The Meq (32 page)

“The point is, we did witness it, and in the midst of the carnage, while the air was filled with Basque arrows and the screams of men and horses being pierced and blinded, I stared up at the sky and suddenly felt the presence of something else, something unknown and yet as familiar as my own heartbeat. I heard her breathing. I heard her breathing rapidly. I was six hundred and forty-four years old and had been in the Itxaron for six hundred and thirty-two of them and I knew instantly I was in the presence of my Ameq. I looked down fifty feet below and at the head of the baggage train was a caged caravan breaking away from the others and making a run for freedom along the narrow ledge. Behind the bars of the caravan were several men, women, and children, all Christian Basque who had resisted Charlemagne. And there was one other among them who resembled a child, but of course was not. The caravan struggled, passing and pushing oxcarts and packhorses into a three-thousand-foot drop. Then, just as the caravan broke free and moved away, she grasped the bars and looked up among the boulders, searching for me. Amid the screams and chaos, she had heard my heartbeat and felt my presence. I stood up from my hiding place and looked for the first time into the eyes of Usoa. She whispered one word which I heard with all my being. She said, ‘Beloved.’ In another instant, she was gone and the caravan disappeared around the rock cliff. I stood staring,
sans souci
and oblivious to the battle raging below.

“Later, Sailor had to tell me what had happened, that I had experienced the silent touch, the Whisper, what the Meq call the Isilikutu.”

Unai stopped talking and rose from the wicker chair in silence. He took Usoa’s hand and held it to his mouth, kissing her palm. I had not heard her approach. She sat down in the chair and, except for the blue diamond in her ear, could have been his twin.

“Do you know the story of Pyramus, Zianno?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

“It is the story of a legendary youth in Babylon who dies for love of Thisbe, his beloved. The details are unimportant, but for the next twelve years, Unai nearly became my Pyramus. Using passion instead of reason, he endangered himself constantly, finally cajoling and manipulating Bidun into convincing Adelric to take him along in his entourage to Worms, where Adelric had been summoned. Charlemagne wanted an explanation for the abduction of Count Chorzo of Toulouse and Unai wanted to find me at any cost, though he told Adelric he was acting as a spy at court, where, everyone knew, children were ignored. But once there, he was no child. He stalked the grounds of the assembly and foolishly used the Stones almost at random on guards and emissaries until he found me.

“Ironically, it was Unai’s entrance that secured our safety and eventually gained us favor. Originally, I had been captured along with some Basque families from Navarra as punishment, but after Roncesvalles I was put into service as a handmaiden to one of Charlemagne’s own daughters, Berta. She thought of me as a charmed being and a good luck omen for her. When she heard the commotion of the falling soldiers, who had been ‘charmed’ themselves by Unai, she burst out of her chambers and saw the two of us embracing. I told her it was Unai who had saved me from an assassin and thereby saved her. With that act and Berta’s natural belief in fortune of all kinds, we were both made a part of her permanent entourage. Adelric returned to the Pyrenees thinking he had planted the perfect spy and Charlemagne welcomed us as magical angels of good luck and fortune. In fact, we were merely two Meq in love. But the ruse worked and we stayed in the courts of Charlemagne for many years, traveling through Aquitaine and the rest of his empire at will. We even became elephant handlers, taking care of Abul Abbas, Charlemagne’s pet elephant, until it died in Saxony in the year 811. I could tell you story after story about Unai and that elephant. Later, of course, we had to leave that world and move on, as the Meq always do, but that is when and how we met and soon our long journey and Wait will end. The Zeharkatu awaits us like a gate to a place we have only named in whispers.”

From deep in the shadows by the fountain, I heard Ray say, “Damn.”

I never said what I felt that night. Not that night or the next or the next. I let it burn up inside me and drift away on its own like smoke. I was honored to have heard Unai and Usoa’s story, but inside I felt only melancholy and confusion. What had happened in China was real, I knew that now. It was common to us, it even had a name. Isilikutu. But what had happened in St. Louis and what it meant was more confounding than ever. If I was going to find Star, I had to let it go.

In the days and weeks that followed, Ray and I stuck to our routine: “breakfast” at noon on the balcony and then off to follow our separate trails and sources of rumors, clues, and bits of information about the Fleur-du-Mal, then a brief meeting with Unai and Usoa at Isabelle’s, dinner somewhere, and then back to the French Quarter or Storyville for our nightly tour of hotels, clubs, whorehouses, saloons, pool halls, poker rooms, docks, markets, and the streets themselves.

Physically, it seemed to rain more and the temperature dropped a bit, often dramatically, at night. But I noticed no change in the seasons to speak of. New Orleans is a season unto itself, especially at night. Storyville never closed, and it was there that we concentrated most of our attention. The Fleur-du-Mal was an assassin, but as Unai and Usoa told us, for centuries he had also trafficked in young girls and women in a complex network between the Muslim East and the Christian West. White slavery had become his stock-in-trade. New Orleans, with the only legal red-light district in America, was a natural hub of that wheel.

Ray and I made acquaintances with most of the “players” in the district; the gamblers, bartenders, pimps, and some of the madams. Even though we were “just kids” in their eyes, we were streetwise and it was New Orleans, a place where life didn’t always need distinction between such things. We moved freely and easily and Ray knew the game well. With just the right amount of laughter and bluff, he could steer a conversation into a gentle interrogation. “Countess” Willie Piazza, the colorful madam who spoke seven languages and wore a monocle, made the first actual reference to the Fleur-du-Mal, and even that was an alias we’d not heard before. Ray had simply asked her if she knew any characters that looked like us. She laughed out loud and took a drag from a cigarette lodged in a holder as long as her arm. “Oh, yes, honey, I certainly do,” she said. “The Genie, that’s what I call him, always poppin’ up out of nowhere with teeth as white as milk and eyes as green as pine trees. But I don’t like what he’s sellin’.”

“What’s that?” Ray asked.

“Girls, honey. Girls younger than he is, younger than you. Girls that should still have a real mama.”

“Well, when was the last time the Genie popped up?”

“It was at the opera,” she said and took another elaborate drag on her cigarette. “Somethin’ by Mozart, I believe. Anyhow, between acts one and two, he came up to me with that cagey smile and asked me about Jelly Roll Morton, of all things, and if he was still playin’ at my place. He was in a custom-tailored little black tuxedo with that black hair slicked back and tied in that green ribbon. But like I said, I don’t like what he’s sellin’ and I politely took my leave. That was just after Mardi Gras, honey, last March or April.”

Through the end of the year, that was as close as we got to the Fleur-du-Mal. It was a frustrating, empty time. A chase without a starting place. A game that he was playing and probably enjoying, but a game that Star never asked to play. He was using her life without permission.

I wrote to Carolina and Nicholas every other day, trying to sound positive and sometimes making up leads when I had none. I knew Carolina would read between the lines, but I did it anyway. Ray even wrote to Eder, and Nova especially, something I never thought I’d see. I heard from Owen Bramley occasionally, as did the hotel management. He helped legitimize our stay and keep curiosity to a minimum. He also said he was moving to St. Louis from San Francisco. Nova had insisted and would not allow any other decision, some doom and gloom prospect in the city’s future, she had said. And he mentioned he had contacted the French photographer and was in the process of obtaining the prints and negatives I had requested. They were old, but they were there, they existed. No one heard a word from Sailor or Geaxi, not Owen Bramley, Eder, or Unai and Usoa, who were already preparing to leave for Spain and an end and a beginning that was unlike any other. We entered the year 1906 frustrated, separated, and in some ways helpless. Unai’s toast on New Year’s Eve was apropos:
“Aide-toi, le ciel t’aidera,”
he said. It meant, “Help yourself and heaven will help you.”

Ray was a good friend, companion, and the closest thing to a brother I’d ever had. We laughed a lot, enjoyed the same food, and shared a love for music, particularly what was going on in New Orleans. On our rounds, we always caught “Stalebread” Lacoume’s Razzie Dazzie Spasm Band wherever they were playing. Jelly Roll Morton was a regular at Willie’s and he was doing things very similar to what Scott Joplin and Tom Turpin were doing in St. Louis, only his music was looser, more danceable. And at the Economy, a tiny club that seemed never to close, we stood outside and listened to a form of music that affected us deeply. Players from all over the South came through the club and they were all playing the “blues.” I was hypnotized. Each player took a common theme and structure and made it their own, made it unique. And when they played together, the music became timeless in a way Ray and I understood instinctively. Complex in its very simplicity, it was an enigma. Through the music, the players themselves shared a joy and camaraderie, almost a secret, acknowledged with a grin or a common nickname. You could feel this music, almost touch it and taste it, or as Ray said, “This is gonna last, Z.”

It was a guilty pleasure for us, but it did yield information about the Fleur-du-Mal, even if it was always in the past tense. Several people said they’d seen “the kid with the smile,” or “the quiet kid with the green ribbon,” but few could remember when and none had a clue where he lived.

We both loved the music, but Ray also loved the crowds, the noise, the late nights, and the constant ebb and flow of strangers in New Orleans. When the crush of Mardi Gras came, I stayed at Isabelle’s for two weeks. I needed a break and I needed to know anything they might have forgotten to tell me about the Fleur-du-Mal, anything I might have missed. Ray stayed put in the St. Louis Hotel and immersed himself in the smothering chaos of Mardi Gras.

The peace was welcome and so was the time spent with Unai and Usoa. These were the last few days and weeks they would be as they were, as they had been for so long it was difficult to imagine. They had spanned an immense length of time with a conscious, living bridge of denial and survival and were on the brink of burning that bridge with another conscious decision that would both confirm their love and trigger their own mortality. The Zeharkatu. It was perhaps the greatest mystery of the Meq and the one I knew least about. I wasn’t even sure what to ask. When I did bring it up, I was surprised at their reluctance and shyness, as if they were as ignorant as I, but didn’t want it revealed.

“Where will you go?” I blurted out. “What happens next?”

We were sitting in the courtyard in the wicker chairs. It was a beautiful morning near the end of my stay. The sun was shining through the live oaks in warm pools of light and Usoa was pouring each of us a cup of rich chicory coffee. After a moment, Unai leaned forward in his chair, but before he could speak Usoa gently pushed him back and spoke for both of them.

“We follow in the footsteps of your mama and papa,” she said. “In the old way.”

“And how is that?” I asked.

“We were with them when they decided to cross. We will do as they did.”

She paused and looked at Unai, who took her hand in his.

“Go on, please,” I said. “Where were you?”

“We were staying on the island-city of Kilwa, across from Tanganyika on the East African coast. It was 1859. Your mama and papa arrived with the favorable winds from India, trailing a man who had supposedly done business with Opari. Ironically, it was the same man we were watching because we knew he did business with the Fleur-du-Mal. It was ironic because none of us ever found the man, but it was with us that Yaldi and Xamurra made their decision. The man’s name was Hadim al-Sadi and he was the current ‘sultan’ of an old Muslim family of trader-merchants that dealt in anything from gold and porcelain to silk and slaves, as long as it was profitable. Hadim’s family was said to have discovered an ancient trade route, older than the Sahara, that connected East Africa with West Africa through the kingdom of Mali. For centuries, the Fleur-du-Mal has been obsessed with Mali. Why, we have never known. The point is, we thought we had a link between the Fleur-du-Mal and Opari and we were excited. We thought we might find a way into her invisible world.

“But as the months passed and we watched and waited, Yaldi and Xamurra became more abstracted and distant. Their interest waned, and, looking back, it is clear they were at the end of a much greater Wait, the Itxaron, only none of us knew it.

“Then, late in the year, Baju and Eder came through Kilwa from the west on a Portuguese ship. Baju said he was making a survey of the stars in the southern hemisphere and seeking the lost African tribe that worshipped Sirius, the Dog Star. His interests were eclectic and ever-expanding and their visit was a surprise, but not unusual.

“One morning, not unlike this one, we were all sitting on the abandoned walls of the old Gereza fortress, watching the everyday traffic of the harbor, when Baju casually mentioned there would be a Bitxileiho, a total solar eclipse, in Spain the following year. The news was not extraordinary, but for your mama and papa it crystallized every emotion and focused every vague yearning they had experienced for months. They looked at each other for a moment, smiled, then Yaldi announced to everyone that he and Xamurra would sail to Spain and cross in the Zeharkatu the old way, in the Pyrenees. His statement was shocking and grand. No Egizahar had crossed in hundreds of years and no one in our lifetime had crossed in our homeland, in the old way. I remember being a little jealous and greatly puzzled. You see, no one, including your mama and papa, knew what ‘the old way’ meant. When to go? Where to go?