Two Testaments (39 page)

One look at Roger Hoffmann, and the young doctor on duty had sent him immediately to intensive care. Two hours later he was installed in a private room. “He will be here for a while,” the doctor warned, motioning for David and Gabriella to follow him.

“
Et vous, Monsieur
. Let me take a look at you.”

David stiffened as the doctor removed the bandages and inspected his head wound.

“You needed stitches,” he stated. “When did this happen?”

“I don’t know. About a week ago. Maybe a little longer.”

“You should have come to the hospital immediately,” the doctor reprimanded.

“I was in Algeria.”

“Oh.” There was silence. “It’s a nasty wound. Infected.”

David winced as the doctor cleaned it with antiseptic and covered the wound with a new bandage. “Thanks, doctor,” he said gratefully. “Could you just check out the rib here? The doc in Algiers thinks it’s cracked.”

The X-rays revealed two cracked ribs.

“We’ll need to bind you up. You’ll have to undress.”

“I’ll-I’ll wait in the hall,” Gabriella stammered.

The intern shrugged. “As you wish,
mademoiselle
. But he only has to take off his shirt.”

Gabriella’s face turned bright red. In spite of the pain David could not suppress a throaty chuckle.
Dear Gabby
, he thought.
All innocence and imagination.
He was glad she still held a few illusions of propriety. His had all gone down the drain in Algeria. Every last one.

They had spoken only a few phrases during their afternoon at the hospital. Gabriella felt so far away from him, from his pain. She dared not touch him for fear of hurting him worse somewhere deep inside.

When they left the hospital and stepped out into the suffocating heat, he took her hand in his. “Let’s go somewhere and get a drink. I can’t go back there yet.”

He called a taxi, and it amazed her how quickly David seemed to regain control. He was stiff, formal, rigid. Only his hand in hers gave a slight indication that he cared for her.

He took her to the Comédie, and they sat in the shade of the large, thick-leafed plane trees with their gray patchwork bark. The waiter came.

“A
pastis
and a
citron pressé
,” David ordered without asking Gabriella, and for the first time she saw a sparkle in his eyes. “You see, Gabby, I haven’t forgotten your favorite drink.” His dimple showed as he smiled wearily. “Does it bother you that everyone is staring at the unshaven wild man with the white turban who is seated beside you?”

“Not a bit,” Gabriella whispered. “I hadn’t even noticed.”

They held hands across the table. He stared at her for a long, long time. She studied his face. The rough black of his beard covered his face and neck like a thin layer of pepper. The bandaged wound extended far up into his hairline. His coarse black hair curled over the gauze and at the back of his neck.

“I didn’t know if I would ever see you again.” He touched her hair, twirling the red strands around his finger. “I didn’t think we’d ever make it back.”

He fell silent again, letting go of her hands when the waiter brought the drinks. She forced the hundreds of questions she wanted to ask him back in her mind.

He watched the people milling on the Comédie, and it seemed to calm him. He was far, far away. Finally he looked at her, his eyes shining with tears, and said, “Moustafa is dead.”

When they returned to St. Joseph, David stopped outside the chapel. “Can you bring Anne-Marie here, alone?”

Gabriella nodded and left him seated in the chapel’s cool interior. She felt, as she had at other times in the past, like a child, expected to obey. She could not reach him, and she dared not question him.

The children were resting in the dorms. She found Anne-Marie stretched out on her bed, reading.

“Come in!” she said brightly, seeing Gabriella. “And where have you been?”

Immediately Gabriella knew she had betrayed it, simply meeting her friend’s eyes. Anne-Marie sat up. “You have news?”

“Come with me.” Gabriella could not say more. She could not pronounce the word
dead
to Anne-Marie. She held her hand and led her through the basement and out into the street, then stood beside the doors to the chapel. “David wants to talk to you alone,” she whispered, swallowing hard. She caught Anne-Marie in her arms and hugged her tightly. She did not let go for a long time.

Then Anne-Marie stepped into the chapel. Gabriella did not wait, could not wait. She ran to Mme Leclerc’s apartment, let herself in, and collapsed on her bed, sobbing.

David looked up to see Anne-Marie standing in the doorway, her dark eyes full of questions. He stood and watched her as he had done in Algiers three months ago. He studied the contour of her face, the high cheekbones, the olive skin that glowed from the incredible heat, the slight flush in her cheeks.

He held out his hand, and she took it. He did not have to speak. She understood him perfectly well. He squeezed her hand tightly, closing his eyes and silently cursing this moment. She did not cry, although her bottom lip quivered ever so slightly.

He pulled her to his chest, held her there, stroking her hair. “I’m so sorry.” It was not his voice that spoke. It was as if someone else were forcing out the words through the tightness in his throat. “I’m so, so sorry.”

David had decided that he would tell her whatever she wanted to know. He would not hide anything. He sat in the hard pew and held her as he spoke of Moustafa. Somehow the telling of it brought with it comfort.

He told her of the teenagers at the port who had attacked them, and of Moustafa’s courage, and why he had made up his mind to stay. He spoke of Hussein and the trunk and Rémi and the
Capitaine
; of Moustafa’s mother and the orphans. He explained the ambush in the night and finding his father and being imprisoned in the same dank basement where she had been months before. Then he told her of Ali’s pronouncement of her death and the explosions at the orphanage.

“We didn’t know. We could only wait and hope.”

“Funny how we must do that, isn’t it, David? Wait and hope.”

Her voice was calm, and it amazed him.

Softly she asked, “And how did it end?”

He described the slaughter at Philippeville, reliving the moment in his mind, not looking at Anne-Marie. He did not realize that he was crying until she reached over and brushed away a few tears with the tips of her fingers. She had not yet shed a tear.

“He was a good, brave man, Anne-Marie. He loved you with everything within him. I can tell you that. He should be here now. It is not right!”

When he had nothing more in him, they sat in silence. He held her hands, clutching them as he repeated again and again, “Why? Why?”

The sun lowered itself in the sky and brought the chapel into shadows. She had not uttered another word but sat with a numb expression on her face. Perhaps not numb, he thought. Composed. Carefully he spoke. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Anne-Marie. I’ll care for you and Ophélie. I promise.”

She cleared her throat. “There is so much that is unclear. Dear David, thank you. Thank you for being there with him, for trying, for telling me. I … I need to be alone now.”

He left her sitting in the dark, staring at the small stained-glass window behind the altar. The sunlight blinded him. He felt disoriented, unsure of where to go. He wanted desperately to rest. He remembered Mme Pons’s apartment and his room there.

It was a short walk through town. The sun beat down on him. Finding the key in his briefcase, he let himself into the apartment, fell into bed, and slept straight through the night.

Anne-Marie could not explain her reaction. She only knew that something was pulling her to the front of the chapel. She knelt on the hard stones, caressing the cross around her neck. She did not feel angry. She did not feel anything except a strange peacefulness, as if invisible arms were cradling her. She stayed kneeling, letting the quiet, the gentle breath of life wash over her. She was afraid to move, because with the slightest movement perhaps the blissful calm would pass.

In her mind she saw Moustafa smiling at her, his head covered up with curls. She could not cry for him, and she didn’t know why, only that his memory came to her with joy. A slight breeze touched her hair; the door in the side of the chapel creaked. When she looked around, no one was there.

The bell in the tower chimed seven. Sometime later she realized that she had been praying, but she was sure the words were not her own.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress … or peril or sword …?

She whispered it over and over again, took the cross to her lips and kissed it softly. Eventually she rose from her knees, feeling the stiffness, and brushed them off. For some reason she crossed herself as she had seen the nuns do. Then she said simply,
“
Merci, Seigneur
,” and added, “I love you, Moustafa.”

The Dramchini women moaned and wept through the night. Anne-Marie sat with them and spent her tears in their presence. She knew how Arab women mourned. She thought it tragic and beautiful. The weeping, the wailing, the tears, the swaying bodies, and the silence.

Later the women talked in quiet tones of Hacène and Moustafa, recalling many happy memories, remembering what their lives had meant to their family and friends. Once in the course of the night Mme Dramchini had cried out, “My sons! My sons!” in Arabic. Then she had taken Anne-Marie in her bosom and rocked her like an infant, sobbing.

“He loved you,” she moaned in broken French. “You mourn with us. We sad together.”

It seemed to Anne-Marie like a healthy, healing experience, the wailing and the questioning, the open display of grief. The women had asked to be left alone in the dining hall, and there they spent the night.

Tomorrow was a new day. The waiting was over. It was time to go forward. The peaceful feeling never left Anne-Marie, and when she lay down on her cot at three in the morning, she immediately fell asleep.