Sparta (35 page)

This time Conrad had chosen the Michigan route. They passed the Al Haq Mosque. This was in a hostile part of town. Al Haq was a violently anti-American cleric who spewed vituperative diatribes over the loudspeakers instead of prayers. The Marines called it Haji Hate Radio. The Al Haq Mosque was an old one, flanked by narrow minarets, each with a small balcony around the top. The muezzin had once made his calls from these, though now he made them from inside, over a loudspeaker.

Olivera was the driver that day, and Conrad sat behind him, watching the window. Leaving the wire, passing the red-and-white-striped barrier, they had all been silent. That was the moment, passing from safety. The radio crackled, the Humvee rattled around them. They headed down Michigan, between high mud-colored walls. Men stared at them boldly.

The Humvee bounced hard over a pothole. Molinos muttered, “Fuck. I nearly bit my tongue off.”

“Wish you had,” said Jackson. “Shut you up for a while.”

“Fuck you, Jackson,” Molinos said without animosity.

Then they were silent again, everyone watching the road ahead.

Once you left the wire, you started picking up what was in the air. You had some kind of extra sense, and you could feel the tension surrounding an ambush, an attack. It was real. You felt it physically, the hair on your arms and the back of your neck turning electric. Sometimes you weren't paying attention and missed it, or sometimes you picked up on it too late to do anything but shout
We're getting hit!
As though just calling it before it happened counted for something.

As they thundered past the mosque, Conrad could feel something wrong. The road was too quiet; he felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. When he realized that the street was emptying of people, the sidewalks clearing, he leaned forward to shout
We're getting hit!
That was when the sound came up, huge and dark and breathtaking, crowding out everything. Something entered into him, closing him down.

When the world returned from darkness, he lay motionless and stunned. He seemed unable to move. He heard Olivera whispering. There were echoes inside his own head, a ringing noise, and he was dizzy. He couldn't remember where he was or who Olivera was or what they were doing there. Olivera kept whispering. The space was filled with smoke, and outside the Humvee there was the jittering sound of fire, and people shouting. Inside he could hear Olivera whispering. He smelled something he didn't want to smell. His leg hurt, and he wasn't sure he could move it. The radio was crackling. He couldn't grope his way toward action, couldn't figure out what it would mean. His brain felt numb. He tried to clear it. Olivera whispered. Conrad couldn't see him.

The ringing cleared, and then he could make some sense of what Olivera was saying.

“Where am I? I can't see,”
he said.

“
You're okay,” Conrad said. “You're right here.”

“Am I going to die, LT?”
he whispered.

“No.” He still couldn't see him. “Hold on, Olivera, I've got you.”

He put his hand out. The air was thick with smoke. His hand found Olivera's shoulder. It was wet.

“Are you in pain?” he asked.

“I can't move.”

When the smoke lessened, Conrad saw that everything in front had changed. The windshield was shattered and opaque, the frame tilted. It was much closer than it should be. Olivera was still in place, but everything else had shifted. The steering wheel was gone. Inside Conrad's head was a great ringing sound, as if something huge were in there. Also, something had stalled, and he couldn't remember exactly how to move his limbs. When he leaned over the front seat, he was still confused. The crazed windshield bellied like a tent. The dashboard pressed against Olivera, and the shaft of the steering wheel seemed to vanish inside his chest, which was covered with a dark glistening sheen. Someone outside was shouting to them, but Conrad couldn't answer. The door was wrenched open and Haskell leaned inside, shouting that they were okay, but when he saw Olivera he stopped shouting.

“Okay,” Molinos said. “I've got you. I'm calling in the docs.” He didn't dare move Olivera, didn't dare touch him. He moved back to call, and Conrad waited with Olivera.

“Will I die, sir?”
Olivera kept whispering. He couldn't speak in his normal voice. His breath was whistling in his chest.

“No,” Conrad said to him, each time. “Hold on, Olivera. I've got you.”

He would die. Conrad found Olivera's hand and gripped it.

The corpsmen were delayed by an attack on another patrol.

This was in April 2004, a few days before the whole city erupted in jihad, when they had to call every Marine off the base to fight, even the cooks. The whole city had filled up with the muj, and it took twenty-four hours of nonstop fighting to stop them, and by then they'd lost eight men in their platoon and fifty-four in the company. But that hadn't happened yet.

When Olivera was killed, it wasn't part of a citywide campaign. It seemed like just a bad day with an IED in it, someone standing in an alley with a cell phone in his pocket, pressing the button and watching, then slipping away down the alley, unscathed, unfindable.

“Will I die, sir?”
Olivera whispered.

He wasn't looking at Conrad. He was looking up at the roof of the Humvee, which was blistered by the blast. A piece of fiberglass hung down over his head.
“Will I die?”
His breath made that strange whistle.

He'd gone into shock then, and after that Conrad wasn't sure if Olivera could hear him or feel anything, but he kept asking his question. Olivera's face was ashen, and there were tiny drops of sweat on his forehead. The blood smelled rich and ferrous. There was something dark and moist in the corners of his mouth, little bubbles forming there. Olivera didn't seem to notice.

There was a firefight somewhere nearby, snipers were hitting another squad, and Conrad was listening to the radio and to the peppering rattle of M16s and AK-47s while he was squeezing Olivera's hand.

“Hold on,”
he said.
“Hold on, Olivera. I'm right here. I've got you.”

Motherfuckers!

But Olivera, his chest caved in, died before the medics could arrive.

You believed in the mission and you believed in your men.

*   *   *

And what were these people in New York doing, here on the sidewalk, walking all over the place, not paying attention, and stopping like this right in front of him?

A man in a short raincoat halted abruptly before him, and Conrad grabbed him by the shoulders. The man turned around, ready to complain. He saw Conrad's face. He stepped back, and Conrad kept on going.
Motherfuckers
.

His father was here in the city. He should have lunch with his father; that might help. He couldn't tell these things to his mother, though she kept telling him he could. He couldn't tell her any of these things. What would be the point? He would still have them in his head, and then she would have them in her head. He imagined her face, how it would look if he told her. How was he supposed to do this? How was he supposed to get through the rest of his life?

He stopped suddenly, and when someone touched his shoulder from behind, he wheeled around as if it were the start of a martial arts contest. But it was only a messenger's bag bumping against Conrad as the man turned away from his padlocked bike, unaware that he'd violated Conrad's personal no-fly zone. Conrad saw his black, impassive face and turned away as well.

He took out his cell phone and called his father.

“Conrad?” Marshall said.

“Dad. Could we have lunch?” asked Conrad. “Today?”

There was a pause. Conrad could feel him recalibrating.

“Sure,” his father said. “How soon do you want to meet?”

*   *   *

Conrad took the subway. It was nearly empty at this hour. He sat at the far end of the car, braced for impact, feeling the high-speed rattle as the car shuttled far too fast through the narrow subterranean passages. He was aware of everyone in the car. He sat with his back against the wall by the door that led into the next car. The sign over the door read
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING,
with a picture of a duffel bag tucked under a subway bench. The same message in Spanish. Fucking worthless. They had no idea, here, how to make a ten-meter check for safety, or what to do if you found something. There was no one in the subways to tell, for one thing, and for another, this whole system, with its long trains of rolling metal cars trapped underground in tunnels, was straight-out fucked if anything happened.

Watching for everything was impossible, though he was aware of everything. Or anyway he was watching everything. Pushing out of the turnstile at Bleecker, he saw that the man ahead of him was Middle Eastern. He wondered for a second time if the man he was seeing was Iraqi—he looked it. Those features had become so familiar, the honey-colored skin, black hair, the hawk nose, the piercing dark eyes. The girl who survived the shooting in Haditha had amber eyes, light brown. He'd seen the photographs, her somber face, her hands tucked between her knees. She wore a turquoise plastic hair band. She'd been shot, too, but not killed. She lay next to her sister, pretending to be dead, while the soldiers went through the house. It was another girl, not the one he'd seen.

He wanted to turn to the man and ask, in his faltering Arabic, if he was from Iraq. He wanted to tell him that he, Conrad, had roots there. The man wouldn't be able to tell that by looking at him, the way Conrad could tell by looking at the man, but he did. That was how he felt—he had roots there. He'd gone there to try to save the people of Iraq. That's why they were there.

He thought of Ali, and the teacher in Ramadi whose school they'd helped rebuild. The part of him that was still there was like the ocean, huge and moving and unseen. It was really all of him. That's where he was; that's where he still was. They'd been helping the people, that was what they had tried to do, Olivera and Carleton and Kuchnik and all the others. He thought of the men in the taxi, and the boy in his pajamas, his head falling back.

He pushed on up the stairs to the street, ahead of the man. He was young, with a narrow hatchet face and those staring zealot's eyes. Marines had zealot's eyes, too, that stern, fixed stare. No one was more zealous than Marines. The mission had been to liberate the Iraqis from a dictator.
Liberation.
So what the fuck had happened? Why was he walking along the street trying to get this mess out of his head, and why had any of it happened? How could he get rid of it?

He thought of his mother hugging him that first night, and the look on her face, ready to forgive him anything. Though not this, not any of this, none of which could be told, none of which could be spoken here, in this country where there was no sand, where people left half-full water bottles on the street, where they read gossip magazines while their young men were driving over hidden bombs. It couldn't be spoken there, either, in-country where it had happened, but over there people understood it. You didn't have to speak it. All the people there understood it. They'd seen it. No one who wasn't there could understand it.

*   *   *

His father was waiting when he arrived. It was a Japanese restaurant, with a low ceiling and pale blank walls, very quiet. The waiter wore a black suit and white shirt. He bowed politely and took Conrad to the back.

Marshall was sitting at a corner table. He sat with his back to the side wall; he'd left the chair with its back to the rear wall for Conrad.

“Con.” Marshall was wearing a suit and tie, reminding Conrad that he had a professional life. He was not only a father.

The waiter hovered, and Marshall asked, “Something to drink? I'm having a Virgin Mary.”

“Great,” Conrad said.

The restaurant was mostly empty, it was early for lunch. The waiters were small, their movements quiet. The walls were unadorned except for one long scroll with a picture of a crow on it. The atmosphere was calm. It was a relief, after the onslaught of the subway, the hurrying crowds on the street.

Marshall folded his hands on the edge of the table.

“How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Conrad said.

His father waited, the lock of hair hanging over his forehead, his head tilted forward.

“Shitty,” Conrad said.

His father nodded. “What's going on?”

Conrad shook his head. “It's hard to describe. It's like I can't get in here. It's as though I'm standing outside. I can see everyone in here, rushing around and doing things, and I can't get in.”

Marshall nodded again. “I'm sorry,” he said, then waited again. “Do you have an idea of what would help?”

Conrad had no idea of what would help.

There was too much of everything, too much noise and color and choices, too many ads and people, too many cars and trucks and cabs clogging the streets, too many pedestrians on the sidewalks, everywhere was crammed and jostling. And it was all pointless, trivial, everything people were doing was unnecessary. Going to the grocery store, going to work.

And everything was filled with fucking irony, everything was sarcastic.
Like I care:
that should be the national motto. Every ad, every overheard conversation, every exchange was full of sarcastic animosity. What was the point? What was the fucking point? Why go through all this every day if that's how you felt—sarcastic, disengaged, distant, ironic? How about watching someone you're responsible for die, his chest caved in, blood seeping out of the corners of his mouth? How about him asking you if he's going to die and you lying to him, telling him he'd be all right? What about
Like I care
then?

It seemed this was the way the whole country felt.