The Kanshou (Earthkeep) (22 page)

Remarkably, Habitante Baragiali still breathed. 

Gabriel embraced the exploded chest and pushed his mouth toward Stone's ear.  "Stone, man!  I got you, I got you!" 

The whisper was faint.  "Gabe?"

"I'm right here, man, right here."

"They didn't leave us, Gabe," Stone panted lightly.  "The animals," he rasped.  "They didn't leave us."  He tried to move.

"Stay still, man, stay--"

"They're all right here, Gabe!"  Stone's eyes were bright.  He was smiling. 

Gabe laid his head against Stone's shoulder, listening for the next breath. 

Stone shuddered and was still. 

Gabe held him tight.  A huge pain began filling him up and flooding the room around him.

A dispassionate voice reached him from across the room.  "He was a dangerous man, Brother Gabriel."

Gabe winced.  In his gut the pain turned to fury.  Carefully he draped cool wraps around the anger and pushed himself away from Stone's body.  Bile washed over his tongue.  He resisted spitting it full in Ángel's face.

With ritual calm, Gabriel folded Stone's arms over his body.  On impulse he lifted the left sleeve, to look once more upon the woman entwined by the snake. 

The white skin of Stone's forearm was smooth.  And free of tattoos.

Girardon turned the arm over, shoved the sleeve higher.  Quickly he pushed up Stone's other sleeve and beheld there no eagle, nothing at all.  Just smooth, undecorated skin.  Gabe closed his eyes tight and shook them open again.  "Jesus!" he whispered, looking from one arm to the other. 

He shivered, bunched his shoulders, and rotated his neck full circle, letting his eyes close and his head hang limp.  After many moments, he wiped his face and peered at the figure beyond the table.  Ángel cradled the shotgun and caressed its wooden stock.

Girardon's eyes narrowed.  Deliberately, he made his fists open and fall casually by his sides.  Then he made his face into a mask, and said evenly, "You didn't have to do that, Ángel."

"Think a moment, Brother Gabriel," Ángel responded.  "What else could we have done?  All our lives are at stake here."

Gabe stared at the little man before him. 

Ángel waited politely for some reply.

Slowly, reluctantly, Giradon closed his eyes and nodded.

"Good," said Ángel.  "Cuza will report that Habitante Baragiali never returned from sandbag transport at the levee.  Until they can search, the 'Darmes will assume that, alas, the Great Dambovita River must have swallowed up Brother Stone."  When Gabe did not answer, he continued, "You are right to mourn.  We shall all mourn our brother."

Gabe smoothed Stone's sleeves so that the tattoo-less arms could rest on the shattered chest.  He retrieved Stone's cap from the corner and set it at a jaunty angle on the bald head. His face still a mask, he rose to face Ángel, and the affairs of the coming day.

10 – Bucharest - [2087 C.E.]

As Kanshou I am guardian of each individual person's physical safety, for an individual's safety, for assurance of continued existence is the most important element in her life and ultimately in the life of her species.  I protect first the safety of any person threatened by violence.  I protect second the safety of my Kanshoumates.  I protect third the safety of the person doing the harm. 

--The Labrys Manual

On a bright Bucharest morning, outside a modest building of stone and wood, citizens gathered to greet and embrace each other with smiles and a suppressed anticipation.  Most were women, wearing long cotton dresses or skirts of varying tints and shades of purple and appointed with black, violet, or white sashes and belts.  Petite bows of lavender ribbon dotted the tresses of girl children and every adult woman wore a purple or lavender scarf, wrapped or pinned so as to cover at least part of her head. 

The men wore black suits, shirts of white or lavender, and black yamulkehs sometimes covered by plain black hats.  Each man's face was framed by two long single curls of his otherwise short hair, and his beard more often than not covered all but the ends of his bright purple neckpiece.  Invariably, from the waist of each man hung the tzitzit, the short strings of his four-cornered undergarment. 

Every person -- women, men, girls, boys -- carried a tallis or prayer shawl.  Most were unfolding them and preparing to place them over their shoulders when two purple-skirted women dropped foot-first from the sky, landing like feathers on the pavement amidst embraces and laughter.  They freed their skirt hooks, and along with their friends, moved hand-in-hand toward the place of prayer.

Rebbe Sarah Bas Miriam was in great spirits.  It was a splendid day, one of those testifying to the harmony of all of life.  There was sunshine, there was freshness from yesterday's rain, there was a tune in her heart, and there was the Torah.  The new roof on the shul was near to completion, and Batya Aranoff, she should lighten her purse, had finally withdrawn her resistance to the plans for the library.

Sarah stood in the foyer of the shul collecting her energies and preparing to join the community that was in her keeping.  Breathing deeply, she listened to the hum of the congregants socializing inside the large prayer hall.  Avrom stood near the door, nervously fingering his tallis.  She caught his eye and sent him a "you'll-do-fine" wink.  He grinned his thanks.  We should all have such sons, she thought.  This was indeed a special Shabbos.

She looked down the aisle formed by rows of stiff benches, full of chattering adults and barely restrained children.  If today had been a century ago, the women and men would have been separated by the mehitza, the wall that used to grace old shuls and synagogues.  Now congregants stood together.

Before Rebbe Sarah moved an inch, she felt the hush that gradually overtook the worshippers as they became aware of her presence.  Nearly a hundred pairs of eyes turned to her.  All breath seemed to halt.  Small children raised bright expectant faces in her direction.  A precious moment, thought Rebbe Sarah. 

She stepped into the gathering hall, and chaos erupted.  Every body went into its own motion, every voice into its own song or prayer, every heart into its own self-examination and rejoicing.  She moved down the narrow aisle toward the distant bimah, flanked by davening or spinning people.  As she reached the front of the hall, she vocally added her prayers to the cacophony, and when the rhythm was exactly right, she let her voice reach out above all others.  "Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who blesseth Thy people, Israel, with peace."

The room fell silent.  The service had begun.

Daniel The Baker led the praise and blessing of the Besht, the Baal Shem Tov, and then of the Hasidim, the first to teach its daughters the study of the Torah.  Livia Radishchev broke into a familiar wordless tune that was taken up for several minutes by the gathering.  Suzanne Bas Katrina danced a blessing to the Holy One, and Barbara Of The Woods prayed for the return of non-human animals.

The high point of the service was coming into focus.  All eyes turned to the eastern wall of the shul, to the Ark, wherein lay the Torah, the wellspring of joy.  Two women brought the sacred scrolls from the Ark and raised them high, accompanied by an exhilarated and intensifying hubbub.  As they carried the Torah among the congregation, praying people crowded around it, blessing it with kisses and smiles and light touchings.  The shul was a tumult of expanding voices.

Then the sacred writing was brought to the bimah and spread open to the Portion Of The Week.  The time of the rising up had come, the time of the encounter with history, the time of the speaking of that which bound their hearts together in a community of love, study, and service.  The texture of the sounds in the room changed, as if all those present had flooded their spirits into the young man who would read on this day. 

Amid interweaving voices, Avrom moved up to the bimah, stepped upon the raised platform, and stood before his people.  He placed his hands to the sides of the Torah and bent his head, then lifted an extraordinary countenance to the faces below him.  The fervor of the voices rose up on tiptoe and then hushed, awaiting the familiar sounds and rhythms that only the Torah could provide.   

Avrom picked up the silver pointer, set it upon the text, and opened his mouth to read.

His words were lost in a burst of gunfire from an automatic weapon just outside the shul.  The noise split the air and shook the building. 

The front door of the building flew open and immediately thereafter, the door to the big room itself.  In the doorway loomed the figure of a large caucasian man wearing a heavy, brightly-figured caftan, its hood flung back.  He took one look at the astonished gathering and then turned upward toward the roof a ponderous automatic weapon, vintage 1988.  With a long continuous burst of fire, he riddled the ceiling in a zigzag pattern.

Single gunfire shots, phaser zings, and spatters of more automatic weapons were coming from the street beyond the foyer of the building.  Shouts and whistles and the sound of running feet stood out from a background of crowd noises and the hum of flex-cars.  Three men flung themselves into the room, one of them firing a modified uzi toward the front doors and the street.  He pushed his African print boxcap hard onto his head and kicked the outer doors closed.  He broke a stained glass window in the foyer, thrusting the nose of his weapon through the opening and shouting into the street, clearly marking the limits of his retreat. 

The big intruder who had fired at the ceiling took up guard duty, swinging his big gun back and forth over the crowd.  The short man in the black beret, who seemed almost swallowed up in his jumpsuit, waved a shotgun as he moved swiftly down the western wall and opened doors beyond the bimah, quickly searching the back rooms.  When he returned, he mounted the bimah and swung his weapon back and forth over the gathering.  The hatless black man was walking up and down the eastern wall shouting, "Stay where you are!  Stay right where you are!"  He pushed back with his rifle barrel any individual who started to break for an exit.

To the people gathered in the shul, the sounds of ballistic weapons were recognizable but distinctly foreign, reminiscent only of occasional incidents reported from newscenters, or of the bloody flatfilms some had viewed from a century ago.  The immediate response of the gathering to the first shots was almost uniform: they fell upon children and loved ones, dragging each other to the floor or beneath benches.

Avrom was one of those who did not drop to the floor.  Instead, he flung himself upon the Torah, hastily gathering it into his arms.  He headed for the Ark and the tall doors that protected it on the eastern wall.  When the shots broke out, Livia Radishchev expelled a shout and reached the Ark in time to help Avrom enclose the Torah within it and push closed the doors.  The two of them stood like statues in front of the small closet, guarding it with their bodies.

"Brother Gabriel!  Pick it off!"  The figure in the boxcap with the uzi had returned.  Snatching a yamulkeh from the head of a young man, he propped it on the back of a bench.  Instantly the black man across the room lifted the yamulkeh again with a bullet from his rifle.  "Now kill this!" shouted the man with the uzi.  He flung a scrap of stained glass into the air.  The black man shattered it.  "And this!"  Another scrap of glass, another shattering.  "Ace Shot Gabriel Girardon," bellowed the man in the boxcap, pointing grandly at the marksman, "pride of the Congolese Resistance!  He will at all times have one of you in the sights of his rifle!"

The four militants surrounded the gathering now, one on each side of the room, the menace of their weapons claiming every eye.  Neither the intruders nor their captives had observed a small form which, at the sound of the first shots, had broken from the front bench and slid like greased lightning to the door behind the bimah.

Yukana Asachi had dashed immediately for the back bathroom and the narrow window above its organic waste toilet.  She was squeezing through the window when the shots that riddled the ceiling ceased.  She was contemplating the eight-foot drop into the backstreet when she heard doors slamming.  There was no cover in the alleyway, but to her left a large shutter flapped.  Yukana uttered a fervent prayer and swung onto the narrow molding behind the shutter, pulling the hinged wooden slats over her body.

She had no time to tremble.  The man in the black beret thrust his head and his shotgun out the window and looked up and down the alley.  Satisfied that no one was around, he slammed out of the bathroom, leaving Yukana with a renewed faith in God.

She released a long breath.  She didn't know why she had run.  She'd simply found herself doing it.  Did she intend to flank the building and tackle the intruders?  Find the Femmedarmes and storm the shul?  Too many
Kanshou Comix
, she told herself, like Marguerite always said.  Too much immersion in those glorious stories of the Kanshou, of Captain Aru Boko and her Fighting Sisterband Of The Lowland Foot-Shrieves. 

Yukana could hear shouts and alarm bells from the front street, and from inside came shufflings and loud excited voices, one of them shouting, "Stay down, all of you!  Down, and you won't get hurt!"  Immediately she was struck with remorse.  Rebbe Sarah was in danger and so were her mothers and friends.  She had to go back!  But what good would that do?  What would Captain Aru Boko do if she were here?  Then in that instant Yukana was struck with a high resolve.  She knew exactly what she had to do.

She had spent the last two weeks being tote-and-go for the construction crew that was removating the shul's roof.  The shul had once been a theatre, and above its big room there was a false ceiling that made a kind of loft or crawlspace between the roof and the ceiling.  Yukana knew from her many explorations that if  you found the right crack in the loft, you could watch everything that went on in the gathering hall below.  She knew these parts of the building like the stitches of her hand-sewn head scarf.  She must get to the loft! 

She remembered that there was scaffolding just beyond the corner of this outside wall.  She could scoot to it along the molding.  Holding onto the windowsill, she unhooked her cumbersome skirt and let it drop to the ground, leaving her legs chilly in their purple cotton tights.  Then she pushed off her Shabbos shoes and socks, and set her bare feet on the narrow molding.  The shiplap that covered the wall was old and uneven enough to provide holding points for her hands.  She clung with her fingertips until she could let go with one hand and reach for the next fingerhold.  Then she moved her feet to the point under her forward hand.