Marshlands (4 page)

The tunic fit perfectly. He'd forgotten how good he felt in a tunic and leggings, how free, how ready for action.

She came out of the bedroom fussing with a necklace, a hair clip dangling from her lips like a cigarette. She was surprised that he was already dressed. She studied him with a knowing look that frightened him. He moved away from the coffee table to have a clearer path to the door.

She asked for help with her necklace, and while he fastened it with trembling fingers, she told him he looked very dashing. The way she kept sneaking glances at him eventually melted his suspicion. She was merely pleased with how he looked. He was pleased, too.

They drank orange juice and had a few sips of scalding coffee. She said she didn't really eat in the morning, the implication being that neither would he. He thanked her anyway and told her he was grateful.

She put the cups in the sink and herded him to the door. He didn't really mind being rushed. It gave him energy. All of it was so normal to her and so alien to him, but the gap was closing a bit.

As she locked the door behind them he thanked her again, very quietly this time, using the marsh tongue in order to spare her any embarrassment.

She accepted his thanks with an old proverb:
Hospitality is its own reward
.

Her accent was flawless. He praised her for it, hoping for an explanation, but she acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had passed between them.

A cab was idling out front. “That's for us,” she said, tapping his shoulder as if he were hard of hearing, “but don't get used to it.”

*   *   *

There was already a long line of tourists at the museum's main entrance, but she whisked him through a temporary door marked
EMPLOYEES ONLY
, then down a labyrinthine plywood tunnel.

They emerged in a new wing with a swooping glass roof. The morning was overcast, but even so, the glare from the polished floor was severe. He closed his eyes and let a soft wooden handrail be his guide.

The rail ended at a pair of enormous bronze doors with bas-relief panels the size of atlases. The designs were geometric and stylized, but there were certain motifs: reed huts; busy waterways; earthen levees. A sun cast brazen rays across the landscape. The center panel depicted a chief's canoe, its high curving prow echoed by the graceful neck of a stalking ibis.

“I have a meeting,” she said. Passing through the doors seemed to make her forget all about him.

He didn't know whether he was supposed to wait or follow her into the exhibition hall, which was even brighter than the hallway. The brightness forced the eyes down, just like in the marshes, and the cleverly painted walls erased any sense of enclosure. The vast scale of the hall—as large as a warehouse, perhaps even larger—was intimidating. There might be anything inside.

The sounds were what finally drew him in: the bellow of water buffalo; the staccato snap of a merganser trying to distract a predator from her ducklings; the dissonance of wind in the reeds.

Somewhere in the distance, a merchant called out his wares: sugar, coffee, steel sewing needles.

He could hear the faint plash of paddles, the gurgle of surface-feeding fish, even the whine of mosquitoes.

There was something else familiar, a quality of light and sound that was very precise: the feeling of a morning after a great windstorm. He remembered those fragile mornings. There was a rawness in the air, a wounded quiet. Earth and sky seemed childishly reluctant to heal.

The verisimilitude was uncanny. He wondered about the curator who'd perhaps said about the lighting, “I like how the shadows purple in the recesses of the buffalo stall, but the sunlight is too sharp for rainy season.”

The center of the exhibit was a floating island, the kind heaped up by succeeding generations of marshmen, a hillock of floating grass linked to shore by a swaying rope bridge; and on the island, a proper marsh village, each hut built of painstakingly baled reeds.

The encircling water was artificial, obviously. One couldn't have museum-goers falling into water. But somehow they'd managed to make it just as shimmering and elusive as any waterway in the marshes, its surface bulging, from time to time, with the lips of simulated catfish.

He wanted to kneel down and touch the artificial water, to study its astonishing craftsmanship, but the construction of the grass mound was so authentic that the closer to the shining black shoreline he came, the swampier and less stable was the ground under his feet, until he couldn't move forward for fear of being pitched against the nearly invisible glass guardrail.

He drew back from the edge and moved to higher ground, then crossed the rope bridge and wandered among the huts. In the distance, real or painted, was the distinctive cone of a village kiln, which towered over a yard stacked high with empty brick molds.

Between the reed island and the brickyard, there was a broad wetland, rutted with natural and man-made channels. A camouflaged walkway overhung it.

A meeting was taking place on the walkway. He recognized his friend by the long plaid skirt, so incongruous among the reeds. There were two others: a tall man in a business suit whose yellow hard hat was stenciled with the word
DIRECTOR
; and a carefully coiffed woman in a brilliant blue dress who knew how to use her body when arguing a point in front of a man.

The director's hands were spread aggressively on his hips. The matter, whatever it was, seemed to have been long settled, but he was working hard to maintain the appearance of fairness.

The discussion reached a high pitch. The director signaled that he'd heard enough, then issued his verdict.

The woman in the blue dress had trouble containing her glee. This was clearly the culmination of a long campaign. The one with brighter plumage had been victorious. The loser stormed off.

The thought of being alone in the exhibit frightened him, so he went to find her. Somehow he knew the lay of the land. Every cut in the red clay, every berm, was oddly familiar.

He followed the river. They'd captured the peculiar sigh the sandy soil made as the river water ran along it, a very distinct sound like the tearing of kraft paper.

He came to a clearing with beached canoes. The canoes seemed authentic, with their curved prows and the bitter aura of bitumen. He got a splinter verifying that the wood was the right species, the pitch the same thick concoction one could smell bubbling in the vats by the water in the dry season, when boats were repaired.

There was a guesthouse nearby, a tiny cathedral executed in bundled reeds. How he'd wanted a guesthouse of his own! It took many years for him to understand that the reason he couldn't get one built had nothing to do with a shortage of skilled workers, or even with the bad feelings toward the occupation, but rather with the transgressive nature of the desire itself. It was wrong to want a communal building for one's own. No one had taught him that in his own country. That lesson had been left to marshmen.

She was inside the guesthouse by the long rectangular hearth, sobbing and cradling her purse. The rules of the marshes applied even here, in a museum in the capital. He didn't know why, but they did. He was entitled to enter a guesthouse, no matter the emotional state of anyone else. If she'd truly wanted to be left alone, she could have chosen any of the reed huts that dotted the path.

Marshmen would often find their way to a guesthouse when they were suffering the throes of indecision or grief. There was comfort in numbers, even if some of the guests might, on the surface, be strangers. There was always coffee, always a bowl of rice, sometimes fresh, sometimes stale, but nourishment, nonetheless. He'd sought comfort there, too, during the long occupation, but never managed to shed the burden of his uniform.

5

She didn't acknowledge his presence, but it was her right not to. The guesthouse was a public place, but one that nevertheless allowed for a certain amount of privacy.

He lingered by the door, even though he was curious about the hearth, which had been prepared for a demonstration of the coffee ceremony. An authentic kettle hung from an iron tripod. There was a sack of marsh coffee, a grinder, a coffeepot—everything necessary for a hospitable cup, even a battered tin of sugar.

Marshmen started coffee fires the ancient way: with flint. When he was first shown the fire starters, which were shaped like spearheads, he'd marveled at the ingenuity of finding a domestic use for a killing point. Later, he was told that the similarity of the fire starters to spear tips was coincidental, but he preferred to think of it his own way: the beating of a sword into a plowshare. It seemed to represent progress. This was back when he believed in progress, when he saw himself as an agent of it.

The fire starters were supposed to be in a leather bag that hung from a hook as one entered the guesthouse, always on the right, never on the left. He looked on the right side, but there was no leather bag. Neither was it on the other side of the doorway.

In addition to the fire-starting fetish about left and right, the marshmen also had a rule about north and south. He walked the length of the guesthouse and found the bag hanging in exactly the wrong place: by the left side of the southern door.

He took the bag and hefted it. Its precious shifting contents felt strangely intimate in his palm. He looked around self-consciously, but there was no one here to call him out, no one to mock him.

He squatted by the hearth and made a small pile of dried grass. He could sense objections forming inside of her, but she didn't voice them. The tinder pile sparked easily. He built up a mound of sand around the base of the tripod, and as the water heated in the kettle, he added a ring of stones. The stones weren't really necessary. There was plenty of sand to kill a fire, but he wanted her to relax.

He toasted a handful of coffee beans, then ground them. The grinder was fancier than he was used to. It had a porcelain knob. He was used to wooden knobs worn smooth by palm leather. He tapped the grounds into two empty cups.

Her interest was gathering, along with the impulse to tell him to put these things down. These were artifacts, museum property. Who was he to handle them? But she saw that he knew what he was doing. It had been decades since he'd made marsh coffee, but it all came easily back.

When it was time to pour from the kettle, he wrapped his sleeve around the hot wire handle. Only then did he realize he'd made a mistake: marshmen never brewed coffee by the cup. They brewed it in a tall coffeepot with a long wooden handle; a fine example was sitting practically under his nose. How had he forgotten that crucial step? It had all seemed so natural up to that point.

He ransacked his memory for a time—a bivouac or hunting trip—when he'd seen coffee brewed by the cup.

Once begun, the ritual must not be interrupted. Part of the pleasure of the marshman's coffee was its preparation, which followed along scrupulous lines. He rinsed the coffeepot and then decanted the foaming cups into it, declaring with this gesture that he'd meant to make two cups of coffee and two cups only, rather than an entire pot. Of course, in the marshes, such precision would have been interpreted not only as frugal, but also as downright rude.

There was a certain showmanship involved in pouring coffee from a height. He'd known experts who could extend the stream nearly a yard without spilling a drop. He raised the pot as much as he dared with his unsteady hands.

He was glad to find the sugar in its authentic state, too, fused in small chunks like gemstones. He gave her one and took one for himself. A marshman liked to hold the sugar in his front teeth while he drank.

She started to drink that way, then shifted the sugar to her cheek. This was an expression of her good manners. She didn't want to make him feel self-conscious.

In that way, she was unlike a woman of the marshes, who would have been glad for the chance to demonstrate the superiority of her teeth.

They sat in silence and sipped their coffee, listening to the distant lowing of water buffalo. As faithful as the recordings were, they'd been produced with the average length of a museum-goer's visit in mind. The sounds cycled every few minutes. The same water buffalo was ever lowing, the same waterfowl crisscrossing the sky.

He waited for her to speak. It was pleasant to be sitting in a guesthouse, in the proper clothing, sipping sludgy coffee. He'd always felt at home in the marshes. That comfort had been at the very heart of his troubles.

Finally he broke the silence, saying that he was certainly no expert, but he did wonder whether the fire starters were in their proper place.

“I know!” she said, adding that she'd pointed it out herself, but was overruled by one of her colleagues who produced a photograph to bolster his claim. Her theory was that the photograph had been printed backward, an occupational hazard with old negatives.

The subject ran its course. There was another lull, which he finally ended by saying the exhibit was brilliant. He didn't mean to sound patronizing, but praising her efforts, dressed as he was, in that setting, was practically the definition of the word. He was an elder. In the guesthouse, offering praise or criticism wasn't just permitted; it was his essential role.

She started to cry. He didn't try to soothe her. He simply made himself still until the crying stopped. She thanked him and went on to say that she'd just been handed a tough decision. A terrible insult, really.

He made more coffee the same way as before, which caused her to tell him, very gently, that she'd never seen it done that way.

He laughed and said he knew it was wrong, but hadn't wanted to admit it.

She took two sugars. She'd wanted two sugars before, she said, but was ashamed of her sweet tooth. Then she told him that some very powerful politicians had threatened to block the museum's funding on account of the marsh exhibit. They claimed it was too “neutral,” meaning that the marshman was nowhere held responsible for his crimes against the homeland. Nowhere was there mention of the bloody insurgency that had cost so many lives, or of the barbaric practices that were routinely employed against coalition forces.