The Unfortunate Son (10 page)

Pons sat down on the beach and covered his face with his hands. Shoulders hunched, he began to weep. The father removed his hat, looked down at Pons, and waited until the old man was quiet.

“Come. We’ll take you home,” he said gently.

His son draped Pons’s arm over his shoulders and helped the old man walk, while the father grabbed what remained of the sail, the net, and the fishing lines. Before they reached the cottage, Cadeau bounded out, tail wagging, licking Pons’s feet and barking. Then he circled and sat, his tail thumping, watching expectantly for his master.

Mattie charged out of the cottage and threw her arms around her brother. Beatrice followed, and the three of them hugged and cried.

“Luc?” asked Mattie fearfully.

Pons shook his head.

Beatrice crumpled to her knees crying, “No! No!”

THE DHOW SAILED wide but usually within sight of the coast. Luc had no sense of day or night in the black of the hold. Most of the time he slept. Now and then the tall sailor jabbed him awake and handed him water or a piece of wormy black bread, a dry bit of salted fish, or a handful of oily olives. At first Luc pushed aside the filthy bread and merely sipped the stale water. But after what he guessed to be no more than a couple of days, Luc began to feel sharp pains in his stomach, cramps that would come on suddenly, disappear, and return. Only food eased the pain. He was starving, and soon he was gobbling down the infested bread and guzzling the sour water. Afterward, he would curl up, still hungry, and sleep. In his dreams, he was fishing with Pons or working in
the garden with Mattie and Beatrice. When he awoke he was numb, aware of nothing but the pangs of hunger in his stomach.

One day, Luc was jolted awake by yelling. Footsteps tramped on the deck above. He was too bewildered to comprehend anything, but when the hatch opened, Luc watched four shivering men, shackled and naked like himself, stumble down the steps, pushed along by two seamen. Blood streamed from one captive’s nose. Two wept. The fourth was silent, trembling and dazed. Luc covered his head with his arms and squeezed himself into the dim back corner of the hold. The words spoken by the captives were no more understandable than those of his captors.

For weeks, Luc and the four other prisoners—naked, hungry, and chained—ate and drank what little bread and water they were given and shared the stinking hold of the dhow. The air reeked of sweat, vomit, and excrement. As the dhow rose and fell with the sea, its foul bilge water sloshed over the prisoners and sent its rats scurrying. Now and then the boat stopped; more cargo, sponges, barrels, and sacks would drop into the hold. At first, the other captives tried to speak to Luc, but he understood nothing, and they ceased trying. When he listened to the other captives talking among themselves, Luc felt even more lonely.

Most afternoons Luc and the other captives were led above to the deck. Sometimes the tall sailor doused them with buckets of seawater. When they were forced to walk
about or even march, Luc often stumbled. The iron cuffs chafed his narrow ankles, he had sores on his shins, and his skin was flea-bitten.

For days the dhow sailed with no land in sight, but the sea remained mercifully calm. At times, when he was up on deck, gazing out at the sea, Luc noticed a patch of choppy water that signaled a school of fish. One afternoon he leaned against the railing that edged the boat and watched as the tall sailor with the neckerchief dropped a small fishing line into the water. In daylight Luc could see an old scar that marked the man’s dusky face from the corner of one eye to the corner of his mouth; his thick, muscled arms were ribboned with more scars. When he grinned, he flashed a mouthful of brown-stained teeth.

Luc turned to the sea, and thought that if he managed to fall overboard, he would escape but only by dying. He did not want death. He wanted his old life back. He turned from the sea to the deck and found the tall sailor had stopped fishing and was watching him.

“Hassan,” said the man, pointing to his chest.

Luc just stared.

The man frowned and spit out a red kola seed. He pointed again to his chest and, more loudly, he said, “Hassan.”

Luc wanted to reply but he couldn’t form the words. He looked at Hassan and managed a very small smile. Hassan returned it with his own wide smile, nodding.

The next day Hassan repeated his name, but Luc still
had no words, only the feeble smile. Then on the third day, when Hassan was standing next to Luc at the stern of the dhow looking at the sea, a dolphin leaped from the water, dived, and leaped again, weaving through the sea, its spray glittering in the sunlight. Hassan pointed to the creature and grinned. Again, he said his name. Luc pointed to himself and murmured, “Luc.”

Hassan smiled broadly and nodded. “Luc. Luc. Luc.” He sucked on the sound, rolling it in his mouth like a kola seed. “Luc!” he bellowed, and patted the boy’s head.

The remaining days melted and melded; time passed without measure. Often Luc felt nothing but hunger. Beyond his name, Luc knew no words to communicate with his fellow captives or with Hassan, who showed moments of kindness to the solitary boy. He gazed out on the sea, but he saw no more dolphins. One afternoon when Luc was slumped at the rail, he noticed that the horizon was fringed by the ghostly mountains of a distant shoreline. By the next day, aqua and green stripes brightened the cobalt sea, and he saw droves of other dhows with sails of red or yellow or gray. Soon his dhow was threading between large square-rigged ships and small fishing boats. White gulls screamed and swooped, and black-billed terns plunged deep into the water from high in the sky.

The five captives received increased portions of wormy bread and olives. In the evening they were fed thin soup. Hassan slipped Luc a chunk of fresh fish.

“Thank you, Hassan,” said Luc.

Hassan shook his head and said, “
Shukran
, Hassan.”

“
Shukran
, Hassan,” said Luc.

Hassan bowed slightly to the boy and smiled.

The next morning, Hassan scrubbed each of the prisoners. He returned their seawater-stiffened clothes. Then he took Luc’s knife and shaved the heads of the others. Luc was left with his golden hair. The voyage was about to end, but the nightmare of capture was in full thunder.

THE DHOW SAILED through a crescent-shaped natural harbor and into a wide manmade canal. It was dawn, and the sky was white. Stone quays edged the canal, shadowed by the thick ocher walls of a crenellated fortress with high watchtowers at each turn. Beyond the fortress, low gray and tan buildings lined the channel. The dhow’s sailors jumped from the deck, dragging ropes and pulling the craft into a berth. A plank was dropped, and Luc and his fellow captives hobbled ashore, where a crowd gathered. Robed and turbaned boys and gangs of young bearded men lunged, making faces and even pummeling the fettered captives as they stumbled on their weak and rocky sea legs. As Hassan steered Luc and the four other captives through the city and along the shadowed
streets, the crowd followed, whistling, jeering, and threatening the prisoners. At a city square, ringed by low windowless buildings, the prisoners filed down rickety steps to an underground warren of hot, hellish cells, a
matamore
. A grate in the slimy ceiling opened to the street and yielded a dribble of air and less light. Moldy, lice-infested straw mats covered the mud floor. The door clanged shut. Luc listened to the sounds of the city above and the weeping of his fellow captives. He was beyond weeping, beyond thinking. Luc was empty.

Before the end of the first day ashore, the dhow captain and Hassan, now turbaned and robed in sky-blue cloth, returned to the
matamore
and led the prisoners up to the street. The afternoon sun blinded Luc and his fellow captives as they were prodded to a pen on the edge of the square, where a small group of men waited. All were mustached and many had pointed beards. They wore long robes with wide sleeves and had covered their heads with turbans or small round caps. A few stepped forward to examine the captives, forcing them to strip off their clothes and jump and bend and skip. Fingers poked into mouths and pulled down eyelids. Two customers admired Luc’s hair but drew back when they saw he had one ear. The captain displayed Mattie’s carved ear. For a moment Luc was flooded with memories of home, and tears streamed from his eyes. The men laughed and moved on to the next captive. At the edge of the group, a singular man watched. He was old and taller by a head then any other man, taller even than the blue-robed Hassan. The old man
was thin, with a lined, narrow face and a trim white beard. He wore a white cap and a long white robe, all spotless as milk, except for his butter-colored pointed shoes. With him was a very short man with a bare, bald head and a crooked smile. He was dressed in a striped gray robe with a pointed hood that hung behind him. Although he was the height of a young boy, he had the face and the broad shoulders of a man. The old man motioned at Luc with a nod of his head, and the little man scampered over to the captain.

“How much for the boy with one ear?” asked the little man. Luc understood nothing as they began to haggle about his worth.

The captain looked down at the little man and frowned. “Two gold pieces.”

“You’re mad,” screeched the little man.

The captain drew a small, curved dagger from his belt.

The little man ducked his head and put up his hands. He simpered. “Forgive me, kind sir. I meant only the price is too high. The boy is not whole. Can he hear?”

“As well as you. Maybe better. You’re but half a man.”

The little man smiled and thumped his head. “Yes, yes. Less than half a man,
sayyid
, but no one says his own buttermilk is sour. Not when he wants to sell the buttermilk.”

“What?” asked the captain.

“This boy is worth little. Maybe nothing. Maybe less than nothing,” said the little man, flicking his teeth with his right thumbnail.

“His hair alone is worth the price,” said the captain, cleaning his fingernails with the tip of his dagger.

“What use is a head of hair?” asked the little man, rubbing his bald head. “Just a luxury bed for vermin.”

The captain shrugged. “Get on with it. One gold piece for the boy. That, or move on.”

“A fair bargain,” said the little man, bobbing his head up and down. “Do we agree, you will pay my master a gold piece to take the boy?”

The captain spit on the ground. “Infernal dwarf. Be gone.” He tucked his dagger back into his belt and turned to walk away.

“The boy has one ear. He is bad luck. It is risky to bring such a thing into a household,” the little man called loudly.

The captain’s face reddened, and he turned around. “A piece of silver, and the boy is yours, but take him and get out of my sight before I use my knife on
your
ear.”

The little man nodded and pulled a silver coin from a leather sack. The captain motioned to Hassan, who removed the shackles from Luc’s scabbed and bleeding ankles. The tall sailor patted Luc’s head gently before he tied a rope around the boy’s neck. When he tried to hand over the rope, Hassan was ignored. Instead, the little man pulled at the captain’s robe.

The captain narrowed his eyes. “Now what?”

The little man held out his hand and cocked his head.

“What?” asked the captain again.

“You have our boy’s other ear.”

“You did not
buy
the other ear. You bought the boy with one ear.”

“My master bought the boy. Surely the wooden ear belongs to the boy. Now both belong to my illustrious master.”

“Who is your master?”

The little man pointed to the tall man in white, who stood apart from the crowd. The old man nodded, and the captain touched the tips of the fingers of his right hand to his forehead and bowed slightly. He tossed the ear to the little man.

“Your master is a very respected man. But you are nothing. Stay out of my sight, or beware, insect.”

The little man dropped the wooden ear into his hood and winked. As he led Luc away, he looked over his shoulder at the captain. With a wide smile and a second wink, he whispered loudly, “The right answer to a fool is silence.”

“What? What did that troll say?” asked the captain.

But Hassan, who heard every word, spit out a red kola seed and shrugged. Then he called to the little man.

“His name is Luc.”

The little man stopped and turned. He pointed a thumb to his own chest. “Bes,” he said, and he bowed to Hassan. Bes turned to Luc, tapped his chest again, and repeated his name. When Luc said nothing, he frowned and jerked the rope. Luc stumbled after Bes, who trotted a few paces behind the tall man in white.

Bes pulled Luc through the narrow streets, yanking the leash and causing Luc to stumble and sometimes fall to his knees. Bes laughed each time until the old man turned, wagged his finger, and clicked his tongue. Bes shrugged and cocked his head to one side. “Yes, master,” he said. But when the old man turned, Bes jerked Luc one last time and stuck out his tongue at the boy.

Along crowded streets, through narrow alleys and under covered archways, the three passed stalls selling leather slippers, copper cauldrons, and bolts of cloth. They passed mountains of almonds and dried dates and bushels of grains and green vegetables. There were tables stacked with brightly colored sweets, round loaves of bread, and noisy pens of hens and chicks. Blood-spattered butchers called from beneath fly-covered hooks of skinned lambs and goats. The trio stepped aside to let donkey carts pass, and everywhere they went, people bowed to the old man, calling out, “
Salaam alaikum
.”

Although the sun was hotter than home, Luc was shivering. He inhaled the scents of cumin and turmeric and burned sugar; he saw bolts of cloth in shades of saffron, orchid, and indigo. He heard people talking, arguing, and singing, in words he could not understand. Nothing was familiar to Luc. Nothing was identifiable. Then, as he hobbled along, he noticed a man carving wood with a pointed chisel, etching an intricate design of vines and flowers. Luc stopped to watch. Bes tugged at him. The rough rope scratched and burned Luc’s neck, a harsh reminder of his status. He was naked and leashed.