Blue Damask (35 page)

     “Henry,” she said.  He turned his head at the sound of his name and gave her a vicious glare.  Elsa backed away, the water bag over her shoulder.  “Very well, then,” she said.  “We can talk later.”

     She was trudging up the hill with the heavy water on her back when she heard the crack of a rifle.  The sound echoed around and around her.  She stopped and dropped the bag, looking around at the brown and green hills.  They did not have a rifle with them, They had traded them all away for cash and food as it had been difficult to find ammunition for long guns.  They had only Descartes’ pistol with them as Sonnenby had been disarmed in Baghdad.  A pistol shot sounded very different from a rifle. She puzzled first, then became alarmed.  There was no second shot.  No return fire.  This might be a hunter, not a soldier.  Either way the sound of a stranger’s gun was not good.  No. Not good.

     She picked up the water bag and took the last few steps to the top of the hill where they had started to set up camp.  Descartes and Sonnenby would know what it was.

     “Hurry Elsa!”  Sonnenby came breathlessly across the top of the little hill, supporting  Descartes in front of him. He held the Frenchman pressed to the side of his chest, one arm around his shoulders.   His other hand was pressed into Descartes chest where a bright bloom of crimson seemed to grow beneath his fingers.

     Elsa dropped the water bag and fell to her hands and knees.  She cried, “Put him here!”

     Sonnenby dropped to one knee and gently lowered Descartes in front of her with one arm beneath his head and the other hand pressed firmly into a great hole just below the sternum in his upper abdomen.  Elsa’s hand hovered helplessly over his.

     “Don’t let go!”  She told him.

     “No!”  He shook his head violently; his hair spattered her with sweat.  He gasped, “Fix him, Elsa.  You can fix this.  I’ll get the kit.  It’s in your saddlebag.”

     “No, don’t let go,” she repeated because he looked like he was going to jump up and sprint for the supplies and grab the medical kit himself.  “Stay right here.  Don’t move.”

     He was trembling all over.  Elsa put her hand on his arm which felt like steel bands woven together.  “Easy,” she murmured to him

     Descartes face was slack. He was in shock, his eyes half lidded his face a horrible gray, but he was conscious.  Elsa felt his cheek with the backs of her fingers and the lids fluttered.

     “
Mon Dieu,
cherie
, I am dead,” he whispered.

     “No,” Sonnenby puffed, “Elsa,” he took a breath, “Elsa can fix this.”  He looked from the Frenchman’s bloody wound to Elsa and his eyes told her she had better get to work.  “Now.”

     “Henry,” she whispered.  She blinked at him because she couldn’t get the rest of the sentence out.

     “Get it,” he gasped, “Elsa, get the kit”

     “Henry.”  She put her hand over his.  From the amount of blood, its bright color, and the regular pulsing she knew the slug had torn both the vena cava and the aorta in the center of his body.  “I cannot fix this.”

     “No.  You can.  You can fix anything.”

     She looked at his face to see if he really believed that.  He looked back at her with desperation and hope alternating one after another until his eyes became tragic with acceptance.

     Descartes body gave a little jerk.  His muscles were starving for oxygen and they were demanding it from his heart.  His heart was valiantly trying to pump the blood to them, but the break in the line made its efforts futile.

     Elsa agonized over the connection between something as physical and predictable as blood, and the mysterious something that was a man’s mind.  How can they be so linked and be so different?   How could such a mechanical measure like blood pressure and volume and temperature determine the beginning and the end of something so profound and immeasurable as the thoughts and feelings of a man?

     She leaned over Descartes’ chest, cradled his head in her arm and kissed his cheek. She pressed her lips to his skin and left them there, touching him.  She murmured to him, “
Vous êtes magnifique
.”

     Sonnenby set his jaw.  “How long?” He asked from between his teeth.

     She did not want to tell him, but it would be wrong to lie about something so important.  “If you remove your hand, one minute, maybe two,” she told them both, lips pressed against Descartes’ ear.

     “
Mon Dieu, mon Dieu
.”  Descartes’ voice was weak.

     “Can you at least give him the Luminal?”  Sonnenby growled.  He pressed harder on the wound as if that might delay the inevitable.

     Elsa knew the drug would do nothing to help Descartes, as his interrupted circulation could not distribute the drug throughout his body before he died.  He was not feeling much pain from this wound, the shock was too great.  By the time she loaded the hypodermic—

     “
Non, non, ami, cherie
,” Descartes answered for her.  “I want,” he took a shuddering breath, “to be awake for this.”

     “Oh God.”  Sonnenby bent his head with a long groan.

     Elsa took Descartes hand in hers.  “Jean-Philippe,” she said to him.  She squeezed.

     Descartes struggled to smile at her.  He said to Sonnenby, “
Mon ami
, let be.”

     Elsa reached out her other hand to touch Sonnenby’s.  “Give me your hand,” she said.  He had trouble relaxing the muscles and making his hand obey.  She tapped his wrist and pulled at his fingers until slowly the steel bands in his forearm softened.   He splayed all his fingers out like a fan, but would not let her lift them from Descartes abdomen.  He rested his hand there over the great hole in his friend.

     Fresh blood bubbled out through the red-soaked head cloth and up between his fingers and spilled over them.  Rivulets of red rolled over the side of his chest and onto Elsa’s knee.  Descartes sighed and blinked his eyes several times before they drifted closed.  His chest rose and fell once, twice.  There was a pause, another breath and a long sigh.  The blood no longer flowed freely but now merely oozed under Sonnenby’s fingers. Descartes lay still.

     “God damn it!” Sonnenby hissed. “A goatherd shot him.  A goatherd!  A fucking scrawny, half-grown goatherd.  Goddamn it all to bloody, beastly, hell.”

     He yanked Descartes pistol from the holster on his thigh and lurched to his feet.   He stuck the pistol in his belt and then stomped the ground back and forth in his boots while Elsa folded Jean-Philippe’s hands over his chest and kissed his cheek.  The sound of stamping disappeared suddenly and so did Sonnenby.

     She sat up, alert, but knew better than to call out.  He may have seen something.  Heard something.  Maybe that goatherd had reloaded.  She stayed low, and on her hands and knees crawled to the crest of the little rise where they had camped.  She peered carefully over the edge and down to the river where Sonnenby and Descartes had been when she heard the sound of the rifle.

     She was prepared to see a whole village turn out to attack, but all was peaceful.  There was no army of goatherds approaching.  No angry villagers waving staves and shovels.  She saw only Sonnenby’s broad back far below and heard only the wind in the trees along the river.  His boots slid a little as he neared the bottom of the steep bank and raised some dust but he kept his feet.  She watched him walk back and forth, eyes on the ground like he was looking for something.  Finally he stopped and bent his knees.  When he stood up he had something in his hand.  She watched him slap it against his thigh, raising a puff of dust around his knees, and then slowly smoothed the fedora onto his head.

     Elsa sat by Descartes’ body holding his hand until the sun touched the tops of the hills in the west, then reluctantly made her way to the grazing animals and dug out the camp shovel from the pack.  Sonnenby was still pacing the river bank and she would not wait for him any longer.  She had watched him from up on the hillock, worried he might take off toward the village in a fury of revenge, then worried he might throw himself into the river, then worried he might take Descartes’ pistol to his head.  He did none of these things, but paced back and forth, back and forth at the place where Descartes had fallen.

     She unfolded the shovel handle and locked it onto place.  She measured a spot on the gentle slope and started to cut a line in the sod.  She had two meters done along one side and about half a meter down when the light went out.  She straightened up to see Sonnenby standing over her, blocking the sun.  His face was ravaged under the brim of the fedora and he did not speak, but took the shovel from her hand and bent to the work without a word.  She was grateful for the rest, but he should not be digging with his hands so bruised and swollen.

     Her palms had hardened in the last few weeks, her blisters no longer bothered her and her back and shoulders had grown used to hard work.  Harder than sitting at a desk with a pen in her hand, anyway.  But grave digging was brutal on the body.  She welcomed a brief break from the work.  Sonnenby dug with a determination that defied his injured hands.

     She rubbed her back as she picked her way to the pile of supplies near the saddles and tents.  She moved her briefcase and Sonnenby’s satchel and tugged at the leather straps of Descartes’ bag.

     Inside she found fresh khakis, his shaving kit, and his passport.  At the bottom there was a little pouch that held some tie tacks, cuff links, a woman’s ring and three starched collars.  A small folded frame made of silver and wood hinged with steel lay at the bottom and she brought that up, too.

     It opened to show two photographs.  On the left was Jean-Philippe, considerably younger, in a fine suit with a pretty dark-haired woman in a wedding dress standing at his shoulder.  Both young people were smiling too broadly for what was obviously supposed to be a formal portrait.  There was none of the serious ‘posing for posterity’ look on their faces.  They were grinning at the camera.

     The bit of blurring on both their cheeks and on the delicate bouquet the woman held suggested that a great deal of laughter had probably exasperated the photographer as he tried to position them properly.  The right side of the frame was a photograph of the same laughing woman with an infant in a fancy christening gown resting on her knees.  She had one hand behind his head, and was lifting him to face the camera.  It seemed to Elsa that even the baby was laughing.  She snapped the frames shut and stood.

     Descartes had said he had been in the Levant twenty years.  She did not want to try to imagine what had happened to his family.  He had come to the desolate wastelands of Mesopotamia and Syria to live a death, buried in the desert.

     Elsa picked up the canvas they used to cover their pack against the wind and sand. She tried to stop thinking as she climbed higher to the top where Descartes lay very still, no longer laughing.  She unrolled the canvas the length of his body and then knelt and went through his pockets.  His safari khakis had many pockets and she examined every one.  She found the expected geologists’ tools, his firestarter, his pens and notebooks, which contained words written in crabbed French that she could not read, a small flask of whiskey, half full, a compass and maps, pencils, and his pocket watch.

     She sat back on her heels.  The pocket watch she took and tucked into her décolletage, the frame with the smiling family she put in his hand and curled the fingers around it.  Rigor had not set in, but was imminent.  The fingers were stiffening but were still flexible enough for her to give him his photographs.  She turned her head to see Sonnenby’s progress.  Dirt and small stones were flying up around his head.  He was attacking the ground with considerable energy despite his injuries.  It would be more efficient to get Descartes in his grave soon, before rigor made it impossible to position the body.

     She rolled Descartes onto the canvas, then repositioned him and gently brushed off the bits of sand and soil and grass from his face before folding the edges of the cloth over his corpse.  She bent down near his head and got a firm grip on the canvas and dragged him toward Sonnenby.  She lined him up with the dark hole that was opening in the earth, then sat down to rest.  Sonnenby knew she was there but he did not look up from his digging.  He was down about a meter, now.  That should be deep enough.  They could pile dirt and stones on top later to make it more secure.

     Elsa realized she would have to eventually stop him.  He was like a machine.  She could see from the sharp focus of his eyes on the ground that he was not thinking about what he was doing. She stood, feeling the ache in her shoulders and back from her own efforts.  She felt the ache in her heart for Descartes, and she felt a greater ache for Sonnenby.

     “Henry, that is deep enough.”  He did not respond.  Another shovelful arced up and over one arm to land in the growing pile near his shoulder.

     She said sharply, “
Heinrich
!”

     He stopped and stood up straight at the sound of his name.  The shovel dropped from his hands and landed at his feet.  He looked startled, his dark eyes big and round in his face.  He was covered in dirt, the fedora on his head buried in several centimeters of soft dark soil.

     Elsa extended her hand to him.  “Henry,” she called softly.  He seemed far away.  She crawled closer, her hand extended, almost touching him.  “
Heinrich
.”

     He finally looked at her.  He bent to retrieve the shovel and handed it to her.   Then he climbed up and out of the hole.  He lay on his back; the fedora tipped its load of dirt and fell to the grass upside down.  She let him rest, panting there beside her.  The wind had picked up, blowing the horses’ manes and tails, and her hair.  It felt cool on her sweating face and arms.  She had no idea where she was.  This could be anywhere in Anatolia. She tried to memorize landmarks before the sun set, but the river cut its way through the low hills and culverts making for miles of repetitive scenery.  She might never find this place again.

     But there was no reason to ever come back here.  She turned to look at the grave.  Two men lay stretched out beside it, one breathing in great gasps, one not breathing at all.  No, she did not need to remember where this place was.  It would be with her forever.

     Elsa sat beside Sonnenby until he was breathing normally again, then together they lowered Descartes’ wrapped corpse in the earth and covered him.  Again they lay resting beside the mound of earth.

     After a while Elsa brought Sonnenby the water bags and they emptied them into their mouths and over their faces and into their hair. They sat there wet, unwilling to move though the sun was low in the sky and they had not eaten all day, nor finished preparations to spend  night here.  They had seen nothing move but birds.  No villagers or goatherds had come out to look for them, no scouts, curious about the European strangers or covetous of the horses and supplies.   No one and nothing.  They heard only the wind and the birds and the constant singing of the river below them.  She was exhausted and did not relish the idea of a night ride through this country without a guide, or the work in setting up the tent and preparing food for another night.  She just wanted to lie there.

     She turned her head.  Sonnenby looked terrible.  He was not making any decisions either.  He lay on the ground blinking at the sky and his eyes moved in a way that suggested deep thought.  She knew better than to disturb him.  She wondered if this current trauma was leading Sonnenby toward revelation or relapse.  He had spent many hours in thought today.  Asking him how he felt in the face of this horrible event would be a terrible mistake.  She knew how he felt.  It was in his face and in the way he held his body.

     In the hospital, one of her duties had been to help the men write home to tell their families what had happened to them, and prepare them for their homecomings.

     Most of the amputees were terrified.  She would sit quietly next to them, pencil in hand and they would look at her with stricken eyes.  “I am half a man”, they would say to her.  “What do I say to Mother? To my sweetheart? How can I go home?”

     Elsa had the same answer for those who could write, “Start the letter with, ‘Mother, I am alive and am coming home soon.’”  She wrote those words many times for men who were missing an arm.  She knew the mothers who read those words would rejoice.  So many mothers received typewritten letters that began, “We regret to inform you….”  But it was difficult to convey maternal joy to these men.  Many of the men assumed their lives were over, and many refused to see their survival as a joyful event, no matter how enthusiastically their mothers greeted them upon their return.

    It was her experience with the amputees that led her to psychology in the first place.  Her own joy and satisfaction over a grievous wound well-healed was not shared by her patients.  Her fine stitching that left beautiful straight scars without a lump were not admired by their bearers.  Her careful care that prevented infection and eased their pain meant nothing to them. Their morphine-glazed eyes haunted her at night as she lay in her little bed in the nurses’ barracks.

     Their bodies healed, but their minds were broken.  No one took the time to help them adjust to these drastic changes.  They were packed up on trains and sent out like baggage.

     Elsa regarded the end of the war as the beginning of her career.  Shell shock and depression.  These wounds were not being treated in the hospitals and the survivors were released before they healed.  She could not bear to see their eyes.  The suffering continued even when the pain was gone.  She pressed her fists to her eyes to stop the memories.  She had to stop them.  If she could not stop them, she must accept them and move on.  Life moves on.  Time moves on.  Time does not stop for death.

     Sonnenby groaned beside her.  She lay back and stared at the clouds that floated across the darkening blue.  He might be one of the many who limp though the rest of their lives, healed but permanently damaged.  Society did not want to look at the wounded.  She turned her head and this time saw that he was looking at her too.

     He said, “We have to stay here tonight.”  His voice was rough, like his throat was sore.

     “I know,” she answered.

     “I will finish setting up camp,” but he didn’t move like he would get up.

     “Good.” She told him.

     Neither of them moved.  She said, “We could just lie here.”

     “I have to picket the horses.”

     “Yes.”

     He rolled to his feet, limped to the baggage and to the picketed horses, which had exhausted the grass in circles around the picket pins.  She watched him work.  If they survived the journey to Vienna, she would return to Doctor Engel with great swathes of notes.  She would miss this year’s conference, but next spring what a dissertation she would present.  She had been writing it in her mind for weeks.

     Sonnenby was using the tent canvas to cover their supplies.  He walked back to her with a handful of tins he dropped at her feet.  “Bully beef, courtesy of the British Army.”  He curled his lip with disgust.

     “I am not hungry,” she told him honestly.

     “I can’t eat,” he agreed.

     “Sit down.”  She patted the grass next to her and he folded himself.  “Without Descartes we can’t be sure where we are,” she said.

     “We have his compass and his maps?”  He nodded to the little pile of his things beside her.

     She nodded and touched them lightly with the tips of her fingers.  “If we get back—“

     “We will,” he interrupted.

     “If we get back,” she insisted, “What will you do?”

     He grimaced.  “I have been thinking about that all day.”

     She knew that.  “You will come with me to Vienna,” she told him.

     He nodded, but the way he rubbed his beard with one filthy and bloody bandaged hand told her he was agreeing with some conclusion he had come to, and not her statement. He raised his chin and met her eyes.  “I am still your patient, aren’t I.”  He did not phrase it like a question.

     She tried to keep her face impassive.  He was asking her to deny it.  She did not have an answer.  Inside this question was a great pain not related to hunger or exertion.  Maybe it was fear.  She rubbed her stomach where the pain was greatest. She was disgusted that it took her so long to parse out her feelings.

     “Of course you are my patient,” she answered before she had time to think about the more dangerous answer.

     His face fell and his throat moved with a hard swallow.  He lowered his eyes then got up and walked around the top of the hillock.  The silhouette of his body, topped with Descartes’ fedora, was stark against the glow of the sunset.  She wondered if he would build a fire.  He paced the hill looking off into the horizon and then down to the river.  He and Descartes had shared the night watch, taking turns sleeping and watching the horses.  Without a partner to spell him, she would have to stay awake at least part of the night.  She might have to sit with a loaded pistol on her knee as Descartes did.