Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (66 page)

    
“I intend to honor my vows.”

    
“We’ll see. Men of God should never deny
themselves the true chapel. I doubt those vows will hold up tomorrow.”

    
“What, exactly, is going to happen
tomorrow?” he asked her.

    
“It is the first full moon of spring and
the last night of the Jam in this town. You might call it an explosion of love
. . . and we will need every drop of it for what is ahead. Restore yourself,
Father, first with sleep and then with laughter. It may be a long time before
we laugh again. And who knows how long before you have a woman?”

    
She turned away and he reached for her,
taking gentle hold of her upper arm. She glanced at his hand, then raised her
eyes to him. He nodded toward the tavern in front, now closed but unlocked. She
followed without resistance. When it was dark, he spoke softly: “Listen. I
don’t know what the hell happened out there. You can spend your life reading
the lives of the saints and still not be prepared when something holy comes
your way. I only know that it probably had to happen, and that she probably has
to be here. She told me . . . she has dues to pay.”

    
“What does that mean?”

    
“Maybe that she got her sister into this
mess and now feels like she has to be part of getting her out. Maybe to honor
her friend Shams. Or maybe it’s just that everyone looks for redemption in
their own fashion. There was a car out on the highway. An American limo . . .
pretty rare here, I would think. And a village boy, running away, saying
something about men who take the children. Could they have tracked Mikhail?”

    
“It might be the same men . . . or
different men,” she said. “The wars have stirred up an army of orphans, ready
to follow anyone with a smile and a stick of candy. Half the village girls will
have whored themselves before they are sixteen. Many will end up in debt
bondage. Wars make some men rich. Limousines are not as rare as you think.”

    
“So you don’t think we need to get the hell
out of here . . . like, tonight?”

    
“I will think it over,” Francesca answered.
“But I think we are safest here. Turkey is crawling with predators right now,
but they rarely enter the villages. Especially not this village. They wait on
the outskirts. At the moment, we are better off here than on the road. When the
festival is finished, yes . . . by that time we must be invisible.” She touched
her thumb and forefinger to his eyelids and said, “Now . . . to bed.”

    
The
music began just after dawn with simple dance rhythms beaten out on frame drums
by the village women. The drums looked like oversize tambourines without the
jangles and were played with the heel of the hand. Raszer had awakened to the
sound and lay still, tapping the rhythms on the frame of his cot in imitation.
They seemed to be in mixed meters of three and four, but he sometimes lost the
downbeat.

    
His impulse had been to rise immediately
and go to the street, not to miss a moment of whatever timeless ceremony was
about to begin. His body, however, had been made a prisoner of Ruthie’s limbs.
The mattress was barely three feet wide, and she had entwined herself in him.
As soon as he was fully awake, he realized he had just two choices: to
disengage or accept. Raszer got up.

    
He’d slept fully dressed. Now he pulled on
his boots without bothering to lace them and stumbled into the tavern to find
Ismet smoking at the bar, a carafe of what Raszer hoped was coffee at his
elbow. The front door was open; the drums echoed off the cobblestones. Raszer
lifted a hand in greeting, then turned and quietly closed the door that led to
the sleeping quarters. Shaykh Adi slipped through at the last second and joined
him at the bar.

    
Ismet filled a demitasse with coffee as
thick and black as pitch. He pushed over a little bowl of rock sugar and
without a word, dropped two large chunks into Raszer’s cup. This was Turkey. It
was presumed he wanted it sweet. Raszer lit a cigarette, gave the dog a scratch
on the head, and took the coffee down in a single gulp. His teeth ached like
ice on a new filling. On the next cup, he’d forgo the sugar.

    
Normally, he’d have tapped the bartender
for all he knew about the day’s festival and the general lay of the land, but
he didn’t speak Kurdish and he’d already discovered he wasn’t going to get far
with Arabic. He decided to try English, just so he didn’t have to sit there
mutely, exchanging awkward smiles and nods.

    
“Big party,” he said, gesturing toward the
street.

    
Ismet returned a mostly toothless smile and
poured him more coffee. When he went for the sugar, Raszer lightly touched his
leathered knuckles to ward him off.

    
“Not much of a sweet tooth,” Raszer said,
touching a finger to his teeth.

    
Ismet mimicked, tapping his empty gums,
shrugged, and said something that probably meant,
Yeah . . . you see where it got me
.

    
“I feel like an American asshole, coming
here without boning up on your language.” Raszer stubbed out his cigarette.

    
“
Asssh
hole,”
Ismet repeated, and grinned. He took one of Raszer’s smokes for good measure
and lit it with both pleasure and a sense of entitlement. After exhaling blue
smoke over Raszer’s head, he nodded in the direction of the open door.

    
“
Mum
sondii
,” he said.

    
“Come again?”

    
“
Mum
sondii
.” Ismet retrieved a nearly exhausted candle from the end of the bar.

    
“Candle,” said Raszer, touching it.

    
The proprietor filled his cheeks with air
and blew.

    
“Candle . . . blown . . . out.”

    
Ismet nodded.

    
“Tonight?” Raszer asked.

    
“Yes. Tonight,” said his host, and turned a
little circle with his hands in the air.

    
For a few minutes, they sat in
companionable silence. The Raszer stood, gestured to the street, and offered
Ismet another of his cigarettes before heading outside.

    
At this stage of the day, the parade was
mostly grandmothers and children wearing boldly dyed prints of indigo,
tangerine, saffron, and cinnabar. Some of the children carried handmade
pinwheels in matching colors. A few old men stood nearby looking on, their skin
like sun-dried fruit. The sixteen-to-sixty age group was entirely
unrepresented, probably sleeping in, in preparation for a long night.

    
With the rising sun, the hillside village
turned first pink, then lavender, and was finally bathed in a glow like the
skin of a blood orange. The elders acknowledged Raszer politely as they passed,
some even granting little bows. Only later did it occur to him that it the
presence of Shaykh Adi at his heels was probably what had elicited such
gestures. He knew from his studies that the Alevi people believed in the
transmigration of souls, but it surprised him that they identified a saint in
canine form so quickly.

    
After a while, he went back inside. It was
best, he thought, to wait for the others to wake before doing any serious
exploring.

    
He and the group held a council at
suppertime. They’d had an afternoon of sun, music, and bittersweet local ale,
and refrained from discussing the business ahead of them. Ruthie’s arrival had
introduced too much uncertainty, so, for the time being, they simply allowed
the pageantry to wash over them. The five of them—plus the dog—took an outside
table at the village’s only sit-down restaurant, a little kebab place with
waiters in yellow turbans who took turns sitting in with the band when they
weren’t handling orders. The stone patio was set back from the street and
wedged between the restaurant and a tobacconist’s shop. The sun was dropping,
and in less than an hour it would be cool, but for now the day’s warmth
remained on their skin. They’d spent the day strolling, sampling meat pastries,
learning the local dance steps, and observing what, to all appearances, was a
typical spring festival with pagan roots but offering no hint of the evening’s
promised revelry. Throughout the afternoon, the two women had kept each other
in their sights.

    
The drinking did not begin in earnest until
the unmarried young men began to materialize at around three o’clock. This was
probably out of consideration for the children, who, along with their
grandparents, began to disappear as the sun dropped.

    
Raszer took Ruthie aside at lunchtime, but
she seemed preoccupied and not in the mood for explanations.

    
“Why, Ruthie?” he asked. “And just as
important,
how
?”

    
“I
can’t not be here,” she mumbled behind red-tinted sunglasses.

    
“Because you feel responsible for what
happened to Katy.”

    
“Don’t shrink me, okay?” she replied,
turning away. “Can’t people ever just do something because it feels right?”

    
“Sure,” he said. “Some people can.”

    
She glared at him. “But not me, right?”

    
“Sure, people act on noble impulses. But
this can’t have been all that impulsive. Things get complicated when you travel
to a war zone. How’d you pull it off so fast?”

    
“Shams and me,” she said, “we were gonna
come here and look for Katy. Had it planned for a long time. Then you came
along . . . and he died, so I adjusted the plan.”

    
“Who paid for the ticket? I’m not sure I
believe—”

    
“You think because I live in a fucking
trailer that I don’t have resources?”

    
“I have no doubt you’re resourceful. But
you have to admit—”

    
“Look, mister.” She sighed and gave him a
square-on look. “Can I tell you something?”

    
“I’m listening.”

    
“Henry left me some cash, money he skimmed
from the gun and dope deals him and Johnny were doing for these dicks. Nobody
knew about it.”

    
Raszer calculated the odds that there might
be even a drop of truth in her statement. He doubted it, but didn’t argue.

    
“Money would explain a few things. Not all
of them.”

    
“You don’t look so bad bald,” she said.
“And with that slash on your face, it makes you look kind of holy and nasty at
the same time.”

    
“That’s good,” he said. “Maybe you won’t
fuck with me as much.”

    
“So, what’s the story with the Italian
bitch? I don’t think she likes me.”

    
“You ought to be able to figure that one
out. And if you expect to hang around, you’d better follow her lead. She’s
tougher than you are.”

    
“Are you fucking her?”

    
“I’m a priest.”

    
“Since when did that make a difference?”

    
At
7:07 by Raszer’s wristwatch, things suddenly got unnaturally quiet and Raszer
heard a distant
mey
flute,
accompanied by something that sounded a bit like castanets. The tune was
haunting, infectious, a string of notes repeated again and again and commanding
attention. On the patio, a few of the young men began to tap out the rhythm on
their tables and exchange knowing glances. The women—some veiled but most in
colorful headscarves—whispered and giggled with one another. One of them boldly
removed her scarf and shook out her chestnut hair. None of the others followed
suit, but most began to sway gently in time.

    
When the sound of the flute floated close
enough to tickle their eardrums, it was joined by drums of a deeper tenor, and
soon after, the
saz
player in the
restaurant band began to pick out the tune. Dante leaned over to Raszer and
said, “It’s beginning. Watch the street.”

    
“The holy men and dervishes will come
first,” said Francesca. “To bless the feast and remind us that it is a
zikr
, a remembrance of our origins.”

    
“What is this?” asked Ruthie.

    
“Nothing you’ve seen in Azusa,” said
Raszer. “Not even in Taos.”

    
Ruthie returned a blank look. Francesca
smiled privately and began to sway in time.

    
Now the waiters emerged in a procession,
carrying silver trays crowded with small glasses containing an amber-colored
liquid. After all the patrons had been served, all but one set down their trays
and joined the
saz
player at the
bandstand. The remaining waiter went to the gates of the patio and stood
patiently with a full tray. When the first of the red-sashed dervishes twirled
into view, he stepped into the street and began to distribute the communal
elixir to the vanguard of holy men. Not only did each manage to claim and hold
on to his glass without ceasing to whirl, they all then extended their arms and
poured the concoction into their mouths without spilling a drop. On that
signal, the bandleader raised his own glass and directed all to drink. The
liquor was deeply herbal, and Raszer registered it as even more potent than
Ismet’s raki.