A Time of Miracles (7 page)

I sigh. The snow is drenching my pants up to the knees
and I ache all over. We’ve walked for at least a million kilometers. The scientists at Souma-Soula ordered us to evacuate from what they classified as a “dangerous zone.” What can Gloria possibly find to make me feel better? I want to know. Is she going to pull Suki, Maya, and Stambek out of her bag like a magician?

“Ah, here we are!” Gloria smiles as she shows me her old tin box.

She removes her gloves, and for the first time she opens the box in front of me. In spite of my bad mood, curiosity makes me come closer.

“I knew that one day we would need this,” Gloria says. “And that day has come.”

At first I see nothing but a pile of papers. Then Gloria unfolds them, and I stare wide-eyed when I understand what they are: a fat wad of bank notes—of American dollars. And, rolled inside them, two small notebooks with the universal word “passport.” Inside the passports are lines written in an alphabet I can’t read.

“This passport is in your name: Blaise Fortune,” Gloria explains. “The other one is your mother’s passport: Jeanne Fortune. The pictures are missing, but we’ll get new ones before we board.”

“Board? But …”

I’ve grown up, it’s true, but I’m not sure that I understand. Gloria laughs when she sees the puzzled expression on my face.

“The one and only remedy against despair, Koumaïl, is hope! That’s what I have in my box: hope!”

She puts the lid back on, satisfied.

“We’re going to use the passports?” I ask in disbelief.

“Exactly!”

“But … you’re going to take my mother’s place, then?”

“Yes.” Gloria smiles. “And at last you will officially be Monsieur Blaise.”

I can’t believe my ears. Around us there is only snow, sky, and crows, a kind of hazy landscape without limits, where dollars and passports are of no use.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“To France!” Gloria answers cheerfully as she lifts the gear over her back. “So, are you coming?”

THE
next million kilometers seem much easier to me. Knowing we have a destination is like having wings! Snowfields, gravel fields, bare forests where invisible owls hoot—it makes no difference. I walk relentlessly. And relentlessly I pester Gloria with questions: France, but where exactly? I want to know. There are so many towns! And what boat will we board? What is its name? Once we get to where we’re going, what will we do? And how is it that she has my mother’s passport?

Gloria explains that Jeanne gave it to her, together with mine, when she was in the train wreck, before she lost consciousness.

“You never told me that!” I protest.

“Well, now you know.”

“And the photos?”

“I was afraid. I burned them.”

I frown. “And the money?”

“Zemzem gave me the box. He wanted to give us a
chance to get away, to cross borders and controls. Being called Bohème is not enough to leave a country at war.”

“So that was his gift? A box and dollars?”

“Only part of the gift,” Gloria confesses. “I might tell you the rest … but later.”

I am both troubled and vexed that Gloria never mentioned these passports to me. What if she hasn’t been telling me the simple truth about the Terrible Accident and about my mother? I start to think. Yet I have no choice but to trust her.

We trek across villages with muddy streets and telephone poles whose torn cables swing in the wind like people hanged; we trek across flooded fields; we trek along roads that go nowhere and vast countryside where nothing grows.

The people we encounter have emaciated dogs and hostile faces. They lock their doors when they see us. Do they know that we come from Souma-Soula’s “dangerous zone”? I wonder. Is it written on our faces?

“Don’t pay attention to them,” Gloria advises me. “Move on as if you were a ghost.”

I do my best to imagine that I am nothing, just a draft of air.… But days go by like this and I begin to feel sadness weigh heavily again on my chest, worse than if I had swallowed a grapnel.

From time to time, having no strength left, we have to steal something to eat—some warm bread on a windowsill, some dry meat, or some pickles in vinegar.

Along the way we come across trucks covered with tarps
that move more slowly than a hearse and are headed north with their loads of ashen-faced soldiers. No one makes the V sign.

At night we sleep in barns, in churches, even in henhouses. In the morning we stink of droppings and rotten straw.

“Courage,” Gloria keeps repeating. “We’ll be there soon.”

But I don’t see any port. Never mind a boat on which to embark. France is a faraway and out-of-reach dream, more so now that we don’t have any coal to boil water in the samovar.

Gloria takes my hand. “Soon we’ll leave the mountains, Koumaïl,” she tells me. “In the valley you’ll see a river. At the end of the river, there is an estuary that opens onto a large sea and a city that opens onto a port. The air will be sweet and you’ll see palm trees, Koumaïl. Over there we’ll find people to help us. I’ll manage, I promise.”

I move on, trying to imagine this improbable city from where we will board a boat to go to other, just as improbable cities. But something nags at me.

“At the border they’ll see that you’re not French,” I say.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk! And why would they?”

“You can’t even speak French.”

“So what? You can’t either, Monsieur Blaise! Yet you’re French, aren’t you?”

When I make a list of my French vocabulary, I know only a few words in the language of my country of origin: “
Helpmehelpmeplease.
” Gloria’s argument leaves me speechless. So I keep on walking and try to believe that my feet are somebody else’s.

*   *   *

We finally reach the river, then the estuary and the port of Sukhumi. Beyond the palm trees, cargo vessels and military ships adorned with cannons lie hull after hull.

Night falls over buildings in ruin. It rains. The docks are littered with debris but also with men, women, and children who have nowhere to go and who sleep here and there, taking shelter under tarps. I am so tired that I am ready to sleep under the rain with the dogs and the garbage.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Gloria tells me. “There is better for us tonight! Come on.”

She drags me through backyards and smelly streets up to the entrance of a bar, the Matachine.

The room is dark, with wobbly tables and cigar-smoking men who stare at us. Gloria pushes me toward a bench and asks me to wait for her.

As Gloria heads toward the bar, I make myself cozy and put my head down against the sticky armrest. I can’t hear what she says to the man who is opening the beer bottles. They talk a long time, while I fall into a deep sleep.

When Gloria wakes me up, she smiles broadly.

“Everything is arranged,” she tells me. “We’ll board a boat in a few days. For the time being, we’re going to settle in upstairs.”

Her finger points to the ceiling of the Matachine.

We climb a stiff ladder up to a narrow trapdoor, and Gloria breathes with difficulty because of her weight. Finally we put our gear in a sort of cupboard in the attic: our new refuge.

The place is dusty, cluttered with boxes, but it has a dormer window. Gloria unfolds two camping beds right under it. This way, she tells me, we will see the stars and it will be wonderful.

I lie down. I look up. The sky is pitch-black.

“Be patient,” Gloria murmurs. “There are stars behind the clouds, always. Don’t fall asleep, Koumaïl, watch the sky.”

Drops of rain crash onto the glass, and Gloria coughs a little. I wrap myself in Dobromir’s blanket, sheltered, struggling to keep my eyes open. I try to remember the names of the stars that Mrs. Hanska chose from her old book: Betelgeuse, Aldebaran, Merak, Vega.…

Suddenly, thousands of sparkles illuminate the sky.

“There they are!” I say.

But Gloria doesn’t answer me. She’s fast asleep.

The points of light disappear, and I hear the humming of engines and then muffled noises that shake the walls of the Matachine.

Those are not stars.

I hide my head under the blanket and close my eyes. Far away a bomb explodes in the port of Sukhumi.

IT’S
early in the day still and I don’t know where we are going. Gloria drags me along demolished streets, where there are mangy dogs and people pulling carts. She explains to me that Sukhumi was a nice town before the war, a seaside resort where people came on vacation to soak up the sun and enjoy the beaches. In summer, under the palms trees and the flowering tangerine trees, people used to eat ice cream, barefoot in sandals. It’s the pure and simple truth. Now Sukhumi is an ugly place, and if people walk barefoot, it’s because they’ve lost their shoes under the ruins of what was once their home. Only a few vestiges of the past glory days remain: big, empty hotels; waterless fountains; rusty pontoons on the shore; and collapsed walls. Still, I try to imagine how magnificent it must have been here, before the bombs, before the soldiers and the fear. I’d like to understand why those days are gone, but I know that it’s a waste of time. Gloria will only tell me again to leave the Caucasus where it is, that it’s not the concern of a French boy. That we have to hurry along.

“Why don’t you tell me where we’re going? Is it a surprise?” I ask her.

She doesn’t answer, so I grow suspicious.

“Good or bad?” I ask.

Gloria pulls on my hand. I jump over the deep, rainfilled potholes of the avenues.

Finally we arrive in front of a large building. There are letters, partly erased, above the door. I read:
PU
_
LI
_
BA
__

“Puliba?” I say.

Gloria winks at me. “Come on.”

We go through the front door and enter an echoing hall. Several women with children are in line in front of a counter managed by a heavy lady with tired eyes. We give her a few coins before taking a flight of stairs that goes underground.

“I knew we would be lucky,” Gloria tells me. “The water has not been cut off yet.”

Once we’re downstairs, warm steam and the scent of perfumed soap suffocate me. Finally I understand that, including the missing letters, “puliba
” means “Public Baths.”

Gloria removes her shoes and then all her clothes. I’m startled by how plump she is. I stand on the tiled floor, frozen like a statue.

“Come on, Koumaïl, don’t be a baby!” Gloria laughs. “You’ve faced more difficult situations before!”

I think about what I’ve lived through since the Terrible Accident, and I know she’s right. A moment later, as bare as worms, we disappear into the deliciously warm cloud of the hammam.

*   *   *

I let go of my tiredness, my fear, even some of my sadness, and let them run down the drain with the water of the showers; I feel much lighter. When we come out, we’re as red as newborn babies.

Gloria’s cheeks probably look as appetizing and shiny as the apples in Vassili’s orchard. She combs my hair, buttons my shirt, and looks at me with satisfaction.

“You’re as clean as a new coin!” she says. “I’m sure that you’ll please Mr. Ha.”

I’ve never heard of Mr. Ha. “Is this another surprise?” I want to know. “And why do I need to please him?”

“Stop asking questions and follow me,” Gloria says. “We have something very important to take care of before curfew.”

I hang on to her hand, and we make our way along the streets in the opposite direction.

Mr. Ha is a Chinese man. He’s waiting for us at the back of a hash house, where other Chinese people are eating spicy soup in silence. My mouth starts to salivate, but we haven’t come here to fill our stomachs.

Mr. Ha takes us to a room barely larger than a cupboard and closed off by a curtain. Gloria takes a wad of dollars out of her pocket, along with our passports.

Mr. Ha looks at them. He smiles.

“Ah, yes, France!” he says. “What a beautiful country!”

He pockets the dollars and then directs me to a stool. I wince. Is he going to shave my hair like creepy Sergei? I wonder.

“Come on,” Gloria encourages me. “You have nothing to fear.”

I sit down cautiously. Mr. Ha rummages behind the curtain and then brings out a gleaming camera that stands on a tripod. He positions it in front of me. I turn toward Gloria. I get it! I’m getting a new picture for my passport! That’s why we went to the puliba first! A French kid can’t be dirty.

“Look this way,” Mr. Ha orders me. “That’s good. Now keep your eyes on the lens and think about the Eiffel Tower.”

I frown. “What
eiffeltower
?” I say.

“Come on, young man, everyone knows the Eiffel Tower!”

I shake my head. All I know are the pages in my atlas with the names of towns, rivers, mountains—I can even tell you the distance in kilometers between Paris and Marseille—but I have never seen a tower with the name Eiffel.

Mr. Ha sighs and heads behind his curtain. He comes back with a sort of catalog. There’s a picture on each page—a picture that represents one of France’s monuments.

“There!” he says, showing me. “That’s the Eiffel Tower. Take a good look.”

I stare at the image of a big iron edifice in the shape of an arrow planted in the blue sky. The caption, in Russian, says, “The Eiffel Tower, the Champ de Mars, the Seine, the Iéna Bridge, the riverboats.”

“So, young man? Are you ready?”

I look up at the lens. I think very hard about this
pointed tower, the bridge arched over the Seine, and I imagine that I’m on it.
Click!

“Perfect! A true little Parisian!” Mr. Ha laughs. “All right, now. Off you go!”

As Gloria sits on the stool to be photographed, I flip through the catalog. That’s how I discover Montmartre and its artists, the crowded Champs-Elysées, the Palace of Versailles, Chartres Cathedral, the Bridge of the Gard, and also Mont-Saint-Michel, which is surrounded by the sea.

Mr. Ha leans over my shoulder. He looks with me at the sea, the sand, and the golden angel at the top of the mount.

“You can have the booklet, if you want it,” he tells me. “Learn everything, my boy, you’ll need it.”