vegetation permeated the air.  Elsa had nearly forgotten these sensations, and the green around her seemed vulgar, it was so bright and the colors so intense after weeks surrounded by an ever present dusty beige.

     Her horse followed a well-worn path in the grass as it moved up and down, following a river through the rougher country above them.  Sometimes she could not help herself, and turned her head to look back.  Sonnenby rode two lengths behind her, swaying gently, watching the scenery and his horse’s footing.  The rope of their packhorse was wrapped around his saddle horn, and he would turn his shoulders behind him now and then to keep an eye on its progress.

     He had put his head cloth back on, held down by the double loop of a plain black
agal
.  The edges of the white cloth blew in the wind and looked out of place among the greens and blues of Anatolia. 
Keffiyahs
were for the desert, not the mountains. Head cloths were Arab dress, not Turkish. They were in Turkey now.  He could have bought a turban or a fez.  She wondered what he was saying to her by not buying a fedora in Baghdad or Aleppo.  Her own wide-brimmed hat was held down firmly with two yards of tulle.  It kept the sun off her skin and his eyes off her face.

     She turned around and faced Descartes’ back.  The Frenchman was studying his map and looking at his compass as his horse placidly made its way along the trail without guidance from his hands.

     She would speak to Sonnenby tonight when they sat around the campfire.  She would explain her feelings.  The situation.  He would understand.  She nodded to herself.  She would make him understand the necessary distance between a patient and his therapist.

     Descartes stopped them for the evening with the sun was still high over the horizon.  When both Sonnenby and Elsa were within hearing distance he explained.  “If we keep going we will reach the river crossing at dark.  That place is not good for a camp, and there would be no time to turn around and come back, nor should we cross at night.  Best to stay here for the night, then leave in the morning and reach the crossing at noon.  You see?”

     “Is it safe here?” She asked as she dismounted.  She took her foot from the stirrup and looked around at the distant hills and the low shrubs.

     Descartes burst out laughing, and Sonnenby made an exasperated noise in his throat.

     Descartes wiped his eyes.  “This whole country is a disturbed ant hill,
cherie
.  There is no safety for a thousand kilometers in any direction.  There is civil war here.  No.  It is not safe here.”

     She nodded, her eyes searching the trees along the river for movement not caused by the breeze.  “Yet this is the best way to get out.”

     He smiled with understanding.  “It is the only way to get out.”

     Elsa led her horse to where the grass was thickest.  The river was quiet below the trail, water would be abundant.

     The horses had already dropped their heads and were chewing the grass with their bits in their mouths.  A campfire would be possible as there was much deadfall among the trees that lined the river.  She was satisfied.  Descartes unloaded the pack horse.  Sonnenby unsaddled the riding animals.

     Elsa went to Descartes to get a water skin.  He handed it to her.  “Leave him alone for a little while,
cherie
.  He is angry with you.”

     “He needs to talk to me about it.  Brooding and grumbling will not solve the problem.”

     “It is a man’s way,
cherie
.” Descartes gave her a slow smile.  “Surely you understand that he must, as you say, ‘cool down’”

     Elsa would cool him down.  She made sure her path to the river intersected his.  He would not look at her when she stepped in front of him.