Over the next few months we learned the story. Winslow Carvenell had discovered a document describing the birth of the twins. The first-born twin had a large birthmark on his back, the younger was unblemished. Winslow, with the ugly strawberry-colored blotch on his left shoulder, was the true heir. The doctor who had delivered the children had mixed up the details later, and the old count was happier with an unblemished heir anyway.
Winslow had approached William asking for the title and lands. After all, Winslow would only get to enjoy it for a few years, and then it would pass back to William. William didn’t want to relinquish power—even for a few months to the grumpy old scholar. He decided to slay his uncle.
He knew that I had often quarreled with old Winslow. One day the Count had visited me hoping to find some way to incriminate me. I remember he had asked to borrow some ancient book of poetry, as I had searched among my badly organized library he noted that I was using the ring as a paperweight. This proved to him that I didn’t know the value of gold, and was therefore unworthy of it. Or at least was unaware if it. He stole the ring to plant in the scene of his crime.
William resides in the king’s dungeons, where I hear he has very bad dreams. The fonder of the line, the red knight, had been known for fearsome forms of justice. Apparently William dreams himself as a guest in his ancestor’s dungeon-courts.
I live much as I did before, but increasingly wonder if I should die ring-less. Now that I have penned this little story, perhaps I should try a sonnet for Shina.
Shall I compare thee to the mystery of dream?
Thou are more mysterious and more rare.
A good start....
THE SYRINGE
Mr. Randolph Holland’s prize possession was an old-style glass hypodermic syringe. It had served him and his habit well for twenty-five years. Despite what you may have read on the subject, junkies can live a very long time—long, anonymous, gray lives in cheap boarding houses—with two-bit jobs which have only the function of serving the monkey. Such syringes used to be the rule, but plastic with its disposability now dominated the market.
“Never misses the vein,” he used to boast. “Always hits blood.”
Mr. Randolph Holland not only lost his prize possession but also his life (although in a sense he had lost it years before) to a pair of the street thugs named Crazy Eddy and Rico.
“Man, this guy didn’t have shit,” said Eddy cleaning out the boarding room with leisure. Mr. Holland had been quiet about his going, so the boys weren’t worried that his neighbors would be dropping in. They had watched the old junkie.
“Let’s pull him off the bed,” said Rico. “We can stay here for a while, sell his shit tonight.”
They pulled him off the bed. Rico took out a package of condoms and they amused themselves.
Later as night fell, Rico asked, “You want to shoot up his stash? There ain’t enough to sell.”
“Nah, I don’t do that stuff. Makes you too slow.”
Rico was more catholic in his tastes than Eddy. As he prepared his fix, he said, “I ain’t never seen a syringe like this. I bet that old cocksucker used this for years man. Look the metal’s green on the handle. I wouldn t stick it in me.”
“I washed it man. What are you worried about. Maybe it’s haunted. Maybe it’s used to biting the blood of the living every night.” Rico managed a pretty good Lugosi for the word blood. He filled the syringe from the spoon, and tied off his right forearm.
“Don’t talk that stuff with him stuffed under the bed.”
“We didn’t wake him up before, we’re not going to wake him up now.”
Rico went to shoot up. Suddenly his arm jerked and the syringe plunged full into his shoulder.
“Shit.”
He injected the entire contents and then pulled at the hypo. The plunger on the back came out and blood pouredf rom the device.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!”
He was loud, very LOUD.
All Eddy could think of to do was hit hard. Ring his bells. Quiet him down. He punched Rico’s nose, and Rico fell.
Eddy didn’t even breathe for a while. Just listened. There were people talking, and toilets flushing, and TVs—but no knock on the door.
He checked Rico. Rico was not going to get up.
He would stay here a few hours, then clear. He gathered up the money from the two bodies, and he turned off the lights so it would look like no one was home.
It was a long wait. Everytime he heard somebody in the hall, he damn near pissed himself. All he could think of was “drinks the blood of the living.” What a stupid bastard to say something like that. Better not think it too much.
He wondered how many times the needle had tasted blood. Once a night for—he couldn’t figure it out. When would the blood become a habit for the needle, like junk for the junky?
Something rolled in the floor. Someone had kicked the needle. Oh god, should he risk the light. Stupid son of a bitch. Stupid—
That was his last clear thought as he felt the needle prick his arm.
MY HEART
SHIFTING AS SAND
My capture had been the irony of ironies.
War was newly upon us, and I had seen its strange fever grow in Naema. It had grown in many of our friends, but we had young children, which should be a cure for the fever. At first I had argued with her. I did not feel the need to rid “our country” of the French. “Our country” was drawn on a map in Europe. The French were newcomers, much as we Arabs were newcomers taking land from the Berbers. If we drove the French away, surely the Berbers would drive us away?
My arguments fell on deaf ears, or rather ears full of new words, that packed them as tightly as the wax packed in the ears of Odysseus’s sailors. I found a sublime solution. I would take her to see her family in the South, in the Haut Plateau. It is not like the North. Nothing thrives in the southern wilayat, and she would see that life is more precious than principle. Her family lived here in a miserable little village, she would see her mother fussing over the children, and she would yearn not to put them in danger. This was good, because the war will not last. France will win.
I shed my Western clothes for the trip. We would go as Arabs to see Arabs. There was a small bus that runs into the Plateau once a week, and Naema, the children and I boarded it. She did not chatter about the war as we drove into the sea of sand. She spoke of her mother, of favorite foods and games. She taught songs to the children. As the sight of sand became everything, lines drawn on a map could not bother her. The bus climbed onto the snow-covered Plateau and her spirit soared like a desert falcon. I had always found the emptiness oppressive, perhaps it mirrored emptiness within me. So as she told our children the stories of Ali and Fatima, I entered into a silent dream of her family reunion. I could see her mother running to meet us, her stupid brother with his rotten smile, the cousins and hangers-on joyous because a fatted goat would be slain. I heard the laughter and tasted the hot sweet tea, and the showing of family treasures.
The land of the Plateau lies flat and stretches as far as is painful. The snow, as a white as blank page made it worse. I knew that history, that old enemy of mankind, hungered to write something here. We saw the village long before we arrived. There was no one to meet us, but from the bus we could see her mother sitting in her doorway, her veil tossed overhead, crying loudly. I held the children back, while Naema ran to her mother. Behind us the bus drove on, stranding us here for a week.
Her brother, in his stupidity, had killed a cousin because of a minor quarrel, and was now hidden in the desert. Her mother was alone, the more distant family members having suddenly found reasons to be elsewhere.