Blue Damask Page 31

  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.

  “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 muc
h 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.