Field Marshal Stern? Generalissimo Stern? What rank was he taking in his make-believe empire? Noble shit and bloody ideals, as dazed as anybody else in the garden, you could see he’d never been starving and on the run from the Black and Tans.
Smuggling arms for what? Why bother? The Black and Tans would only be back again anyway. If you won today they’d be back tomorrow, they always came back and you couldn’t hide forever, not in this world. Better to rest and not worry about it, close your eyes and let it come because it came anyway and there was nothing to stop it, nothing to do about it, coming by itself like the Black and Tans and tomorrow.
A savage pain. He’d slipped and fallen sideways on his broken elbow.
And there it was and Stern hadn’t even seen it. Only Haj Harun was awake and guarding them, pathetic in his rusting helmet and tattered yellow cloak, his sword in the air, ready to charge the Turkish soldier who had come in through the gate and was aiming a rifle at his middle.
Why? He’d be dead before he took a step. For what? In the name of what?
Jerusalem of course. His beloved myth of a Jerusalem.
There he was again facing the Babylonians and the Romans and all the other innumerable conquering armies, and conquer they would but he’d still be there defending his Holy City in the flames and smoke, an old man weak from hunger in a ridiculous helmet and threadbare cloak, limping on spindly legs, tottering on visions of Prester John and Sinbad, humiliated and insulted and hopelessly confused, ready to charge once more. As he’d said the first time they ever met, When you’re defending Jerusalem you’re always on the losing side.
The Turkish soldier was laughing. O’Sullivan Beare shot him in the head.
Then Haj Harun was moving meekly among them calling them children, gathering them up and saying this wasn’t the garden where they should rest.
The harbor, chaos. The waterfront two miles long, one hundred feet deep. On one side the Turks, on the other the water.
Five hundred thousand people there and the city burning.
Turks working the peripheries robbing and killing and taking girls. Horses’ halters catching fire, the beasts charging through the crowds trampling bodies. The crowds so dense in places the dead remained standing, held up by the living.
Sivi and Theresa delirious, rising to scream, Haj Harun moving back and forth tying bandages and comforting the dying, holding old women and closing the eyes of rigid children in their arms. Stern leaving and returning, searching for an escape.
Now it was night, Sunday night. Flames in the blackness, shrieks in the blackness, hacked arms and legs in the blackness, baggage and old shoes.
A little girl lay beside Joe and he kept turning away from her. Long dark hair and white skin, a black silk dress, her face ripped open. He could see the small white teeth through the hole in her cheek. Eyes shut and lips shut, a wet stain on her chest where she had been stabbed and another below the waist, a black pool between her legs.
The moan was low but every time he turned away it fell on his back with a dreadful weight. How could he even hear it out here? He couldn’t, it wasn’t there.
A shoe on the cobblestones a yard away. Cheap, worn, the sole rubbed down to nothing, one stiff twisted shoe. How many hundreds of miles had it walked to get here? How many times had it been patched through the years to get here? How many years was that? How many hundreds of miles?
It was pressing on his back, he turned around. The eyes were still shut, the lips still shut. Small white teeth, stains, a black pool between her legs. Eight or nine years old and no one taking care of her. Alone here next to him. Why?
He looked at her shoes. Smooth black leather and new, not worn at all but caked with mud, especially the heels. Mud caked up the heels to her ankles where she had ground them into the earth when the soldiers were on top of her. How many soldiers? How long had it gone on?
Too many, too long. There was nothing anyone could do for her now. She’d be gone in a moment, gone in her black silk dress for Sunday. Sunday? Yes still Sunday.
Can’t you hear what she’s saying?
Stern’s voice. He looked up. Stern was standing over him with a desperate face, exhausted, streaked with grime and blood. The eyes were hollow, he looked at the shoes. Old and not wearing well, he was surprised. Why a cheap pair like that for the great general? Old and not wearing well, Stern’s shoes.
What?
Goddamn it, can’t you hear what she’s saying?
She wasn’t saying anything, he knew that. She was just moaning, a soft heavy moan beside him that wouldn’t go away. No, not beside him, around him. All around him and louder than the cries and shrieks. Stern was yelling at him again and he yelled back.
Answer me goddamn it.
No I can’t hear it, I don’t speak bloody Armenian.
Please. That’s what she’s saying. Where’s your revolver?
Lost in the garden.
Take this then.
Stern dropped a knife in front of him and leaned over Theresa, over Sivi. He was fixing something under Sivi’s head, a coat probably, it looked like a coat. He was forcing Theresa’s mouth open and clamping a piece of wood between her jaws so she wouldn’t swallow her tongue or bite it off. Always busy, Stern, always thinking of things to do. Busy bastard.
Where was Haj Harun? Had to keep an eye on the old man or he’d get lost. Always forgetting where he was and wandering off.
Over there, the yellow cloak kneeling beside a shadow. Was that where the new scream was coming from? What was the music? It sounded like music. And who was that man dancing up and down? No shoes at all, that one. Why was he dancing and where was his hair? Dancing and laughing up and down just like that, gone, laughing and dead, no shoes.
Where was the other shoe, the one that had walked hundreds of miles? It was right there a minute ago and now it was gone too. A body had fallen on it.
The soft moan, he turned. The fingers were broken, he hadn’t seen that before. The hands were smashed and hanging the wrong way, backward. She must have tried to scratch them and they’d beaten her hands with their rifle butts, crushed them on the stones before stabbing her in the chest, stabbing and doing everything else while she was on her back in her black silk dress and her Sunday shoes.
A pain in his shoulder. Stern had kicked him. Stern was down beside him angry and yelling.
Well?
Well bloody what? Do your own work. I’m no bloody butcher.
Stern’s eyes were afraid, he could see that too. He just wasn’t the bloody terror he wanted you to think. Tall and strong all right and acting as if he were in charge and giving orders like some great general who’d been through all the wars, Stern the hero who knew what he was doing and had the money to do it and pretended to know all the answers, Stern the visionary who wasn’t so much in charge as he wanted you to believe. Staring with those empty eyes, frightened they were too so the bastard might as well hear it again, arrogant and giving orders, a frightened fake of a general without an army, parading his ideals. Well there were none and the bastard could hear it again right to his face. Who did he think he was? Yell it again why not.
No good, Stern. Do it yourself for a change. I’m no butcher. Take your bloody cause of a kingdom come and shove it up your arse. Chase it, dream about it, do whatever you want with it but I’m not there. I’m not working for you or anybody else ever again and I’m not killing again, ever. Hear that, Stern? From now on you and the other fucking generals can do your own bloody killing. Hear it, Stern?