Marshlands (10 page)

None of the men moves forward to assist her. Nor do I, for that matter.

Her face is modestly covered, but her eyes are red from weeping, and she wears a mourner's sash. The soldiers crowd around her, taking their clean clothes from the basket and tossing coins at her feet. As she scrabbles for them, one of the men holds a finger to his lips, sneaks up behind her, and snatches her headscarf.

Her arms fly up to cover her face while the soldiers play keep-away with the headscarf. The laundress is torn between the coins, which lie gleaming on the floor, and her scarf, which flutters like a raven among the men.

“Gentlemen,” I say. “Give it a rest.”

But the game is in full swing. Soldiers who a few minutes before were listless on their cots are now fully awake and shouting. Each wants his moment with the scarf.

It's innocent enough. They know nothing of this woman's loss. All they know is that they're bored; that here is a woman; and that teasing her offers a diversion from my tedious lecture.

This is just a game to them, which is why the roar of my sidearm comes as such a shock.

I turn to the soldier with the wadded scarf, whose arm is frozen in midair. “Give it back to her,” I say.

But the laundress is gone. The gunshot has terrified her. She has fled, leaving basket and coins behind.

The soldiers are stunned. One of them waves a disbelieving hand through the shaft of sunlight created by the new hole in the roof. “Holy shit,” says another.

I choose a scapegoat at random: a skinny, sunburned infantryman with a nasty-looking mole on his shoulder. It's all I can do to keep from examining it. The sun here is much more intense than in the homeland; melanoma is a constant worry.

I tell him to gather up the coins and the empty basket. He looks to his friends, but they have become stone-faced. The discharge of a weapon is an event with real meaning in their world, as opposed to the speechifying they're used to from me.

As we walk to the washerwomen's lean-tos at the edge of camp, I endeavor to explain. “Sometimes,” I say, “teasing will go too far.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In the marshes, uncovering a woman like that is a grave insult. Typically, her face will remain hidden outside the home. She feels naked without her scarf. Do you understand?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

The huge laundry basket extends awkwardly from his hip. It's truly ungainly, except when balanced on the head of a marshwoman, where its design reaches a kind of perfection.

“I'm not sure you do,” I say. “Are you prepared to marry this laundress?”

“No, sir, I am
not
prepared to do that!” Suddenly he's standing at attention.

“Then don't undress her,” I say, dismissing him.

His retreat to the barracks is an out-and-out sprint. Talk of marriage has truly frightened him. His panic would be amusing if it weren't so sad. To a soldier of the garrison, marrying a woman from the marshes would be an abomination. While marshwomen certainly have all the requisite parts to be useful on a Saturday night, they aren't considered fully human. I've actually heard our soldiers refer to the marsh people as “mudmen,” as if they'd been shaped from the red clay but denied the divine breath that would give them a soul.

It takes the better part of an hour to find the laundress. The heat is dizzying, and there's precious little shade in the flats. The lean-tos are full of nattering women who go silent when I come crashing by. Bursts of shrill laughter follow me down the path.

I come upon her suddenly in a shabby lean-to set apart from the others. I duck under the roof and there she is, radiating all the stubborn energy of a beast surprised in a field. She's wearing a new headscarf improvised from a rag. It's bright red, a foreign color, but it suits her. Her fine dark eyes seem to glow in the narrow slit.

I brought your scarf
, I say,
and your basket. This is yours, too, I believe
. I place a stack of coins on the edge of the folding table, hoping she won't notice that I've added a few to the pile myself.

She counts the coins, taking only what she was owed, and hands back the rest. Then she returns to her folding, a great pile of soldiers' fatigues.

I watch her for a while. The rhythm is mesmerizing. Her hands are very precise. I tell her I admire her skill.

She contradicts me with the slightest shake of her head.

The pile of fatigues grows and grows until it looks ready to topple. I step in, but the only result of my intervention is to drive her nervously into the corner.

I'm sorry
, I say,
I'll leave you be
.

Then, with a movement so abrupt that for a moment I think she has tripped, she prostrates herself at my feet.

What's this?
I ask, bending to help her up. My senses sharpen. Someone might walk in and see us this way.
Come,
now
, I say, but she insists on pressing herself to the ground.

Please, Master
, she says. She stops for a moment, overcome by emotion.
I would like to have my son back
.

I've heard about your loss
, I say.
I saw to the boy myself
.

She thanks me, but it's the kind of thanks one might give a merchant who offers a paltry refund for some spoiled meat. I wait for more gratitude, but something else comes: a question, tinged with rage.
Are you finished with him, then?

Please get up
, I say.
You're embarrassing me
.

I help her to her feet. She sighs. Her knees crack as she straightens. She isn't old, but brute labor has already worn out her joints. She looks at me with defeated eyes.

Perhaps I've misunderstood
, I say.

I would like to bury my son
, she says.

If it's a question of money …

She answers with supreme disdain.
His body was taken away
, she says.
They came in the night.

Who came?

Soldiers
, she says.

What soldiers?

She touches the stack of fatigues.
From this tribe
, she says.

I try to take her hand, but she pulls back.
I will look into it
, I say.

She doesn't believe me. She thinks I've merely employed one of the empty phrases my people use to dismiss a claim, a phrase as formulaic as the ones the other laundresses probably used to acknowledge her grief.

You will have your son back
, I say.
You have my word
.

She bows awkwardly, then steps outside and waits for me to leave.

I'm as astonished by my impulsive promise as she is. I haven't given my word in a very long time. I wouldn't have thought I was still capable of it.

3

The palace has changed since my last visit. The new general has remilitarized it. My relic of a jeep, with its sandblasted hood and steaming radiator, is stopped at no fewer than three checkpoints. A fresh road has been laid in a defensive spiral that forces all traffic to circle the compound twice before coming to a halt at the main gate. The uncured asphalt causes trouble for the jeep's nearly bald tires, which squeal as they negotiate the road's constant inward curve.

Inside the gate, the frame of a new building, a flat sprawling hulk with partitions for countless tiny rooms, rises from a sea of razor wire. The parade ground is jammed with camouflaged construction equipment. Jogging soldiers reach out and slap the giant tires to the rhythm of ribald exercise songs.

The great columns and arcades of the palace are festooned with patriotic banners. The messages are fragmentary and oblique.
THIS IS YOUR MISSION!
says one.
UNTIL WE'RE VICTORIOUS!
says another. The fabric is something I've never seen before, a gossamer mesh that iridesces like a locust's wing. I'm forced to avert my eyes when the desert wind lifts it to the sun.

The general is out riding, which gives me a chance to cool off in the cavernous waiting area outside his office. It's rumored that virtually every room of the palace, which was built atop the ruins of an ancient ziggurat, was used, at one time or another, by the torturers of the old regime. One imagines cries of agony echoing down the polished corridors.

When I'm summoned, at long last, into the general's office, I find a familiar face.

“Administrator,” he says, pressing my arm.

“Is that Curtis?”

“
General
Curtis,” he says, tapping the star on his collar. The uniform is new to me; black and severe, the sleeves embroidered with the blazon of Protective Services. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Have a seat. Tell me, has it really been ten years?”

He retreats behind the immaculate sandstone desk. His wavy blond hair is neatly trimmed—although longer than it should be, for a stickler for the rules—and the beard is gone, but he's just as vital as I remember. If anything, with his cheeks flushed from the exertions of the ride, and his face a bit fuller, he looks even younger than before. I, on the other hand, feel like a tired old man. “Forgive the impromptu visit,” I say.

Curtis smiles and repeats the word “impromptu,” shaking his head. “One forgets there are educated men out here,” he says.

As I explain my purpose, he tries to give the impression that his attention is fully focused, but he can't resist polishing his high leather boots with a thumb, which he surreptitiously wets from time to time.

“An unhappy story,” he says, “although I'm not sure I buy it. It's highly unlikely a random corpse would have found its way to our morgue. But you're welcome to have a look.” He reaches for the intercom, then thinks the better of it. “Actually, I'll take you down myself,” he says. “There's something I want you to see.”

A lurching service elevator delivers us to the bowels of the palace, where Curtis leads me through a warren of utility tunnels. It's a struggle to keep up with his energetic strides. In the hope of slowing him down a little, I offer my congratulations.

“What for?” he says.

“Your promotion. This posting.”

Curtis tilts his head, listening for irony in my voice. “Frankly,” he says, “I was surprised to hear you're still camping on the border after all these years. A man of your talents, with those incredible language skills.”

“I like running a field hospital. It makes me feel useful.”

“Really, Gus,” he says, as if we're old friends, “it's a waste of you.”

Then he stops in front of a pair of steel doors. “Well, here we are.”

“The morgue?” I ask, but he merely smiles and opens a door for me.

I hesitate at the threshold. The air is wet and musty. It's pitch-black inside, but there's a sense of vast space, as if the doorway gives out on a canyon.

“The lights are just … here,” he says, throwing a lever. Arc lamps, some of them at a great distance, slowly start to blaze, illuminating a massive stone ruin at our feet.

“My predecessor was excavating for a weapons bunker when the ground under one of the earthmovers gave way. That was how they found the first chamber. Took the better part of six months to clean the whole thing out.”

“What is it?”

“Guess,” he says.

The intricate foundation reminds me of a picture from one of my old schoolbooks. “Steam tunnels, perhaps for the royal baths?”

“Good guess! A very good guess. But no. It's a labyrinth.”

“A labyrinth? Here? Can we take a closer look?”

Curtis nods indulgently and says, “I knew you'd like it.”

As we climb down and pick our way, single file, along a tightly curving path, he explains that most people have the wrong idea about labyrinths.

“The classical ones weren't really mazes,” he says. “They were more like spirals: one way in; one way out.”

He goes on to say that the labyrinth inspired the design of the new defensive road around the compound. “You see? I'm still capable of learning a thing or two from this godforsaken place.”

There's a surprising amount of regret in his voice. This may be as close as I'll ever get to an apology.

Long years among the marshmen have taught me to hold my tongue. In the old days, I might have lashed out at him:
Save it for the child who lay screaming on my table!
But there's no point in saying such a thing to Curtis, a man so lacking in humility. Then again, perhaps I lack it, too, for presuming to stay in the marshes, for presuming to atone.

I walk on in silence, trying not to turn an ankle on the uplifted cobbles.

When we reach the center of the labyrinth, a clearing barely large enough to exercise a horse on a tight tether, Curtis tries again. “Things are different now,” he says. “We have new methods. It's much easier. I can always use a good man, a trusted man. There's everything here: books, music, wine. I even brought a chef with me, a miracle-worker with wild game. Surely you miss the creature comforts.”

“I do, but I'd miss the hunting more.”

“You could still hunt!” he says. “You could certainly hunt. So, if hunting were part of the mix—”

He breaks off when he sees the expression on my face. “Fine,” he says, raising his hands in surrender, “do what you want. Maybe someday you'll explain it to me.”

In fact, we understand each other perfectly. He wants to keep me close, if only to ease his conscience; whereas I want no part of his methods, old or new. The very phrase “new methods” makes my gorge rise.

“Well,” he says, “there's no need to go back the way we came.”

He leads me through a series of concealed doors that provide a more or less direct path through the stone spiral. Soon we're back out in a modern hallway, where the way to the morgue is clearly marked.