The Meq (18 page)

“Will I feel—”

He cut me off and said, “We will talk of your feelings afterward, Zianno. It will be the same for you as all others, yet uniquely your own. Since Eder and I have crossed, I will not be affected. This is also not understood, but I am like the Giza now, and Pello, Joseba, and I will be there while you, Geaxi, and Ray are . . . somewhere else. This is all I have to say now—afterward, afterward we will talk.”

Geaxi got up suddenly to go to the ladies’ room and was escorted by Pello and Joseba through the rowdy crowd. I thought I caught a glimpse of Ray ahead of her, but I turned and saw him still in his seat scooping up the last of his beans with a piece of bread.

On her return, I noticed Geaxi looked extremely pale and I asked if she was all right. She could only point to her stomach and say “the food.” Ray looked at her with an expression of bewilderment.

Owen Bramley paid the bill and we walked the short distance back to the ship. There was a low fog hovering over the whole town and out on the Burrard Inlet. I walked alongside Geaxi. I was nervous, uncomfortable, and I didn’t know what to say or what not to say. She looked over at me.

“Do not worry, young Zezen. I know that you are anxious, but Sailor is right—it is time for you to gaze in the Window.”

Back on the
Lotus,
it was a quiet night with only a few passengers outside their cabins. Baju said to get a good night’s sleep and rise early. It would happen in the morning just after the sun crested the mountains to the east.

I mostly lay on my bunk wide awake with thoughts tumbling one into the other. I did drift off once and dreamed I was playing catch with Papa in a bright green field with the sun high in the sky above us. I was wearing Mama’s glove. Papa was tossing the baseball to me, higher and farther each time until once he tossed it so high I lost it in the sun and turned my head, afraid it would hit me. It did hit, but it hit the ground, splitting open and spilling out the Stones. The gems sparkled in the sunlight. I tried to yell to Papa. I tried to yell “I broke it, Papa, I broke it!” But I couldn’t yell. I couldn’t even speak. Then Mama was talking to me. She was saying something over and over, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the Stones and the gems sparkling in the light.

“Wake up! Wake up, Zianno!” It was Geaxi. “It is almost time.”

I dressed quickly and met her at the railing on the deck, not twenty feet from my door. Baju was there with Ray. He said he wanted us close to our cabins. It was light, but there was no sun yet and a fog still clung around the ship.

I looked up and down the deck on the starboard side. I saw Pello standing out of sight under some stairs to my right. To my left, Joseba was walking casually beside the railing. Past Joseba were the only other passengers on deck, a group of men setting up tripods, cameras, charts, and graphs, all speaking at once in a rapid and excited French. Baju said they were members of some obscure French astronomy society. Owen Bramley was nowhere in sight.

Then it began. First, the sun rose above the horizon of the mountains and the fog gradually burned off. The air was cool, the sky became clear. Baju lined up three deck chairs behind us. “You may have to sit down,” he said. “You will notice nothing at first, but during totality you will not be able to move.”

We were in an eerie half-light. The moon was sliding into place. I looked out across the water and there were low-contrast bands of light and dark racing over the seascape. The amateur French astronomers began to cheer and whistle at the other end of the deck. I glanced quickly at Baju. He was smiling. I looked up and there was only a thin bright crescent of the sun remaining. I was hypnotized by that crescent. The horizon around us was yellowish or orange, the zenith a pale blue. The seconds ticked down—five—four—three—two—one—Incredible! It was the eye of God. A perfect black disk, ringed with bright spiked streamers stretching in all directions. I could see a few red peaks in the ring and a star or two behind this wonder, this window blazing in the surrounding blackness at midmorning.

And half of me fell away. There is no other way to say it. Part of me was open, weightless, nothing there. I could see, but what I saw went on without me. I could feel nothing, move nothing. Why move? There was nothing to move. I was at the other end of a strange telescope, a tiny point, a speck of . . . what? It was cold and dark, so dark. I wanted to sleep, but I heard a voice, a whisper. It said, “Beloved, wake.” I felt a fluttering of wings. I looked back through the telescope, this window, and saw movement. I saw Geaxi and Ray sitting in chairs and a figure approaching them. Everything was in slow motion, but it still happened quickly.

The figure slipped behind Geaxi and in one practiced motion removed the necklace with the Stones from around her neck. Then he moved behind me and I could feel a tickling sensation as he took my necklace and Stones. I couldn’t move. I felt trapped in a thick, invisible sand. All I could do was watch.

He bent down in front of us and was holding the Stones on the deck with one hand and prying out the gems with the other, using a uniquely designed pointed tool. At the same time, Baju, Pello, and Joseba were rushing forward from three different directions. When they got to within a few feet of the man, three shots rang out from a pistol. In the grand silence of a solar eclipse, they sounded like cannons from another world.

Baju and Joseba went down, both hit hard in the chest. Pello fell against the railing, hit in the thigh and unable to move. The man who had fired the shots walked through the darkness and over to Pello. It was the man I’d seen in Denver in the bowler hat with the razor-thin eyes. He lowered his pistol and pointed it at Pello, but didn’t shoot. Instead, he looked up the deck toward the French astronomers. Owen Bramley was out of his cabin and running toward us. The man with the pistol yelled something in a strange language to the man picking at the Stones. Owen Bramley was gaining ground. Finally, the kneeling man had all the gems picked from the Stones and leaped up, running past the man with the pistol. Backing up, the man kept his pistol aimed at Owen Bramley who had closed the gap and was going to charge the man, gun or no gun.

Light returned—bright only an instant after totality. I could move again and just as the man with the pistol cocked the hammer to fire, I reached for the Stones, which were no more now than a black rock shaped like an egg and I held this rock with both hands and I turned to the man and said, “Stop now, Giza! Stop and forget! Turn and go!”

Then, as if a switch had been turned, the man dropped his pistol where he stood and walked away in the direction in which the other man had fled. I looked at the pitted, black rock in my hands. There were deep gouges where the gems had been picked out and stolen. It was now only a rock—an old, old black rock. Geaxi was staring at me. Owen Bramley was out of breath and crimson-faced. He didn’t have his glasses on and he was squinting in the bright light. “What happened?” he gasped.

I looked for Ray and he was kneeling by Baju, who was still alive. Joseba had been killed instantly. Pello was hanging on the railing and losing consciousness. Owen Bramley went to look after him. Geaxi and I ran over to Baju and knelt down next to him. Geaxi took off her beret and held it with her hand under his head. She shook her head slowly, sighing, and said, “Baju, Baju.”

He opened his eyes and coughed. There was a dark bloody hole in his chest. He looked at Geaxi and said, “This was supposed to be my last time, old friend. Did you know that? I was going to teach Nova and the next—” He broke off in a coughing spasm and blood ran out of the corner of his mouth. His eyes were closed, but he opened them again and looked at me. “Zianno,” he whispered, “come closer.” I bent down so that his mouth touched my ear, as I had for Mama, and he said, “This was not about theft. This was—” but he never finished. Baju Gaztelu died on the morning of August 9, 1896.

I looked at Geaxi. She had tears streaming down her face, but said nothing. This was the second time I’d seen someone murdered and both were senseless.

I said, “Someone will have to tell Eder and Kepa about this.”

Ray said two words and I knew he knew everything that went along with them. He said, “I will.”

Owen Bramley had Pello leaning against his shoulder. He was conscious, but bleeding badly. Owen said, “I will make the arrangements to get all of us back to Kepa’s safely.”

Geaxi and I exchanged glances. “We won’t be going with you,” I said. “Geaxi and I will go ahead to Shanghai and meet Sailor.”

Owen Bramley gave me a long look. “After this? Are you sure?”

Geaxi answered for both of us. “Yes.”

We talked to the police and the officials of the shipping firm, giving our explanation that the eclipse must have driven a madman over the edge and he had shot at random the first phantoms that appeared in his delusion, who happened to be our friends and uncle. All agreed it was a misfortune and a tragedy.

One of the members of the French astronomy society, the photographer, told Owen Bramley a strange thing might have happened. As the shots rang out, he had been startled and bumped his tripod, swinging the camera to a different position, one that caught the madman directly in his lens. He had squeezed on his bulb without realizing it and may have taken the madman’s picture. He couldn’t be sure until it was developed, but it was very possible, indeed. I overheard and asked Owen Bramley to get his name and address. We wanted to see that photograph.

Later, when Ray, Geaxi, and I were alone, Ray said, “The Fleur-du-Mal?”

I shrugged and looked at Geaxi. She didn’t respond to that, but she reached into her vest and held out the two egg-shaped black rocks. “I do not think it matters any longer which is which,” she said. “Do you, Zianno?”

We looked at each other with a hard truth and new understanding of what we had seen.

“No, it does not,” I said.

“You know the Basque have always had the true name for these,” she said and tossed me one of the rocks. I caught it easily. She held hers in her fist with her arm pointed straight up.

“What is it?” Ray asked.

She brought her arm down and opened her hand, staring at the object she had been born to wear and had worn for so many centuries. Was it a blessing or a curse? She had always thought the “secret” to be in the gems. She looked at Ray with a sad smile.

“Starstones,” she said quietly.

9

HERENEGUN

(DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY)

You are a child. All your life, inside, behind the clutter and refuse you must acquire to live in this world, there is a child. Everyone knows this, but rarely admits it. The child is too busy hiding and playing amid the clutter. Occasionally, usually after the clutter has been hoarded and stacked, moved from place to place, displayed and then forgotten, the child will tire of play and tell us to throw things away, clear the room, make things the way they were the day before yesterday. And therein lies the conundrum. We have spent our lives constructing gates and fences, protecting this clutter, preparing for the day after tomorrow. We cannot find the day before yesterday. Even the child cannot remember what we need to know . . . where it was . . . how it was. The gift of Time is time and it cannot be given back. The day before yesterday is a place of dreams where even children are strangers.

T he departure of the
Lotus
was delayed a full twenty-four hours due to the “incident,” as the captain referred to it. During that time, Ray and I picked up our passports and other false documents that Owen Bramley had prearranged for us. He also bought coffins for Baju and Joseba and wired Solomon, telling him briefly of the events and the change in plans. He asked if we should try to wire Sailor and Geaxi said that would be impossible, because when Sailor traveled alone, he was virtually invisible. No one would find him on any passenger list.

Of course, Ray wouldn’t need his passport anymore, except to reenter the United States. He and I talked a little about him joining us again soon somewhere in the Far East, but neither of us knew when or where that might be. Something in Ray had changed or maybe it had always been there and I was just now seeing it, but Ray took the death of Baju personally. I could see it in his eyes. For the first time, he had a sense of purpose that was, without a doubt, his own. We had been through a lot. We were true friends and I would miss him, but there is something odd and wonderful about true friends—farewells are easy. The feeling that true friends share is always in the present. Time in any direction is not the point.

As we pulled out of the Burrard Inlet in patchy fog with broken clouds overhead, Ray was on the docks, standing between Owen Bramley and Pello, who was in a wheelchair. Pello waved meekly and Owen Bramley stood ramrod straight. Ray reached up to tip his bowler hat to us, but then remembered he’d thrown it to Nova. He tipped an invisible one anyway. I felt a hand tap me on the shoulder and turned around to see who it was. There was no one there and I had to remember . . . “it is common.” I was looking west toward the horizon and beyond, toward China. I had the same feeling I’d had so many years before on a pale cold winter morning when Carolina and I had been kids, real kids. An overwhelming sense of leaving and barely a trace of return.

The voyage across the Pacific was long and made even longer by a series of storms off the coast of Japan. The
Lotus
eventually steamed into Yokahama, our first port of call, badly in need of supplies and repairs.

Geaxi and I had stayed in our cabins for most of the trip—the less seen, the fewer questions—a lesson both of us had learned a long time ago. I did tell her what Baju had whispered: “This was not about theft.” We both had plenty of time to think about what had happened and what it meant. In Yokahama, we talked about it.

The
Lotus
docked for three days, not only for repairs but also because she had to be thoroughly searched. The Japanese had been at war with China and any ship going there was suspected of carrying contraband. I thought we might be asked several questions that would be difficult to answer, but Geaxi spoke fluent Japanese and made it easy for us. She said she spoke an old dialect, but the official understood her perfectly and whatever lies she told him, he believed her and bowed to her with great respect. For some reason, I wasn’t even surprised.