Gandhara
by M.G. Warenycia
The palette was all earth tones, each one muted like if the artist had blended a good deal of titanium white into the ochres, purples and daubs of terre verte – the effect of dust hanging in the stagnant air of the broad, level valley. Only the sun was bright – cruelly bright, scorching the sand, the stunted trees, and the line of low mud-brick houses, and the eyes of the soldiers who dared meet its merciless stare. Kyle imagined the paints; the actual, physical paints one would have to use to paint the scene, because it was one of his last clear memories of the life before he found himself clad in CADPAT, riding in a LAV through this Benadryl fever-dream of a land…
There had been a classroom discussion; the Art teacher’s position could be easily surmised, but the students were left to go at each other, provided there was no swearing or insults. They had been studying Neoclassical and 19th century art, generally. Much money had been forked out for beyond-budget-allocation supplies. The debate must have broken out because of something in the papers that morning. Everyone’s family got a newspaper back then. One faction said it was Imperialism; Neo-Liberalism…the military-industrial complex needed an enemy, after all. Mahmoud, whose family immigrated from over there, told about the British and the Russians…Gabriela and Masha, indignant and keen to display their erudition, countered with a revisionist narrative of the immense social progress – hydro dams, atheism and girls’ schools – brought by the noble Soviets, inspiring Mahmoud to mutter a curse and Lukasz to drop his pen and plan a rebuttal. Jenna mentioned that she’d seen that newly-released documentary-movie about the Canadian citizen who traveled to visit her sister right before the war…Kyle saw through them. He said his peers wanted high-status jobs, with big salaries and bigger titles, which going to university would get them (so everyone believed). They knew they were going to run straight to that, so it was ridiculous to see them struggling to act like they really cared and were somehow authorities on events happening ten thousand kilometres away, given that actually participating in resolving any of these problems or helping any of these people they claimed to care about was the last thing in the world they would ever do. Kyle flung down his paintbrush like a judge slamming down his gavel. They, he told them (everyone was well aware that the army offered a great salary and job benefits), would sooner be homeless and begging on the street than pick up a gun and go achieve any of the grand global political goals they talked about as being so essential to the salvation and progress of the world.
Masks of outrage appeared around the huge, U-shaped arrangement of connected desks at which the three dozen teens sat to draw and paint, but no articulate speech rose to counter Kyle’s. He smirked, knowing he was right. So tedious…and they were going to spend four more years congratulating themselves, competing to dress the part of artists and activists, before they jumped into the rat race, just like their parents, whose blasé materialism they so loved to critique!….
Between that debate and this was a gigantic blur, less real than the sweat-drenched dreams he got in base before each patrol…
…Jean-Léon Gérôme, Edwin Lord Weeks, Horace Vernet…
Kyle wiped his goggles with the sleeve of his glove. It was better sitting on top than buttoned up inside. Bullets could one one easier, true, but the sense of being sealed in and blind was more unnerving than a somewhat elevated risk of a gunshot. The LAV moved as fast as it could, which was not very, keeping scrupulously to the centre line of the “road.” The dusty line narrowed and their vehicle slowed as the houses clustered densely – curious, in light of the vast, wild space stretching in every direction, limited only by the snow-capped fringes of the Central Highlands to the north and east, and, to the south, the Registan Desert, which flowed into others of its kind, farther than the eye could see or the mind fathom walking. It was as if the houses themselves were afraid of something, huddling together like that. Strangely, Kyle had observed no ruins nor even mounds or middens to indicate that anyone had ever lived in the vastness beyond the little hamlet. The wars had been going on for thirty years; surely something would have remained at least a few decades in the arid climate.
“Cresswell!” The sergeant’s voice barked from inside the hull.
Kyle snapped to attention.
“Check the goddam map again. No way in hell this is the right road. ‘Sposed to be a straight run to the ANA base once we got off the highway.”
Kyle pressed the map flat against the LAV’s roof to stop it from flopping as they bounced along. “Uhhh…yep, Sarge…”
“Yep what?!?”
“Yes, you’re right. It’s supposed to be a straight run…supposed to be. I guess we’ve just been moving slow; road probably isn’t what it was when they drew the map.”
The sergeant paused, then grunted. It was as much of a concession as one would ever get from him. They had, indeed, moved more slowly than they might have in a rugged and well-maintained vehicle over the dry ground. The schedule was planned precisely in advance, but, unconsciously, there had been a silent collective decision to do otherwise. The LAVs and Nyalas which comprised the convoy were harder targets than the Humvees of the Americans or the hapless supply trucks which careless Soviet commanders dared to dispatch along these routes, but this was not a place one could feel safe in, no matter how heavily armed or armoured. Kyle now and again doubted the wisdom of trying to see see as much of the country as possible. Knowing is supposed to alleviate fears, but, he’d discovered, it doesn’t always work like that.
Many people lived in the village: that was obvious from the tidiness of the dwellings (notwithstanding the abysmal poverty of the place). Someone ate the fruits heaped in polychrome pyramids and someone made use of the kaleidoscope arrangements of copper pans, silver teapots and gaily enameled thermoses stacked and hung in narrow shops whose awnings extended to the street. One could be forgiven for assuming that women were an extinct species in the area: not a single one was visible. Here and there, male figures were glimpsed, squatting in doorways, leaning on a windowsill, singly or in wordless conclaves of three or four, cross-legged and brooding over tea upon a dais behind unglazed windows. Kyle squirmed under the sun’s spotlight, straining to make out the details of the faces of his audience.
Somehow, he decided, it would have been less threatening if they’d been confronted directly by the village headmen, or if they’d found the valley abandoned. That would have been creepy, if they came through at night, but not so much in the afternoon, or so he reasoned with himself.
He carefully registered each watchful figure, establishing a type for his memory. The country was a collage of images; images whose meanings were inscrutable as ancient hieroglyphs: whether they spoke Dari, or Pashto, or Uzbek, he could not tell and would not understand…
“The broads are smoking hot underneath those sacks they wear,” a ruddy, distillery-scented corporal had insisted in a Kabul hotel where they’d gone for some training symposium, part of the eternally vague ‘hearts and minds’ strategy – mostly sitting through PowerPoint presentations by cherubic do-gooders from overfunded NGOs who’d leave the country as experts after three weeks. Kyle was intrigued. It had been drilled into them in training that they were to behave themselves. On the other hand, the idea of a war zone – especially a Third World War zone, as a place where men – especially men who, in their own country, were, to put it bluntly, not high up on the social ladder – could satisfy their every desire without consequences had been taught to him by endless reruns of ‘80s action movies set in ‘Nam (which the Americans always won on the silver scree). None of the delays, pesky and expensive courting rituals, interactions with in-laws, and other pretenses which might prevent one from having his way with even a small town diner waitress…no separation between Will and Action, he philosophized. Some Japanese samurai writer he’d first learned about in karate class had a quote to that effect…
The frequent risk of violent death was the bargain that justified the fantasy; made it believable according to a cosmic sense of justice. Unfortunately, soon after arriving in country, Kyle understood that there was no “me love you longtime” here, and his commanders were simply trying to minimize the amount of men who died or caused their comrades’ deaths on account of irresponsible recreation. Not that tantalizing rumours didn’t float around the smoke pit from time to time…
Kyle was shaken from his meditations by a subtle alteration in the terrain from what he must have subconsciously expected. Neither he and his buddies nor any foreigners in decades had driven upon this stretch of unpaved road, but Kyle had been on enough journeys in country to recognize that something was not as it ought to be – if things were ever as they ought to be there…
When his brain finally processed it, his next thoughts were fear as to what he’d missed in those tens of seconds which had elapsed right before. The fields on either side of the road were lush. Obscenely lush…In most of the region, wheat or barley was the principle crop, but, increasingly, the farmers here and in neighbouring Helmand Province had taken to planting corn…”Food security,” all those UN initiatives…the real reason was because corn grew fast – if you grew corn, you could get a food crop in before winter, on top of the cash crop, which was opium. Wheat or barley weren’t fast enough to beat the Afghan winter and, if, conversely, you went all-in for opium, you might get cash, but cash couldn’t always guarantee food in a land which was wracked by famine only a decade earlier. And, if western and ANA troops came by, you might end up with neither cash nor food.
Yes, grow corn, the officials nodded in approval. They didn’t need to be so many convoys or air drops of food – always vulnerable to insurgent ambush. A few weeks earlier, Kyle’s unit had supervised a platoon of ANA troops as the latter whirled metre-long canes like slo-mo lawnmowers, moving up and dowin in a line, severing the heads of the flowers which had been the only guaranteed income of the farmers. The kevlar and ceramic plates Kyle sweated under didn’t protect him from the gazes of the locals; gazes which oozed a hatred he could never understand because he had never experienced a world in which a momentary decision could condemn someone’s children to destitution. The mood of relief lasted until summer, when the corn was dense and eight feet tall. Then, it was time for regret…
An epiphany rolled into his head as they rumbled along: “Civilization is the state of being in which one’s ideas exist separate from material consequences…We are civilized…”
* * *
“You break it, you buy it!” The hoarse, thickly accented exclamation caught Stepan and Sophie off guard. Everyone had heard the line somewhere, but usually from stock TV characters in movies which could not be produced today.
“Sorry, ‘scuse me,” Stepan’s hands were numb with terror lest the sculpture touch anything else on that cluttered, seemingly deliberately wobbly shelf and thereby precipitate a domino effect, shattering both porcelain and Stepan’s desire to show his face in there again.
The sculpture attracted him because it was such a unique version of something so commonplace – commonplace, at least, for Chinatown, or, for that matter, in any self-consciously ‘spiritual’ bourgeois house downtown as well as unconsciously sincere ones in the suburbs to the north. It declared itself through use of the basic artistic canon that it was Buddhist and represented either Buddha himself or one of the bodhisattvas who more or less fill the role performed by saints in Catholic Christianity. The material, however, was unusual: a kind of slightly waxy stone, or earthenware rendered to resemble stone, with a nearly uniform yellowish-grey colour…not the jade, fake jade, glazed ceramic, agate or bronze which were typical for sculptures of such subjects. It could pass for an antique easily enough, especially in the less-than-ideal conditions for analysis present in the cramped, dimly-lit curio shop.
There was something in this sculpture, though; something ‘about’ it that achieved a powerful response somewhere deep in Stepan’s soul, though he hadn’t the slightest interest in Buddhism and only superficial knowledge of it. The sculpture possessed an essence akin to, yet not the same as, that of the red lacquered chests with brass-fitted drawers, or the worm-eaten, vinyl-bound copies of sutras and Maoist exhortations, or the tenebrous inkstones which some silk-robed scholar might have used to write the Qing imperial examinations – items left by those who long ago left this world, or sold off by their children; a quality inexplicably both creepy and entrancing.
Supper was very late, to allow for the darkness to become complete and everyone to finish with the business of the day. Their shopping hauls were laid out on or around the coffee table, which, as it was in the house of Sophie Belzer’s Beaches-dwelling dentist and psychologist parents, was huge and carved from solid Javanese teak. A mutual buddy, Delilah Brunton, had come after doing overtime at a community centre in distant, derelict Etobicoke, to share in the smorgasbord of snacks and to watch the screening of Death on the Nile (the David Suchet version, of course) in 65-inch plasma screen glory.
The movie had barely established the jealousy between the nervous socialite and her new husband’s ex-fiancé when Sophie’s father entered to fetch something from the adjacent computer room. “Don’t mind me, just passing through…Hey! Where’d you guys get this?” He halted, transfixed. The movie watchers turned to see that his attention was directed towards the Buddha head which Stepan had purchased.
“Uh, I don’t remember the name of it, but it was one of those narrow little trinket shops in Chinatown, the ones that sell all kinds of antiques and knick-knacks and things,” Stepan answered.
“Gosh,” Sophie’s father exhaled meditatively, tapping, then gently rubbing the sculpture with the tip of a finger. “Me and Sophie’s mom, before we got married, we traveled all over there – Afghanistan, I mean.” He shot a sideways glance towards a small rug hung on the wall behind the dining table. “The Hippie Trail, they called it, because, I suppose, that’s what we were. Traveled – adventured, really, you could say, because it was all on camels, or beat-up old Land Cruisers and those hand-painted buses…no electricity until you got to a city. It was safe, too, which is the craziest thing about it…learned to play the rubab – like a hybrid of a guitar and a mandolin. Well, I tried, anyway.” The younger folks could tell he savoured the stories which were obviously playing themselves out in his head, though it seemed he was describing not just a strange locale but an alternate dimension. Snapping out of his reverie, he asked, “How much did you pay for it?”
“Uh, twenty-five bucks?”
“Twenty-five bucks?” Mr. Belzer inquired of the sculpture, which stared mutely back at him, unbothered by his material concerns. “Nooo! You’re joking?…But, this…” He tapped it some more and held it to the table lamp. “Gosh. If your grandpa was still alive, Sophie, I’ll bet he’d have loved to have a look at this. Honestly, for the life of me, it looks like it’s genuine. You know they had a Greco-Buddhist kingdom then, before Islam? Their art was a mix of east and west…Huh…” He walked off in a daze. Sophie, Stepan and Delilah did not really believe in his speculations. Regardless, an exotic perfume seemed to suffuse the atmosphere and, while nothing changed about the room or the movie on the screen, they felt themselves subtly connected, as if by an invisible portal, to something else – not merely an ancient kingdom, and not quite the place on the news, but, maybe, to all those things and to something more which the mind could only almost imagine…
* * *
The Nyala was pulling ahead…well within sight on the mostly straight road, but it wasn’t how they’d been trained. Instinct was taking over the convoy, Kyle saw. Sarge didn’t see it, or at least nobody said anything. Kyle double-checked. Not imagining things, nope. His LAV’s driver also didn’t notice it. It was as if the drivers of the nimbler and the more sluggish vehicles were unconsciously adhering to the exact same level of of urgency on the steering wheel and gas pedal.
The orchards weren’t too bad – the spaces between the trees didn’t grow grass, couldn’t hide much. The melon fields were harmless, as were the wheat and rapeseed. Endless ribbons of green and yellow under an endless, milky cyan sky. Kyle was going to ask Corporal Alexander, the driver of their LAV, if they were going in circles: how did the road keep going on and on as it was? He waited for someone else to ask first. Noone did. He kept silent.
In a moment too gradual to notice and too swift to reach to, the level of the ground rose and the road began to move left and right, then left and right again. Not sharp turns, but the world before them began to shrink and what was behind them disappeared. A settlement came into view. Not a cluster village; just a double line of houses that shared an affinity with each other because they had nothing else to associate with, besides their people-less fields. These fields were small, divided by banks and hedges, hemmed in by outcroppings of dusty stone topped with thorny, dwarfish trees. The villagers grew much corn, and, behind the tall corn, undoubtedly there were poppies. Only the verdant health of the crops persuaded Kyle and his squadmates that they hadn’t, in fact, wandered into some parallel dimension or haunted zone where they were the only human beings. The architecture didn’t help. Everything was disturbingly timeless. Kyle searched in vain for a pane of glass, a plastic signboard, a scrap tire or sheet of corrugated metal roofing – something to prove they were not lost within a waking nightmare.
And nobody said anything! Were they blind to it? Was he mad? As these thoughts rushed in, Kyle noticed that the vehicle ahead of them had vanished around a shallow bend – who knew how far? He went into panic…
“Hey!” A voice of salvation. Corporal Alexander hit the brakes. “Listen, Sarge, Cresswell, this ain’t right…” The three men held conclave atop the LAV, various maps unfolded for comparison. Reading and rereading aloud the place names and plotting the distances with their fingers and the map legends, the two NCOs came to the same conclusion, confirming to Kyle that he wasn’t insane. They should have got in sight of the ANA base by now. Otherwise, they must have made the wrong turn somewhere. This, they agreed heartily on, yet Kyle could not help witnessing that, for all the increasingly insistent jabbing of digits on paper and despite the ever more voluble recitations of topographical names, none of the mentioned routes really resembled the one they had taken and no marked place quite matched the habitations they were now moving amongst.
“You think somebody should go ask one of them?” Kyle whispered.
“What?” Alexander barked back.
“I…” Kyle coughed, forcing his voice higher: “I was thinking, maybe we could ask somebody where we are,” nodding towards the low earthen courtyard of a farmhouse.
“These damn maps, eh,” The Sergeant opined with an unsettling amount of confidence. “Half of ‘em are from when the Russians were here. The way these people live, stuff’s bound to look different. Some of them highways are probably nothing but dirt and grass now.”
An exchange of glances decided that Kyle and the Sergeant would go inquire while the rest of the crew waited at the ready – the Sarge, for authority and the smattering of Pashto phrases he could string together, and Kyle for an extra gun. The farmhouse was the biggest in the settlement. It offered the best prospect of an owner who knew something of the territory beyond the boundaries of the village fields. Too, the wide courtyard – whose walls, on closer inspection, were composed largely of integrated outbuildings – offered a clear field of fire for Corporal Alexander and Private MacEachern as they kept watch, fingers on the triggers of their C7s.
Neither Kyle nor the Sergeant spoke at first. Anyone inside would know they’d arrived. The silence of the courtyard made the powdery dust crunch like gravel beneath their boots. A quern-stone sat under thatched eaves; a low well occupied the center. The unglazed windows and doors were of rough-hewn wood set in the clay of the walls. No flags to show allegiance. Inside his head, Kyle was still longing for a hubcap, a motorbike propped against a wall; a radio sitting on a window sill, anything to share the eerie sensation which he knew, yet could not trust, was a paranoid delusion.
The Sarge calleed out, “Salaam Aleikum! Umm, khe-chare! Za da Canada pauz. Canada army!” Without turning to face Kyle, he argued, “Somebody lives here! They gotta…”
“Scared maybe?”
“Or…Whatever. Doesn’t it bug you?”
“…” Kyle could not, under the constraints of the moment, articulate why the place creeped him out, even if he had a clear picture in his thoughts, no adequate verbal explanation could make it through the pounding of his heart in his throat. His hands clutched the rifle tighter, as much because of its polymer and aluminum nature as its lethal functionality.
“Like somebody took away all their animals…” The Sarge hissed.
“Animals?”
“You know. Farms. Should be animals. Goats, chickens, donkeys. Don’t look at me like that. You think Hadji’s plowing his fields riding around on a frickin’ John Deere?”
“No, I…hmm…” Kyle swept his rifle side to side, imagining shadows. The five p.m. sunlight was playing inscrutable tricks. It was so unnatural, even though this was as close to Nature as anyone had lived since the advent of agriculture. They finally stepped past the well – neither was ready to try the main entry yet. “You ever listened to Art Bell on the Radio?”
“Art Bell?”
Kyle shivered from embarassment. “You know. Or George Noury. Coast to Coast AM, that kind of show.”
“Satellite radio?” Kyle at each step expected a stingy rebuke form his Sergeant but, instead, the more experienced soldier was surveying the house, eyes darting left and right, back and forth, never resting, never finding what they were hunting for. As if with great exertion, he took a step back. Speaking coldly, “Yeah, I know what you’re talking about…”
The pair stood, guns at the ready, unsure how to deal with the situation. Walk back to the vehicle and tell everyone they didn’t get directions because they got the heebie-jeebies first? Then again, they both understood they would not find anyone inside to ask for directions.
“Hey, Sarge,” Kyle tilted his head to the left. The Sarge followed his lead. “Look!”
In the far left of the courtyard, perched on a gnarled and ossified apricot tree, was a small object, evidently animate though barely distinguishable from the tree itself. A second later, the two men made it out: a small tawny owl, sleepy, watchful…
Kalashnikovs rattled all around, multiplied in echoes off the walls. Somewhere, behind them, an ancient Enfield boomed and there was a fateful ‘whoosh.’ They dove behind the coping of the well, as it was the only solid cover in the middle of the courtyard; rifle muzzles seeking for something to shoot at. Then there was an explosion like metallic thunder, and Kyle knew a rocket-propelled grenade had found their LAV.
* * *
The museum employee beamed with pride as he strolled, hands clasped behind his back, through the interlinked rooms. The ceiling appeared almost black; the outside world did not exist once visitors were drawn towards the items, hermetically sealed under glass, bathed in lights that glowed rather than shone. The sober pediments, the fortress-like doorless gates that opened from each chamber into the next – he savoured the cocktail of coziness and intrigue which had made him fall in love with the R.O.M. as a child: thus, he knew he had succeeded – if, after a stressful adolescence and meandering career path, the magic found him again, it would find others, too. He turned to his companion, who was not a fellow R.O.M. employee but rather a longtime friend invited for the occasion: a journalist who worked at the Toronto Star. A third, a woman who taught international relations as an adjunct professor at the U of T, had come as the plus-one of the second.
“I wish you’d put on something this nice for some of the other, er, ethnic-themed exhibits,” remarked the journalist. “I mean, the lovely things you’ve done with the walls and the specific décor, and blending the displays of the artifacts with things in the present day. Time is a spiral, or whatever the saying is.”
“What? Oh, I’m afraid it’s an exceptional case.,” the curator confessed. “The plasterers, painters – even though a lot of the decorations are just styrofoam and plaster underneath – running a museum isn’t exactly a high-profit-margin business. We decided it’s time for a retrospective. It’s not every day, or even every decade, honestly, that Canadians find themselves enmeshed – like it or not – with history. We kind of live outside of it most of the time, if you think about it. And, too, it’s sort of a way to show that we have a role to play in the community, as a site of shared learning, shared memory; the idea that history and science shouldn’t just be something shoved to the side, just for the ivory tower, scholars and school trips, you know?”
“I always felt the same way myself,” the adjunct professor jumped in on the side of the curator. “All those years and we never really confronted things. We never really understood what we were there for or even where we were, if you get what I mean.”
“Totally agree,” her journalist companion insisted, seeking common ground as he pointedly examined a millstone and an arrangement of copper utensils backed by an explanatory text plaques and black-and-white photos of Soviet helicopters and troops patrolling the very site where the items were dug up. Alongside these images were others, in colour, but otherwise no different except for the models of the helicopters. “They had me help out with the Remembrance Day coverage for a couple years; twenty-twelve, twenty-thirteen. Half the interviews you couldn’t use, or, I felt we shouldn’t. Jingoistic patriotism. Everybody believed in ‘the mission,’ or else they had to pretend they believed in it, to be polite to everyone else there. ‘N, like, okay, I get it, thank you for your service and all that, but not one of the veterans I interviewed – I’m not exaggerating – not one single one of them could speak any of the languages they talk over there. I’m not talking fluently, I mean at all. None of them knew anything about Islam, except no pork, no booze, and cover your women. And I have to keep a straight face, all polite, but the whole time I’m thinking to myself, ‘we were over there for how long?’ What a shit show…”
“Ugh!” The professor grunted in disgust. “I’m sure the local customs didn’t stop them if they wanted something. You, your buddies, all with guns, no police, nobody to interfere…That’s the problem with armies in modern democracies. Aaah, whose book is it I’m thinking of? Maybe it was on JSTOR? There’s these lofty goals, but as the people sent to execute them are, you know…Of course, even if it was all educated experts that we sent over there, they would struggle with how to implement ideas like ‘nation building’.”
“And we hand the task over to the kids who, when we were studying in class, they were blowing up frogs with firecrackers and dropping out in Grade 10,” the curator lamented, perusing inlaid Qajar pen boxes.
“Exactly!” the academic huffed. “A lot of the kids who sign up just want to get away from their stepdad’s belt and to go kill people, legally. How do you build a nation, win hearts and minds with that? It was a pipe dream! I’d be scared if I found out someone like that was living in my building.”
“That’s partly why we put on the exhibit,” the curator offered. “We never asked, collectively, what to make of it.” He smiled slightly at the dense cluster of attendees, eagerly milling about, looking as if they might divine some secret of their generation’s national identity if only they contemplated the art and artifacts with sufficient intensity.
“I’m just glad we weren’t stupid enough to go down the road the Americans did in Vietnam,” the journalist declared.
“We couldn’t have,” the curator affirmed. “We’re more educated now. People ask questions. Plus, it went on so long. If you can’t tell anyone why you’re there and what you mean to achieve, you’re not going to get a whole bunch of university graduates with a future ahead of them rushing to sign up, especially not for what’s not really such great pay anymore.”
“The hubris of Empire,” the curator mused, with audible capitalization. “Alexander. Kublai Khan. The British. The Soviets. What did we think we were going to get out of it, when they all met the Fate they did?”
“Hm,” the professor cooed agreeably. “You know, you could say this exhibit you’ve put on, and in the Royal Ontario Museum of all places – it’s really about us as much as it’s about all these lifeless things plucked out of the empty sands where we were groping for meaning. All for ourselves, in a way. No?” She was extremely proud of her cleverly turned phrases. Everyone smiled, but no more than was appropriate for the mood of the event.
* * *
The rapid and ongoing cacophony of explosions had temporarily deafened Kyle. He was not cognizant of how he had come to be inside the building, but he recognized that his belly and ribs were sore and his gloves were scuffed down to the lining in places. His rifle felt light. He reloaded. Guiding the magazine into the mag well was like unlocking the door after staggering how from a bender at the clubs. He had as much control over his limbs as a puppeteer with a string puppet: his body wasn’t quite his anymore – he had enough rights to it to receive fear and pain, yet overall possession of its substance was clearly in dispute.
A ragged wave rattled the walls and roof, smacking a wooden window-beam down towards his feet – he was laying down and didn’t even try to evade it. The enemy was at least squad-sized, probably more, since they liked to have one group shoot while the other maneuvered around for a better vantage or to disengage and escape. However, these were probably local militia, not full-time Taliban regulars, judging by the motley assortment of weapons, which Kyle could differentiate by sound, plus the fact they didn’t seem to have anything heavier than the one RPG. If he could keep from getting killed, sooner or later (probably sooner), backup would roll in from base and push the guerrillas out. Somebody had to be looking for them already, the way they’d been last out on the road among the convoy. Helicopters, perhaps a Specter gunship – that would be even better. Revenge entered his mind – he wasn’t sure why. Now that his chance for heroism had come, he left it untouched like salad at a buffet. Medals didn’t matter, only making sure there was as low a chance as possible that none of those bullets hit him. He pressed his body into the carpet that covered everything on the floor, undulating like a caterpillar until he was in a niche, sort of a closet without a door, between two rooms whose purpose the lack of familiar furniture prevented him from speculating on.
Having no idea of the layout of the structure and where somebody might enter from in pursuit of him, he instinctively fell back on basic training for urban warfare…or tried to. Don’t poke your rifle out of the windows; hang back so you’re in the shadows…works, if you have buddies to watch your flanks. How many of his squad had survived the initial ambush? He listened for voices, but all he heard was some far-away cheers and orders that definitely were not English. None of the reports echoing around the thick moulded-mud masonry was a 5.56 of any type that he knew; only the distinctive ‘pop’ of AK47s and the occasional boom of a sniper rifle. Everything sounded pretty close; no further than the shrub-topped hillocks which his hazy recollection told him marked the natural boundaries of the village. The windows in the room he was in were all absurdly high off the ground. Bandits must be common in this district, he figured. The next room, though, which was larger, had a big, bright window that he guessed might look behind the house, right up to where the bulk of the shooting was coming from, and it was low enough that he could lie down and see out of it while barely raising his body. Or, better yet, peep out using a signaling mirror. The gunfire was just sparse enough that Kyle feared making noise by moving too speedily. This was fortunate, as, right when his helmet was about to pass through the space of the large room, a single powerful bullet tore a plank out of the window that held the shutters, throwing jagged wood splinters everywhere and gouging a bone-white scoop from the azure-painted interior wall. Kyle shuffled back into the previous room, keeping his eyes on the bullet impact. In what must have been three or five seconds, he did a minute’s worth of reasoning: he definitely had not been visible – he was sure he wasn’t deceiving himself here. None of his buddies, alive or dead, were holed up in this portion of the house. The enemy ‘marksmen’ were squeezing off precise single shots at…nothing. It was possible that the enemy didn’t know how many of Kyle’s guys were in there, or where they’d all scattered to, and they were simply dumping suppressive fire in the faint hope that they might hit something. The Talibs were brave enough for suicide bombing but the ones not set on that ending weren’t known for storming buildings with NATO troops still inside. Kyle huddled into a recess where the floating dust sparkled in the noonday shadows. So many vehicles…so many radios…someone would have put out an alert about the engagement and called for backup, he reminded himself again. Hell, it had taken them so long on the road, someone must have started looking for them already. They had to. If he could sit tight, undetected, the relief force would come barreling through in twenty, or ten minutes If he could survive that, or maybe even five minutes without the Afghans finding him…
* * *
Sophie launched into a brief lecture about Kammerer’s theory of synchronicity. After all, wasn’t it true that they had all been in a retrospective mood lately and none of them quite knew why? (Stepan mumbled something about events in the news). And, was it not also a fact that Stepan had only a day and a half earlier found that sculpture in the curio shop – been drawn to it by inexplicable impulses (“I didn’t put it that way,” Stepan cautioned)? Which was, astonishingly, genuine, as they were informed when they brought it to Professor Weisbrot at the U of T’s Department of Anthropology. So what if it was mid-20th century rather than 2nd century BC? It was still genuine in the sense of being a folk craft, probably produced by the same methods as the ancient original and likewise imbued with the spiritual energies of its place of origin? (The University lab had not tested for the latter characteristics, but both Sophie and Stepan shared popular beliefs about haunting, feng shui and so on in a real, albeit doctrinally imprecise sense).
Now, to top things off, they had been invited to an unofficial reunion dinner, hosted by their ex-classmate, who had become (assistant…) curator of antiquities at the R.O.M. Not the best paid job among alumni of their small, academically focused high school, but certainly one of the coolest. Too, there would be Heather, who’d parlayed her bubble blonde charm into a reporter gig at the Star, Kenneth, who’d become an academic making a high salary on worthless predictions about geopolitics, and Charmaine Ngai. And the venue was the Pomegranate Restaurant at 420 College St., the same one where they have the booths on raised daises with low tables where you can sit on rugs instead of chairs.
“How did you get your invite?” inquired Stepan.
“SMS,” Sophie replied matter-of-factly.
“Eh? The text you got didn’t say anything…cryptic, did it?”
“Why? No.”
“Okay, because mine definitely sounded like something trying to be all cryptic, James Bond-y, like for fun.” He pulled out his phone to be sure of the words. “Lessee…’the four winds may scatter’ – it’s all in caps, by the way – ‘the four winds may scatter our willful souls, but the wheel of samsara spins, spins though we’re blinded by greed and sin, calls us in, bound in an eternal whole.’” He showed the message to Sophie. “I had my data turned off, got mine a couple hours late after you told me. When I tried calling the number back, I got ‘not in service.’ Figured it was a reference to the mandalas we painted in…was it grade 11 art class?”
A doubting Sophie tried calling the number on her phone, with the same dead-end result. “Huh. Look at my message history. It’s actually a different number from the one that messaged you. They’re obviously talking about the same event invite, though, so, I dunno. Maybe like someone using a secret number, like a VPN for your phone?” Her cynical grin switched to a confounded frown when she attempt to call that number which had texted her. It, too, was out of service.
They hypothesized about a hacker, but couldn’t conceive of a motive. Meanwhile, Charmaine and a couple others had messaged to say they were on their way and, knowing some of the guests would be using the subway, Stepan and Sophie knew they would have no cell service to respond to inquiries about potential phone hackers until they were all at the restaurant together.
Confused they were, but there was nothing weird about an informal high school reunion in of itself. Indeed, they’d all talked about doing one now and then over the years. Only, Delilah wasn’t going to come because she was laden with cases that evening; refugees experiencing integration troubles and an addiction ‘workshop.’ Everyone commented on the lovely and exotic atmosphere of the Pomegranate. Only the museum curator, Geoffrey, picked up on the coincidences, sparking a discussion. Stepan still had the Buddha head in his bag. The curator gave his verdict: “See the even pore structure and the even tones over the whole of the head,” he pointed out, scrutinizing it with the magnifying glass in his Swiss Army knife. “On the other hand, there’s no tool marks, like from a Dremel tool. So, none of the stains or patina you’d expect from something that actually dates to the 1st century AD, which it matches stylistically. But the look is spot-on and there’s no doubt in my mind, this was worked and polished by hand. You’d think they’d at least have sandpaper and lathes. Somebody sure went the extra mile. Bit of a waste for a tourist-trap souvenir.”
Charmaine, whose father was devoutly Buddhist, remarked on how little we can learn about our world merely by looking at its present here-and-now, and lamented the recent politics which split apart people who should be appreciating how much they share together across distance and geography.
“I also got a strange message,” the Star reporter, Heather, sought to be the centre of attention. “But it must have come when I was in the subway. I didn’t think it was related to this here,” she jabbed a fork towards the table, “Hmmm…” She read the message on Stepan’s phone. “No, this was something different; it was about a scoop downtown today, to be near campus to meet an informant talking about sleeper cells and terroristic activism in ethnic student groups downtown, but they never called. I’ve been killing time in a cafe around the block for like four hours. This is a different number, too.” Someone brought up hacking of phones, and the journalist in her fired up. “”All those powers they gave themselves after 9/11, basically demolishing the Charter, did they repeal any of them?” she asked rhetorically.
“Well, the alternative was a danger to public security,” the IR prof conjectured. “You remember how freaked out everybody was back then. Nobody knew when the next one was going to be.”
“Umm, never?” Sophie rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, that is why we were in Afghanistan, after all, wasn’t?” Stepan joined in, deliberately sarcastic. “Fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here?”
Sophie, too impassioned to grasp his sarcasm, clapped down her teacup. “Fight who? Fight Mulhim? Fight Aksa?” She named two of their fellow alumni, currently distant but remembered fondly or at least without complaint. “That was the argument for Iraq, by the way.”
“Sorry, mixed them up.” Stepan shimmied his glutes upon the rug. “Sophie’s right,” he pleaded. “Gosh, I couldn’t think of killing Mulhim, or Aksa. Ugh, just, ugh.”
Heather stunned him with an angry retort: “So you’re saying their sacrifice was in vain, then?” leaning in, as if she was trying to get his hot take on the mic.
“Of course it was in vain!” Sophie replied for her friend. Looking to the curator, “We chose, or, our political classes chose to send soldiers to die, in the same failed adventures like so many other empires had done before us and which had been a disaster for all of them.” The curator nodded.
“Wha…excuse me,” Heather hadn’t planned on being other than a noble icon of impartiality in any matter of virtuous retrospection. “You don’t think women’s rights, schools, healthcare, safety, all the things we have; you don’t think it was worth it? To bring it to them?” She pouted.
“You don’t win ‘hearts and minds’ by burning villages and raping the local women and boys.”
“Did Canadian soldiers ever do that?”
Sophie hadn’t expected a debate when she accepted the invite, but was now caught in her role, which she felt even more strongly as she noticed that their waiter and the wife of the couple that owned the place seemed to be listening, hovering at the cash desk, curious to hear what the diners on the dais were arguing about.
“Not off the top of my head, but if you are part of an occupying force, and it’s a widespread activity among your comrades…” Stepan, his courage fortified by Sophie’s stand and eager to curry favour with his friend, gave a riposte. “You know, too, what kinds of people join the army…”
“Tell me,” the reporter snorted.
“Uhm, well, like we had this girl at the Starbucks I worked in back then. She went to U of T like us but she was from Thunder Bay and her brother joined the army then, during the war, and she wasn’t having it. Said he was a psycho that she’d never let near a gun. He said straight up, she told us, that he wanted to kill people, legally. That’s it. That was his reason for joining. And other, err, things that go along with that…situation. It got him real excited, apparently. She said it’s basically a system the government designs to get them out of society when they’re young, because, if it wasn’t Afghan villagers, it would be Native hitchhikers on the Highway of Tears or something.”
“Not like the government would care either way, except prison costs more than a soldier’s salary,” Sophie gibed.
“Yep, and she also told us, it’s worse when they come back alive, because they can’t adapt to normal peaceful society, and will just act out all those violent impulses on the public back home.”
“If you found yourself treated like a stranger in the country you were born in and fought to protect, especially if you had PTSD from fighting terrorists with AK47s in a literal hellhole…” Heather refused to abandon her sudden, hawkish position; she who had never seen a gun except on TV or in a cop’s holster. Her friends were taken aback; they had seen the contrarian ‘shit-disturber’ side of her before, but not the apparent sincerity with which she challenged them, on what they had all believed were perfectly mainstream, socially-approved understandings of the events of their formative years.
“More like, abused civilians so the villagers take up arms to get you out of their village…” Sophie scoffed. “As for hellholes, I would rather live in a self-sufficient farming community, if it was my own culture, than how our homeless and addicts and people in assisted housing live. If you want to blame something for crime…”
Charmaine was utterly ignorant of foreign affairs and had been stuffing her face quietly, was triggered into action by the talk of crime. “Actually, my dad is a detective,” – as if this was news to anyone who knew her – “and I remember him mentioning that guys who served over there are hugely over-represented not, like, in murders, but among, like, homeless people or the druggies living in those run-down old house apartments that are like four stories high and brown and ashy on Sherbourne and Jarvis Streets.”
“Trauma,” Heather whispered mournfully.
“But yeah, no, what Sophie or Stepan said, my dad agrees, it’s a psychology issue with the people they send; they’re already a selected group before they go over there. Explains why we didn’t have an explosion of psycho hobos after World War Two, even though way more people served in the army then.”
“Classism, gotta love it, eh?” Heather drawled.
Stepan wondered to himself, ‘what has gotten into you?’
“It’s not rich or poor; it’s psychology,” Charmaine insisted. “The same kids would be growing up to beat their wives, do drugs, get drug, sexually assault if they stayed here, too. At least over in Afghanistan, Somalia or some place the people can defend themselves.”
“You’d shoot a homeless veteran if he asked you for money?” Heather had forgotten her kuku sabzi, nourishing herself instead on moral superiority.
“If I could, oh my God, yes,” Charmaine answered frankly. “Right when I was coming here, walking like fifty feet away from the restaurant, just across the street, this crazy guy stopped me and asked for change. And when because I was startled, I said, ‘change?’, like asking him, he got pissed, ‘You promise? But you can’t deliver!’” She mocked a gravelly male voice. “Accusing me like I’d committed some crime against him or something. I was thinking, what the fuck, I was just, you know, surprised, like anyone would be when some horrible-smelling bearded guy jumped out at me and asked me for money. Then he went on about how my money can’t buy the change he needs and he’s already paid me more than I can return to him, and I’m over it at this point; like, no way, I don’t owe you shit.” Her dining companions listened in worry or awe. “I mean, I don’t mind giving people panhandling some money as an idea, but don’t come at me as if you’re friggin’ entitled. Anyway, I pushed him aside – washed my hands at least five times after I got in here, don’t worry.”
“He touched you?” Several mouths gasped. “That’s assault!”
“Not really, he stood in my way and I had to brush past him or else walk into traffic. It was gross, though, even if you can’t say it’s on the level of sexual assault. The creepiest part was how he laughed when I went away from him and he said ‘enjoy your meal,’ but, I hadn’t even moved to go inside the restaurant yet, and there’s so many other stores and food places on the street.”
“Lucky guess? Dinner hour?” Geoffrey attempted to demystify things.
“I dunno, maybe I telegraphed something with my body language.”
“How did you know he was a soldier? Or are you just bringing it up because of what we’re talking about now?” Heather asked.
“Uhhh, because of his army clothes and boots. Head to toe, only, with all the flags and rank-symbols ripped off.”
“You can buy those clothes at the surplus store in Kensington.”
“Whatever. He gave me that vibe. I don’t think he wanted to hurt me, but it felt like he enjoyed scaring me, or hoping he could scare me.” Charmaine was equally stubborn as Heather. “A menace to society. Women should be able to protect themselves.”
“Hmm…” Geoffrey uttered, trying to keep space open in the conversation while he processed his thoughts. “I am pretty sure I saw the same guy, but he was at the entrance to the subway, leaning against a building near where the steps come out on the sidewalk. Army clothes, sort of a duffel bag but I guess you could carry it as a backpack, with the shoulder strap. I paid special attention to him because he was sitting there, just sitting there, meditating, like a Buddha. If it is the same guy, he wasn’t bothering anybody. Perhaps it’s because your dad is a cop; usually they have had a lot of bad experiences with the law by the time they’re at that stage.”
“How would he know, though?” Charmaine laughed.
“I…I don’t know! Could be it’s the way you carry yourself. People can always tell an undercover cop.” It was hard to claim that the spunky, gregarious Charmaine – all five-foot-three of her, came across as in any way suggesting “police.”
Nonetheless, in her mind, she was very much her father’s daughter. A Facebook post by Stepan both depicting and describing the latter-day ‘artifact’ he and Sophie had purchased in Chinatown the other day was fresh in her thoughts. Buddha…White-people-influenced Buddha…Hipsters, who are sane to the highest degree of boring herdmindedness, will sit cross-legged atop some special, pigeon-haunted nook or pedestal, palms on knees or fingers clasped in a gesture everyone passing by will assume must be a symbol of some principle relating to the energy flow of the universe or other mumbo-jumbo. They do it for attention, fleeing either direction interaction or a thin and disinterested crowd. One never encounters their pseudo-Oriental spiritual practices in the Rouge, let alone Muskoka.
If a hobo is sitting silently, demanding nothing, decrying nothing, then he is either stoned out of his mind or he is attempting to appear utterly shattered and catatonic, that he might excite more pity and faster fill his coin-cup or upturned baseball cap. Neither possibility fit either of the descriptions of the man.
Whatever argument there had been was smoothed over with the geniality induced by a full stomach. Contrary to the norm for reunions of old fellow schoolmates, no one who had bothered to show was established enough in life to inspire soul-crushing shame, nor was anyone poor enough to feel shame and lose all desire to propagate the nation. This state of affairs did not go unnoticed.
Due to the coincidence of their residences’ location and their friendship being maintained better than in former times, Sophie, Stepan and Charmaine left together as the diner party dissolved with much affected adjusting of clothes and patting of bellies.
Charmaine raised the idea before it could escape her: “Which of us was it, d’you think, invited the rest of us?” The others stared at her dumbfounded. “Think about it, nobody was really the ‘host.’”
“Huh,” Stepan was enlightened. “You’re alright. I guess we didn’t notice because we all know each other and nobody’s got a beef, or jealousy or anything.”
“Think harder! You don’t think, maybe, somebody wanted us to beef?”
“Wanted us to have a reunion, and turn on each other? Like something out of Gossip Girl?”
“Well, we all have a history, things we never resolved; went our different ways…” Charmaine’s mental energies surged like a storm-fed river but could not find the right channel to flood into.
Sophie smiled politely. Yet, she bought it. It all did seem too much for mere coincidence. “Was anyone supposed to come who didn’t make it?”
Stepan shrugged. “Don’t know, except Delilah but she wouldn’t do some crazy psychological scheme. And there’s no easy way to figure it out now, is there?”
In silence, trying to think of something else to banter about, they strolled along Dundas Street, taking in the evening tableaux. Stepan meant to pop into an LCBO, since it was nearly closing time and he needed some Taylor Fladgate for the cupboard. Sophie stuck an arm across his chest. “Better not…”
The LCBO was bustling but the sidewalk between them and it contained drama that intrigued, as long as one didn’t smell or touch it. There was one of those stairways flanked by brick abutments which lead to below-street shops in certain old districts of downtown, like College and Dundas-Spadina, usually stores that sell niche goods which don’t pay for above-ground rent, such as anime DVDs, Chinese books, and pet supplies. It was clear from the discussion that this matter involved Tung Hoi Fish Centre and not Star Video, which may have been a defunct shell as far as anyone could tell from the darkness and the sun-faded posters covering the windows. A cold breeze reminded the wandering trio that it was not yet summer and of the importance of regular showers, also…but, for all of them, though only Charmaine would admit it, this was too spicy a scene to walk away from. One participant, backed against the abutment, was a classic downtown ‘street person’: disheveled, ruggedly bearded, clad in an olive drab coat (better burned than laundered). The other participants appeared to be a father and daughter who ran a family business.
The hobo seemed to know both of the shopkeepers – and the law. Only snippets of the conversation were legible past the effects of alcohol, madness and traffic noise. “…See, that’s where you’re wrong, pal,” the hobo said, in a voice strangely familiar. “You can’t do citizens’ arrest!”
“What you mean? I can’t do!” The man, a stout Vietnamese or Cantonese in a striped polo, growled. “This my store! I catch you robbing my store, I arrest you, wait for police.”
“That’s right!” His daughter advanced menacingly, stopping as she wrinkled her nose. “We won’t hurt you, okay, but you can’t just break the law. This is our family’s livelihood!” She had obviously been to university. Her father’s glare suggested he didn’t agree with his daughter’s restrictive use-of-force policies.
“Doesn’t work like that, pal, sorry. To make a citizens’ arrest, you have to actually see me commit a felony and not lose sight of me at all between then and when you make the arrest. If you took security training, that’s exactly what they would have taught you.”
“He’s right, you know,” Charmaine whispered to her friends.
“Smart hobo,” Stepan nodded.
The trio clunk back beyond the corners of a side street where the light of a restaurant patio and a rare ash tree partially concealed them when a cruiser rolled up. Someone had called the cops. There was a broad, confident smirk all over the hobo’s face; his soulful eyes glinting, trusting that reason would prevail over pettiness and paranoia.
The three friends were transfixed. Of course, there was the morbid curiosity of a little drama which affected none of them personally…but there was something extra; some undisclosed ingredient to this moment which gave it a truly irresistible savour…
One of the two cops in the cruiser stepped out and dealt with the situation in textbook fashion, walking between the parties. As the conversation developed, his voice dropped and his eyes widened. He must have handled plenty of weirdos and freaks already, but this was something new.
“Did he say what I think he say? The store owner, I mean.” Stepan was incredulous.
“Yep,” answered Charmaine. “The shopkeeper said the homeless guy is stealing fish. That’s what I heard, anyway.”
“Is that a metaphor for harassing his daughter?”
“Nope…”
As if to double down on the insanity, the shopkeeper demanded the cop search the accused’s pockets to detect if there were stolen tropical fish being smuggled out in them, or perhaps a lionhead or oranda. “Sir, you can’t arrest somebody, as a citizens’ arrest, for something you say happened on a prior occasion, over a week ago.”
“Told ya.” The hobo jabbed his chin at the shopkeepers. “I fought for your rights. But I guess you people miss living under tyranny.”
“Check his pockets!” The shopkeeper demanded, unplacated.
The cop sighed, clearly not wanting to have to handle the suspect or breath the air emanating off him for longer than he had to. “Sir, could you turn out your pockets, just so we can see ‘n be sure for this gentleman’s sake, that you didn’t take anything from his store.”
A barely noticeable tension shot through the officer as the hobo complied with a slowness and deliberation that were a fraction beyond the normal…The trio noticed, too; it was as if the guy meant to manipulate his jacket pockets in such a way that they appeared to be opened, while a small pouch of fabric remained inside the lip of the jacket shell.
If it that was the case, luck was not on the downbeat man’s side. A small transparent object ‘clicked’ on the pavement. The officer picked it up. A vial of something. “You mean to tell me what this is? Hashish oil?”
The hobo maintained a cold silence for a moment. “It’s not a fucking goldfish now, is it?”
“No, no, looks like hashish oil to me. What do you use this for? For yourself? Sell it?”
“To forget the nightmares by which I earned your ingratitude,” the hobo spoke with startling eloquence. “All of you.”
Stepan shuddered. The hobo did not twist his head far enough to actually look at them. Regardless, it felt like he meant to address them; like he knew they were there, although Stepan made sure not to ponder too much whether he was interested in them as mere spectating pedestrians, or as something more…
The policeman did not seem to grasp what the fellow was getting at. His facial muscles twitched nervously; he motioned for his partner in the car.
“…Don’t be scared; I’m not asking you to be scared,” the hobo begged the cop as if he felt sorry for him. “Gosh, eh, isn’t it funny how we can share so much, then some experience comes along; some twist of Fate, and we just…change, man; different directions…and we can’t see the other side. We don’t want to.” Again the man turned, with his shoulders too, this time. For the barest second he made eye contact, or, at least, Stepan imagined he did.
Yeah, for sure, life can be rough sometimes like that.” The cop concurred, edging backwards, hands held ever so slightly away from his hops, elbows starting to bend. “I’m gonna have to take this here though.” He indicated the vial in his hand. “We’re not gonna arrest you on simple possession; I’m okay to leave you with a warning, but we gotta figure out this thing between you and Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen here, ‘kay buddy?”
“You checked my pockets. Did you find anything that could possibly have been stolen from this man’s store – unless he wishes to admit to being a drug dealer?”
“No, sir, I didn’t.”
“He stole my fish! More five, six fish!” Mr. Nguyen fumed. “You have to arrest him, send him to jail, make him pay back my money!”
The notion of a shoplifter purloining ranchus and cichlids by stuffing them in his coat pockets was food for thought: did he eat them, perhaps cooked in some camping stove made from discarded tin cans? Alas, scholarly reflection on the fascinating topic was interrupted by a new twist in the situation, less bizarre but more likely to make it onto the news. In response to the cop’s gesture requesting assistance, his partner stepped out of the cruiser, hands near holstered nightstick and tazer.
Presumably, the cops intended to prevent escalation by demonstrating to the smelly, belligerent suspect that ‘overwhelming force’ was ready in generous portions and he would be wise to remain passive. It had the opposite effect. Stepan perceived that the hobo’s body and gaze turned to confront the sudden challenge; the shopkeepers were forgotten as if they weren’t there.
“You!” he half-yelled, half-bawled, throat crackling wetly. A wildness overtook him, his character transformed from disruptive yet pitiable street person to a pure, primal threat. The only possible reaction was to stop the threat as quickly and firmly as possible, or, in the case of Stepan, Sophie, Charmaine and the bystanders who’d broken from their commuting and trinket shopping to gawk at the proceedings hoping that someone braver and better armed than themselves would put a stop to things.
The policeman was feeling overwhelmed. He wasn’t worried, though – frequently, more than one sane and fit cop was required to subdue an unruly individual jacked up on alcohol, drugs, and traumatic flashbacks. Nobody was anticipating what happened next, least of all Constable Sutraj Singh Malhotra, who was caught off guard when this one among countless unhoused CAMH clients he’d politely shooed off of commercial premises in his young career would snap like an overstretched elastic, pressing him on top of the hood of his own cruiser before he’d finished telling the miscreant that he understood his difficulties but he had to move along now…
The warping sheet metal, the swearing and shouting of the cops and the chatter over the police radio plunged that section of sidewalk into a vision of urbanity befitting the early season of Law & Order. The three friends’ knees flexed, heads bent low, but nothing save a gunshot ringing out could have driven them from their excellent vantage point. “O-M-G!” Sophie squealed.
“Do you think they’re gonna…?” Before Stepan finished his question, a bursting hissss’ was added to the orchestra of crude violence and the hobo was rolling only the curb, knuckles grinding into his face, throat gagging. The cop he’d just assaulted was still lying bent backwards over the hood, holding out his can of pepper spray with one arm while shielding his face with the other. His partner quickly moved to cuff the offender and drag him into the back seat. Stepan thought about a song he’d encountered on YouTube some years prior: “That’s why I’m riding on the Cherry Beach Express; my ribs are broken and my face is in a mess…”
* * *
Sophie tapped the cannister delicately so that she would not feel compelled to rush to wash her hands after feeding the fish. The swarm of guppies materialized out of the groves of Anacharis and driftwood arches, devouring the ochre flakes like a wind-blown fire devouring a prairie farm. She stepped back and admired the aquarium and its surroundings: the stalwart faux ebony cabinet, the weighty books, the rug with woven Kalashnikovs and Mi8’s behind it carrying a warm red-purple colour scheme to contrast with the greens in the fish tank, and the alabaster sculpture of the ancient sage’s head. Sophie approvingly, then began sorting through DVDs on a nearby shelf. “Brideshead Revisited? The Heat and the Dust?…I’m feeling something languid and glamorous…”
“Sorry,” Stepan wore his anxiety on his sleeve. “I was thinking…”
“Of something depressing? Not allowed here! So we need something to get lost in. Either the Heat and the Dust or…The Night of Counting the Years? Oooh!”
“Not depressing, I suppose, just…do you remember the homeless dude fighting with the cops after we left the restaurant the other night?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t he look familiar to you? His face, if you took off the beard and dirt, of course?”
“Maybe, I dunno.” Sophie pressed a finger to her lips.
“I couldn’t help thinking, afterwards, there was some relationship to his being there, after all of us had reconnected, caught up on old times…”
“I see it, now, hmm…” Sophie’s eyes rested upon the Buddha, sitting impassively in disembodied meditation.
“I couldn’t help thinking, how different our lives would have been, if we’d made a single different choice back then. Agh! Where have I seen that face before?!?”
“It’s…” Sophie mused, barely audible, gaze not moving from the enigmatic sculpture. “It’s a lesson from the universe; a ‘sign’ not to take the path of anger and breaking our own reason with drugs and resentment. Don’t you think? We received a lot of lessons from each other growing up, you’re right. Makes us grateful we weren’t in some factory school.”
“Oh, I was gonna say,” Stepan corrected her, “That he looked like the hobo who used to harass patrons outside the Reference Library, but I think that was someone else. Ate the pigeons, supposedly – at least that was the rumour.”
“Eww! So, The Night of Counting the Years it is.”
終
Gandhara
by M.G. Warenycia
The palette was all earth tones, each one muted like if the artist had blended a good deal of titanium white into the ochres, purples and daubs of terre verte – the effect of dust hanging in the stagnant air of the broad, level valley. Only the sun was bright – cruelly bright, scorching the sand, the stunted trees, and the line of low mud-brick houses, and the eyes of the soldiers who dared meet its merciless stare. Kyle imagined the paints; the actual, physical paints one would have to use to paint the scene, because it was one of his last clear memories of the life before he found himself clad in CADPAT, riding in a LAV through this Benadryl fever-dream of a land…
There had been a classroom discussion; the Art teacher’s position could be easily surmised, but the students were left to go at each other, provided there was no swearing or insults. They had been studying Neoclassical and 19th century art, generally. Much money had been forked out for beyond-budget-allocation supplies. The debate must have broken out because of something in the papers that morning. Everyone’s family got a newspaper back then. One faction said it was Imperialism; Neo-Liberalism…the military-industrial complex needed an enemy, after all. Mahmoud, whose family immigrated from over there, told about the British and the Russians…Gabriela and Masha, indignant and keen to display their erudition, countered with a revisionist narrative of the immense social progress – hydro dams, atheism and girls’ schools – brought by the noble Soviets, inspiring Mahmoud to mutter a curse and Lukasz to drop his pen and plan a rebuttal. Jenna mentioned that she’d seen that newly-released documentary-movie about the Canadian citizen who traveled to visit her sister right before the war…Kyle saw through them. He said his peers wanted high-status jobs, with big salaries and bigger titles, which going to university would get them (so everyone believed). They knew they were going to run straight to that, so it was ridiculous to see them struggling to act like they really cared and were somehow authorities on events happening ten thousand kilometres away, given that actually participating in resolving any of these problems or helping any of these people they claimed to care about was the last thing in the world they would ever do. Kyle flung down his paintbrush like a judge slamming down his gavel. They, he told them (everyone was well aware that the army offered a great salary and job benefits), would sooner be homeless and begging on the street than pick up a gun and go achieve any of the grand global political goals they talked about as being so essential to the salvation and progress of the world.
Masks of outrage appeared around the huge, U-shaped arrangement of connected desks at which the three dozen teens sat to draw and paint, but no articulate speech rose to counter Kyle’s. He smirked, knowing he was right. So tedious…and they were going to spend four more years congratulating themselves, competing to dress the part of artists and activists, before they jumped into the rat race, just like their parents, whose blasé materialism they so loved to critique!….
Between that debate and this was a gigantic blur, less real than the sweat-drenched dreams he got in base before each patrol…
…Jean-Léon Gérôme, Edwin Lord Weeks, Horace Vernet…
Kyle wiped his goggles with the sleeve of his glove. It was better sitting on top than buttoned up inside. Bullets could one one easier, true, but the sense of being sealed in and blind was more unnerving than a somewhat elevated risk of a gunshot. The LAV moved as fast as it could, which was not very, keeping scrupulously to the centre line of the “road.” The dusty line narrowed and their vehicle slowed as the houses clustered densely – curious, in light of the vast, wild space stretching in every direction, limited only by the snow-capped fringes of the Central Highlands to the north and east, and, to the south, the Registan Desert, which flowed into others of its kind, farther than the eye could see or the mind fathom walking. It was as if the houses themselves were afraid of something, huddling together like that. Strangely, Kyle had observed no ruins nor even mounds or middens to indicate that anyone had ever lived in the vastness beyond the little hamlet. The wars had been going on for thirty years; surely something would have remained at least a few decades in the arid climate.
“Cresswell!” The sergeant’s voice barked from inside the hull.
Kyle snapped to attention.
“Check the goddam map again. No way in hell this is the right road. ‘Sposed to be a straight run to the ANA base once we got off the highway.”
Kyle pressed the map flat against the LAV’s roof to stop it from flopping as they bounced along. “Uhhh…yep, Sarge…”
“Yep what?!?”
“Yes, you’re right. It’s supposed to be a straight run…supposed to be. I guess we’ve just been moving slow; road probably isn’t what it was when they drew the map.”
The sergeant paused, then grunted. It was as much of a concession as one would ever get from him. They had, indeed, moved more slowly than they might have in a rugged and well-maintained vehicle over the dry ground. The schedule was planned precisely in advance, but, unconsciously, there had been a silent collective decision to do otherwise. The LAVs and Nyalas which comprised the convoy were harder targets than the Humvees of the Americans or the hapless supply trucks which careless Soviet commanders dared to dispatch along these routes, but this was not a place one could feel safe in, no matter how heavily armed or armoured. Kyle now and again doubted the wisdom of trying to see see as much of the country as possible. Knowing is supposed to alleviate fears, but, he’d discovered, it doesn’t always work like that.
Many people lived in the village: that was obvious from the tidiness of the dwellings (notwithstanding the abysmal poverty of the place). Someone ate the fruits heaped in polychrome pyramids and someone made use of the kaleidoscope arrangements of copper pans, silver teapots and gaily enameled thermoses stacked and hung in narrow shops whose awnings extended to the street. One could be forgiven for assuming that women were an extinct species in the area: not a single one was visible. Here and there, male figures were glimpsed, squatting in doorways, leaning on a windowsill, singly or in wordless conclaves of three or four, cross-legged and brooding over tea upon a dais behind unglazed windows. Kyle squirmed under the sun’s spotlight, straining to make out the details of the faces of his audience.
Somehow, he decided, it would have been less threatening if they’d been confronted directly by the village headmen, or if they’d found the valley abandoned. That would have been creepy, if they came through at night, but not so much in the afternoon, or so he reasoned with himself.
He carefully registered each watchful figure, establishing a type for his memory. The country was a collage of images; images whose meanings were inscrutable as ancient hieroglyphs: whether they spoke Dari, or Pashto, or Uzbek, he could not tell and would not understand…
“The broads are smoking hot underneath those sacks they wear,” a ruddy, distillery-scented corporal had insisted in a Kabul hotel where they’d gone for some training symposium, part of the eternally vague ‘hearts and minds’ strategy – mostly sitting through PowerPoint presentations by cherubic do-gooders from overfunded NGOs who’d leave the country as experts after three weeks. Kyle was intrigued. It had been drilled into them in training that they were to behave themselves. On the other hand, the idea of a war zone – especially a Third World War zone, as a place where men – especially men who, in their own country, were, to put it bluntly, not high up on the social ladder – could satisfy their every desire without consequences had been taught to him by endless reruns of ‘80s action movies set in ‘Nam (which the Americans always won on the silver scree). None of the delays, pesky and expensive courting rituals, interactions with in-laws, and other pretenses which might prevent one from having his way with even a small town diner waitress…no separation between Will and Action, he philosophized. Some Japanese samurai writer he’d first learned about in karate class had a quote to that effect…
The frequent risk of violent death was the bargain that justified the fantasy; made it believable according to a cosmic sense of justice. Unfortunately, soon after arriving in country, Kyle understood that there was no “me love you longtime” here, and his commanders were simply trying to minimize the amount of men who died or caused their comrades’ deaths on account of irresponsible recreation. Not that tantalizing rumours didn’t float around the smoke pit from time to time…
Kyle was shaken from his meditations by a subtle alteration in the terrain from what he must have subconsciously expected. Neither he and his buddies nor any foreigners in decades had driven upon this stretch of unpaved road, but Kyle had been on enough journeys in country to recognize that something was not as it ought to be – if things were ever as they ought to be there…
When his brain finally processed it, his next thoughts were fear as to what he’d missed in those tens of seconds which had elapsed right before. The fields on either side of the road were lush. Obscenely lush…In most of the region, wheat or barley was the principle crop, but, increasingly, the farmers here and in neighbouring Helmand Province had taken to planting corn…”Food security,” all those UN initiatives…the real reason was because corn grew fast – if you grew corn, you could get a food crop in before winter, on top of the cash crop, which was opium. Wheat or barley weren’t fast enough to beat the Afghan winter and, if, conversely, you went all-in for opium, you might get cash, but cash couldn’t always guarantee food in a land which was wracked by famine only a decade earlier. And, if western and ANA troops came by, you might end up with neither cash nor food.
Yes, grow corn, the officials nodded in approval. They didn’t need to be so many convoys or air drops of food – always vulnerable to insurgent ambush. A few weeks earlier, Kyle’s unit had supervised a platoon of ANA troops as the latter whirled metre-long canes like slo-mo lawnmowers, moving up and dowin in a line, severing the heads of the flowers which had been the only guaranteed income of the farmers. The kevlar and ceramic plates Kyle sweated under didn’t protect him from the gazes of the locals; gazes which oozed a hatred he could never understand because he had never experienced a world in which a momentary decision could condemn someone’s children to destitution. The mood of relief lasted until summer, when the corn was dense and eight feet tall. Then, it was time for regret…
An epiphany rolled into his head as they rumbled along: “Civilization is the state of being in which one’s ideas exist separate from material consequences…We are civilized…”
* * *
“You break it, you buy it!” The hoarse, thickly accented exclamation caught Stepan and Sophie off guard. Everyone had heard the line somewhere, but usually from stock TV characters in movies which could not be produced today.
“Sorry, ‘scuse me,” Stepan’s hands were numb with terror lest the sculpture touch anything else on that cluttered, seemingly deliberately wobbly shelf and thereby precipitate a domino effect, shattering both porcelain and Stepan’s desire to show his face in there again.
The sculpture attracted him because it was such a unique version of something so commonplace – commonplace, at least, for Chinatown, or, for that matter, in any self-consciously ‘spiritual’ bourgeois house downtown as well as unconsciously sincere ones in the suburbs to the north. It declared itself through use of the basic artistic canon that it was Buddhist and represented either Buddha himself or one of the bodhisattvas who more or less fill the role performed by saints in Catholic Christianity. The material, however, was unusual: a kind of slightly waxy stone, or earthenware rendered to resemble stone, with a nearly uniform yellowish-grey colour…not the jade, fake jade, glazed ceramic, agate or bronze which were typical for sculptures of such subjects. It could pass for an antique easily enough, especially in the less-than-ideal conditions for analysis present in the cramped, dimly-lit curio shop.
There was something in this sculpture, though; something ‘about’ it that achieved a powerful response somewhere deep in Stepan’s soul, though he hadn’t the slightest interest in Buddhism and only superficial knowledge of it. The sculpture possessed an essence akin to, yet not the same as, that of the red lacquered chests with brass-fitted drawers, or the worm-eaten, vinyl-bound copies of sutras and Maoist exhortations, or the tenebrous inkstones which some silk-robed scholar might have used to write the Qing imperial examinations – items left by those who long ago left this world, or sold off by their children; a quality inexplicably both creepy and entrancing.
Supper was very late, to allow for the darkness to become complete and everyone to finish with the business of the day. Their shopping hauls were laid out on or around the coffee table, which, as it was in the house of Sophie Belzer’s Beaches-dwelling dentist and psychologist parents, was huge and carved from solid Javanese teak. A mutual buddy, Delilah Brunton, had come after doing overtime at a community centre in distant, derelict Etobicoke, to share in the smorgasbord of snacks and to watch the screening of Death on the Nile (the David Suchet version, of course) in 65-inch plasma screen glory.
The movie had barely established the jealousy between the nervous socialite and her new husband’s ex-fiancé when Sophie’s father entered to fetch something from the adjacent computer room. “Don’t mind me, just passing through…Hey! Where’d you guys get this?” He halted, transfixed. The movie watchers turned to see that his attention was directed towards the Buddha head which Stepan had purchased.
“Uh, I don’t remember the name of it, but it was one of those narrow little trinket shops in Chinatown, the ones that sell all kinds of antiques and knick-knacks and things,” Stepan answered.
“Gosh,” Sophie’s father exhaled meditatively, tapping, then gently rubbing the sculpture with the tip of a finger. “Me and Sophie’s mom, before we got married, we traveled all over there – Afghanistan, I mean.” He shot a sideways glance towards a small rug hung on the wall behind the dining table. “The Hippie Trail, they called it, because, I suppose, that’s what we were. Traveled – adventured, really, you could say, because it was all on camels, or beat-up old Land Cruisers and those hand-painted buses…no electricity until you got to a city. It was safe, too, which is the craziest thing about it…learned to play the rubab – like a hybrid of a guitar and a mandolin. Well, I tried, anyway.” The younger folks could tell he savoured the stories which were obviously playing themselves out in his head, though it seemed he was describing not just a strange locale but an alternate dimension. Snapping out of his reverie, he asked, “How much did you pay for it?”
“Uh, twenty-five bucks?”
“Twenty-five bucks?” Mr. Belzer inquired of the sculpture, which stared mutely back at him, unbothered by his material concerns. “Nooo! You’re joking?…But, this…” He tapped it some more and held it to the table lamp. “Gosh. If your grandpa was still alive, Sophie, I’ll bet he’d have loved to have a look at this. Honestly, for the life of me, it looks like it’s genuine. You know they had a Greco-Buddhist kingdom then, before Islam? Their art was a mix of east and west…Huh…” He walked off in a daze. Sophie, Stepan and Delilah did not really believe in his speculations. Regardless, an exotic perfume seemed to suffuse the atmosphere and, while nothing changed about the room or the movie on the screen, they felt themselves subtly connected, as if by an invisible portal, to something else – not merely an ancient kingdom, and not quite the place on the news, but, maybe, to all those things and to something more which the mind could only almost imagine…
* * *
The Nyala was pulling ahead…well within sight on the mostly straight road, but it wasn’t how they’d been trained. Instinct was taking over the convoy, Kyle saw. Sarge didn’t see it, or at least nobody said anything. Kyle double-checked. Not imagining things, nope. His LAV’s driver also didn’t notice it. It was as if the drivers of the nimbler and the more sluggish vehicles were unconsciously adhering to the exact same level of of urgency on the steering wheel and gas pedal.
The orchards weren’t too bad – the spaces between the trees didn’t grow grass, couldn’t hide much. The melon fields were harmless, as were the wheat and rapeseed. Endless ribbons of green and yellow under an endless, milky cyan sky. Kyle was going to ask Corporal Alexander, the driver of their LAV, if they were going in circles: how did the road keep going on and on as it was? He waited for someone else to ask first. Noone did. He kept silent.
In a moment too gradual to notice and too swift to reach to, the level of the ground rose and the road began to move left and right, then left and right again. Not sharp turns, but the world before them began to shrink and what was behind them disappeared. A settlement came into view. Not a cluster village; just a double line of houses that shared an affinity with each other because they had nothing else to associate with, besides their people-less fields. These fields were small, divided by banks and hedges, hemmed in by outcroppings of dusty stone topped with thorny, dwarfish trees. The villagers grew much corn, and, behind the tall corn, undoubtedly there were poppies. Only the verdant health of the crops persuaded Kyle and his squadmates that they hadn’t, in fact, wandered into some parallel dimension or haunted zone where they were the only human beings. The architecture didn’t help. Everything was disturbingly timeless. Kyle searched in vain for a pane of glass, a plastic signboard, a scrap tire or sheet of corrugated metal roofing – something to prove they were not lost within a waking nightmare.
And nobody said anything! Were they blind to it? Was he mad? As these thoughts rushed in, Kyle noticed that the vehicle ahead of them had vanished around a shallow bend – who knew how far? He went into panic…
“Hey!” A voice of salvation. Corporal Alexander hit the brakes. “Listen, Sarge, Cresswell, this ain’t right…” The three men held conclave atop the LAV, various maps unfolded for comparison. Reading and rereading aloud the place names and plotting the distances with their fingers and the map legends, the two NCOs came to the same conclusion, confirming to Kyle that he wasn’t insane. They should have got in sight of the ANA base by now. Otherwise, they must have made the wrong turn somewhere. This, they agreed heartily on, yet Kyle could not help witnessing that, for all the increasingly insistent jabbing of digits on paper and despite the ever more voluble recitations of topographical names, none of the mentioned routes really resembled the one they had taken and no marked place quite matched the habitations they were now moving amongst.
“You think somebody should go ask one of them?” Kyle whispered.
“What?” Alexander barked back.
“I…” Kyle coughed, forcing his voice higher: “I was thinking, maybe we could ask somebody where we are,” nodding towards the low earthen courtyard of a farmhouse.
“These damn maps, eh,” The Sergeant opined with an unsettling amount of confidence. “Half of ‘em are from when the Russians were here. The way these people live, stuff’s bound to look different. Some of them highways are probably nothing but dirt and grass now.”
An exchange of glances decided that Kyle and the Sergeant would go inquire while the rest of the crew waited at the ready – the Sarge, for authority and the smattering of Pashto phrases he could string together, and Kyle for an extra gun. The farmhouse was the biggest in the settlement. It offered the best prospect of an owner who knew something of the territory beyond the boundaries of the village fields. Too, the wide courtyard – whose walls, on closer inspection, were composed largely of integrated outbuildings – offered a clear field of fire for Corporal Alexander and Private MacEachern as they kept watch, fingers on the triggers of their C7s.
Neither Kyle nor the Sergeant spoke at first. Anyone inside would know they’d arrived. The silence of the courtyard made the powdery dust crunch like gravel beneath their boots. A quern-stone sat under thatched eaves; a low well occupied the center. The unglazed windows and doors were of rough-hewn wood set in the clay of the walls. No flags to show allegiance. Inside his head, Kyle was still longing for a hubcap, a motorbike propped against a wall; a radio sitting on a window sill, anything to share the eerie sensation which he knew, yet could not trust, was a paranoid delusion.
The Sarge calleed out, “Salaam Aleikum! Umm, khe-chare! Za da Canada pauz. Canada army!” Without turning to face Kyle, he argued, “Somebody lives here! They gotta…”
“Scared maybe?”
“Or…Whatever. Doesn’t it bug you?”
“…” Kyle could not, under the constraints of the moment, articulate why the place creeped him out, even if he had a clear picture in his thoughts, no adequate verbal explanation could make it through the pounding of his heart in his throat. His hands clutched the rifle tighter, as much because of its polymer and aluminum nature as its lethal functionality.
“Like somebody took away all their animals…” The Sarge hissed.
“Animals?”
“You know. Farms. Should be animals. Goats, chickens, donkeys. Don’t look at me like that. You think Hadji’s plowing his fields riding around on a frickin’ John Deere?”
“No, I…hmm…” Kyle swept his rifle side to side, imagining shadows. The five p.m. sunlight was playing inscrutable tricks. It was so unnatural, even though this was as close to Nature as anyone had lived since the advent of agriculture. They finally stepped past the well – neither was ready to try the main entry yet. “You ever listened to Art Bell on the Radio?”
“Art Bell?”
Kyle shivered from embarassment. “You know. Or George Noury. Coast to Coast AM, that kind of show.”
“Satellite radio?” Kyle at each step expected a stingy rebuke form his Sergeant but, instead, the more experienced soldier was surveying the house, eyes darting left and right, back and forth, never resting, never finding what they were hunting for. As if with great exertion, he took a step back. Speaking coldly, “Yeah, I know what you’re talking about…”
The pair stood, guns at the ready, unsure how to deal with the situation. Walk back to the vehicle and tell everyone they didn’t get directions because they got the heebie-jeebies first? Then again, they both understood they would not find anyone inside to ask for directions.
“Hey, Sarge,” Kyle tilted his head to the left. The Sarge followed his lead. “Look!”
In the far left of the courtyard, perched on a gnarled and ossified apricot tree, was a small object, evidently animate though barely distinguishable from the tree itself. A second later, the two men made it out: a small tawny owl, sleepy, watchful…
Kalashnikovs rattled all around, multiplied in echoes off the walls. Somewhere, behind them, an ancient Enfield boomed and there was a fateful ‘whoosh.’ They dove behind the coping of the well, as it was the only solid cover in the middle of the courtyard; rifle muzzles seeking for something to shoot at. Then there was an explosion like metallic thunder, and Kyle knew a rocket-propelled grenade had found their LAV.
* * *
The museum employee beamed with pride as he strolled, hands clasped behind his back, through the interlinked rooms. The ceiling appeared almost black; the outside world did not exist once visitors were drawn towards the items, hermetically sealed under glass, bathed in lights that glowed rather than shone. The sober pediments, the fortress-like doorless gates that opened from each chamber into the next – he savoured the cocktail of coziness and intrigue which had made him fall in love with the R.O.M. as a child: thus, he knew he had succeeded – if, after a stressful adolescence and meandering career path, the magic found him again, it would find others, too. He turned to his companion, who was not a fellow R.O.M. employee but rather a longtime friend invited for the occasion: a journalist who worked at the Toronto Star. A third, a woman who taught international relations as an adjunct professor at the U of T, had come as the plus-one of the second.
“I wish you’d put on something this nice for some of the other, er, ethnic-themed exhibits,” remarked the journalist. “I mean, the lovely things you’ve done with the walls and the specific décor, and blending the displays of the artifacts with things in the present day. Time is a spiral, or whatever the saying is.”
“What? Oh, I’m afraid it’s an exceptional case.,” the curator confessed. “The plasterers, painters – even though a lot of the decorations are just styrofoam and plaster underneath – running a museum isn’t exactly a high-profit-margin business. We decided it’s time for a retrospective. It’s not every day, or even every decade, honestly, that Canadians find themselves enmeshed – like it or not – with history. We kind of live outside of it most of the time, if you think about it. And, too, it’s sort of a way to show that we have a role to play in the community, as a site of shared learning, shared memory; the idea that history and science shouldn’t just be something shoved to the side, just for the ivory tower, scholars and school trips, you know?”
“I always felt the same way myself,” the adjunct professor jumped in on the side of the curator. “All those years and we never really confronted things. We never really understood what we were there for or even where we were, if you get what I mean.”
“Totally agree,” her journalist companion insisted, seeking common ground as he pointedly examined a millstone and an arrangement of copper utensils backed by an explanatory text plaques and black-and-white photos of Soviet helicopters and troops patrolling the very site where the items were dug up. Alongside these images were others, in colour, but otherwise no different except for the models of the helicopters. “They had me help out with the Remembrance Day coverage for a couple years; twenty-twelve, twenty-thirteen. Half the interviews you couldn’t use, or, I felt we shouldn’t. Jingoistic patriotism. Everybody believed in ‘the mission,’ or else they had to pretend they believed in it, to be polite to everyone else there. ‘N, like, okay, I get it, thank you for your service and all that, but not one of the veterans I interviewed – I’m not exaggerating – not one single one of them could speak any of the languages they talk over there. I’m not talking fluently, I mean at all. None of them knew anything about Islam, except no pork, no booze, and cover your women. And I have to keep a straight face, all polite, but the whole time I’m thinking to myself, ‘we were over there for how long?’ What a shit show…”
“Ugh!” The professor grunted in disgust. “I’m sure the local customs didn’t stop them if they wanted something. You, your buddies, all with guns, no police, nobody to interfere…That’s the problem with armies in modern democracies. Aaah, whose book is it I’m thinking of? Maybe it was on JSTOR? There’s these lofty goals, but as the people sent to execute them are, you know…Of course, even if it was all educated experts that we sent over there, they would struggle with how to implement ideas like ‘nation building’.”
“And we hand the task over to the kids who, when we were studying in class, they were blowing up frogs with firecrackers and dropping out in Grade 10,” the curator lamented, perusing inlaid Qajar pen boxes.
“Exactly!” the academic huffed. “A lot of the kids who sign up just want to get away from their stepdad’s belt and to go kill people, legally. How do you build a nation, win hearts and minds with that? It was a pipe dream! I’d be scared if I found out someone like that was living in my building.”
“That’s partly why we put on the exhibit,” the curator offered. “We never asked, collectively, what to make of it.” He smiled slightly at the dense cluster of attendees, eagerly milling about, looking as if they might divine some secret of their generation’s national identity if only they contemplated the art and artifacts with sufficient intensity.
“I’m just glad we weren’t stupid enough to go down the road the Americans did in Vietnam,” the journalist declared.
“We couldn’t have,” the curator affirmed. “We’re more educated now. People ask questions. Plus, it went on so long. If you can’t tell anyone why you’re there and what you mean to achieve, you’re not going to get a whole bunch of university graduates with a future ahead of them rushing to sign up, especially not for what’s not really such great pay anymore.”
“The hubris of Empire,” the curator mused, with audible capitalization. “Alexander. Kublai Khan. The British. The Soviets. What did we think we were going to get out of it, when they all met the Fate they did?”
“Hm,” the professor cooed agreeably. “You know, you could say this exhibit you’ve put on, and in the Royal Ontario Museum of all places – it’s really about us as much as it’s about all these lifeless things plucked out of the empty sands where we were groping for meaning. All for ourselves, in a way. No?” She was extremely proud of her cleverly turned phrases. Everyone smiled, but no more than was appropriate for the mood of the event.
* * *
The rapid and ongoing cacophony of explosions had temporarily deafened Kyle. He was not cognizant of how he had come to be inside the building, but he recognized that his belly and ribs were sore and his gloves were scuffed down to the lining in places. His rifle felt light. He reloaded. Guiding the magazine into the mag well was like unlocking the door after staggering how from a bender at the clubs. He had as much control over his limbs as a puppeteer with a string puppet: his body wasn’t quite his anymore – he had enough rights to it to receive fear and pain, yet overall possession of its substance was clearly in dispute.
A ragged wave rattled the walls and roof, smacking a wooden window-beam down towards his feet – he was laying down and didn’t even try to evade it. The enemy was at least squad-sized, probably more, since they liked to have one group shoot while the other maneuvered around for a better vantage or to disengage and escape. However, these were probably local militia, not full-time Taliban regulars, judging by the motley assortment of weapons, which Kyle could differentiate by sound, plus the fact they didn’t seem to have anything heavier than the one RPG. If he could keep from getting killed, sooner or later (probably sooner), backup would roll in from base and push the guerrillas out. Somebody had to be looking for them already, the way they’d been last out on the road among the convoy. Helicopters, perhaps a Specter gunship – that would be even better. Revenge entered his mind – he wasn’t sure why. Now that his chance for heroism had come, he left it untouched like salad at a buffet. Medals didn’t matter, only making sure there was as low a chance as possible that none of those bullets hit him. He pressed his body into the carpet that covered everything on the floor, undulating like a caterpillar until he was in a niche, sort of a closet without a door, between two rooms whose purpose the lack of familiar furniture prevented him from speculating on.
Having no idea of the layout of the structure and where somebody might enter from in pursuit of him, he instinctively fell back on basic training for urban warfare…or tried to. Don’t poke your rifle out of the windows; hang back so you’re in the shadows…works, if you have buddies to watch your flanks. How many of his squad had survived the initial ambush? He listened for voices, but all he heard was some far-away cheers and orders that definitely were not English. None of the reports echoing around the thick moulded-mud masonry was a 5.56 of any type that he knew; only the distinctive ‘pop’ of AK47s and the occasional boom of a sniper rifle. Everything sounded pretty close; no further than the shrub-topped hillocks which his hazy recollection told him marked the natural boundaries of the village. The windows in the room he was in were all absurdly high off the ground. Bandits must be common in this district, he figured. The next room, though, which was larger, had a big, bright window that he guessed might look behind the house, right up to where the bulk of the shooting was coming from, and it was low enough that he could lie down and see out of it while barely raising his body. Or, better yet, peep out using a signaling mirror. The gunfire was just sparse enough that Kyle feared making noise by moving too speedily. This was fortunate, as, right when his helmet was about to pass through the space of the large room, a single powerful bullet tore a plank out of the window that held the shutters, throwing jagged wood splinters everywhere and gouging a bone-white scoop from the azure-painted interior wall. Kyle shuffled back into the previous room, keeping his eyes on the bullet impact. In what must have been three or five seconds, he did a minute’s worth of reasoning: he definitely had not been visible – he was sure he wasn’t deceiving himself here. None of his buddies, alive or dead, were holed up in this portion of the house. The enemy ‘marksmen’ were squeezing off precise single shots at…nothing. It was possible that the enemy didn’t know how many of Kyle’s guys were in there, or where they’d all scattered to, and they were simply dumping suppressive fire in the faint hope that they might hit something. The Talibs were brave enough for suicide bombing but the ones not set on that ending weren’t known for storming buildings with NATO troops still inside. Kyle huddled into a recess where the floating dust sparkled in the noonday shadows. So many vehicles…so many radios…someone would have put out an alert about the engagement and called for backup, he reminded himself again. Hell, it had taken them so long on the road, someone must have started looking for them already. They had to. If he could sit tight, undetected, the relief force would come barreling through in twenty, or ten minutes If he could survive that, or maybe even five minutes without the Afghans finding him…
* * *
Sophie launched into a brief lecture about Kammerer’s theory of synchronicity. After all, wasn’t it true that they had all been in a retrospective mood lately and none of them quite knew why? (Stepan mumbled something about events in the news). And, was it not also a fact that Stepan had only a day and a half earlier found that sculpture in the curio shop – been drawn to it by inexplicable impulses (“I didn’t put it that way,” Stepan cautioned)? Which was, astonishingly, genuine, as they were informed when they brought it to Professor Weisbrot at the U of T’s Department of Anthropology. So what if it was mid-20th century rather than 2nd century BC? It was still genuine in the sense of being a folk craft, probably produced by the same methods as the ancient original and likewise imbued with the spiritual energies of its place of origin? (The University lab had not tested for the latter characteristics, but both Sophie and Stepan shared popular beliefs about haunting, feng shui and so on in a real, albeit doctrinally imprecise sense).
Now, to top things off, they had been invited to an unofficial reunion dinner, hosted by their ex-classmate, who had become (assistant…) curator of antiquities at the R.O.M. Not the best paid job among alumni of their small, academically focused high school, but certainly one of the coolest. Too, there would be Heather, who’d parlayed her bubble blonde charm into a reporter gig at the Star, Kenneth, who’d become an academic making a high salary on worthless predictions about geopolitics, and Charmaine Ngai. And the venue was the Pomegranate Restaurant at 420 College St., the same one where they have the booths on raised daises with low tables where you can sit on rugs instead of chairs.
“How did you get your invite?” inquired Stepan.
“SMS,” Sophie replied matter-of-factly.
“Eh? The text you got didn’t say anything…cryptic, did it?”
“Why? No.”
“Okay, because mine definitely sounded like something trying to be all cryptic, James Bond-y, like for fun.” He pulled out his phone to be sure of the words. “Lessee…’the four winds may scatter’ – it’s all in caps, by the way – ‘the four winds may scatter our willful souls, but the wheel of samsara spins, spins though we’re blinded by greed and sin, calls us in, bound in an eternal whole.’” He showed the message to Sophie. “I had my data turned off, got mine a couple hours late after you told me. When I tried calling the number back, I got ‘not in service.’ Figured it was a reference to the mandalas we painted in…was it grade 11 art class?”
A doubting Sophie tried calling the number on her phone, with the same dead-end result. “Huh. Look at my message history. It’s actually a different number from the one that messaged you. They’re obviously talking about the same event invite, though, so, I dunno. Maybe like someone using a secret number, like a VPN for your phone?” Her cynical grin switched to a confounded frown when she attempt to call that number which had texted her. It, too, was out of service.
They hypothesized about a hacker, but couldn’t conceive of a motive. Meanwhile, Charmaine and a couple others had messaged to say they were on their way and, knowing some of the guests would be using the subway, Stepan and Sophie knew they would have no cell service to respond to inquiries about potential phone hackers until they were all at the restaurant together.
Confused they were, but there was nothing weird about an informal high school reunion in of itself. Indeed, they’d all talked about doing one now and then over the years. Only, Delilah wasn’t going to come because she was laden with cases that evening; refugees experiencing integration troubles and an addiction ‘workshop.’ Everyone commented on the lovely and exotic atmosphere of the Pomegranate. Only the museum curator, Geoffrey, picked up on the coincidences, sparking a discussion. Stepan still had the Buddha head in his bag. The curator gave his verdict: “See the even pore structure and the even tones over the whole of the head,” he pointed out, scrutinizing it with the magnifying glass in his Swiss Army knife. “On the other hand, there’s no tool marks, like from a Dremel tool. So, none of the stains or patina you’d expect from something that actually dates to the 1st century AD, which it matches stylistically. But the look is spot-on and there’s no doubt in my mind, this was worked and polished by hand. You’d think they’d at least have sandpaper and lathes. Somebody sure went the extra mile. Bit of a waste for a tourist-trap souvenir.”
Charmaine, whose father was devoutly Buddhist, remarked on how little we can learn about our world merely by looking at its present here-and-now, and lamented the recent politics which split apart people who should be appreciating how much they share together across distance and geography.
“I also got a strange message,” the Star reporter, Heather, sought to be the centre of attention. “But it must have come when I was in the subway. I didn’t think it was related to this here,” she jabbed a fork towards the table, “Hmmm…” She read the message on Stepan’s phone. “No, this was something different; it was about a scoop downtown today, to be near campus to meet an informant talking about sleeper cells and terroristic activism in ethnic student groups downtown, but they never called. I’ve been killing time in a cafe around the block for like four hours. This is a different number, too.” Someone brought up hacking of phones, and the journalist in her fired up. “”All those powers they gave themselves after 9/11, basically demolishing the Charter, did they repeal any of them?” she asked rhetorically.
“Well, the alternative was a danger to public security,” the IR prof conjectured. “You remember how freaked out everybody was back then. Nobody knew when the next one was going to be.”
“Umm, never?” Sophie rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, that is why we were in Afghanistan, after all, wasn’t?” Stepan joined in, deliberately sarcastic. “Fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here?”
Sophie, too impassioned to grasp his sarcasm, clapped down her teacup. “Fight who? Fight Mulhim? Fight Aksa?” She named two of their fellow alumni, currently distant but remembered fondly or at least without complaint. “That was the argument for Iraq, by the way.”
“Sorry, mixed them up.” Stepan shimmied his glutes upon the rug. “Sophie’s right,” he pleaded. “Gosh, I couldn’t think of killing Mulhim, or Aksa. Ugh, just, ugh.”
Heather stunned him with an angry retort: “So you’re saying their sacrifice was in vain, then?” leaning in, as if she was trying to get his hot take on the mic.
“Of course it was in vain!” Sophie replied for her friend. Looking to the curator, “We chose, or, our political classes chose to send soldiers to die, in the same failed adventures like so many other empires had done before us and which had been a disaster for all of them.” The curator nodded.
“Wha…excuse me,” Heather hadn’t planned on being other than a noble icon of impartiality in any matter of virtuous retrospection. “You don’t think women’s rights, schools, healthcare, safety, all the things we have; you don’t think it was worth it? To bring it to them?” She pouted.
“You don’t win ‘hearts and minds’ by burning villages and raping the local women and boys.”
“Did Canadian soldiers ever do that?”
Sophie hadn’t expected a debate when she accepted the invite, but was now caught in her role, which she felt even more strongly as she noticed that their waiter and the wife of the couple that owned the place seemed to be listening, hovering at the cash desk, curious to hear what the diners on the dais were arguing about.
“Not off the top of my head, but if you are part of an occupying force, and it’s a widespread activity among your comrades…” Stepan, his courage fortified by Sophie’s stand and eager to curry favour with his friend, gave a riposte. “You know, too, what kinds of people join the army…”
“Tell me,” the reporter snorted.
“Uhm, well, like we had this girl at the Starbucks I worked in back then. She went to U of T like us but she was from Thunder Bay and her brother joined the army then, during the war, and she wasn’t having it. Said he was a psycho that she’d never let near a gun. He said straight up, she told us, that he wanted to kill people, legally. That’s it. That was his reason for joining. And other, err, things that go along with that…situation. It got him real excited, apparently. She said it’s basically a system the government designs to get them out of society when they’re young, because, if it wasn’t Afghan villagers, it would be Native hitchhikers on the Highway of Tears or something.”
“Not like the government would care either way, except prison costs more than a soldier’s salary,” Sophie gibed.
“Yep, and she also told us, it’s worse when they come back alive, because they can’t adapt to normal peaceful society, and will just act out all those violent impulses on the public back home.”
“If you found yourself treated like a stranger in the country you were born in and fought to protect, especially if you had PTSD from fighting terrorists with AK47s in a literal hellhole…” Heather refused to abandon her sudden, hawkish position; she who had never seen a gun except on TV or in a cop’s holster. Her friends were taken aback; they had seen the contrarian ‘shit-disturber’ side of her before, but not the apparent sincerity with which she challenged them, on what they had all believed were perfectly mainstream, socially-approved understandings of the events of their formative years.
“More like, abused civilians so the villagers take up arms to get you out of their village…” Sophie scoffed. “As for hellholes, I would rather live in a self-sufficient farming community, if it was my own culture, than how our homeless and addicts and people in assisted housing live. If you want to blame something for crime…”
Charmaine was utterly ignorant of foreign affairs and had been stuffing her face quietly, was triggered into action by the talk of crime. “Actually, my dad is a detective,” – as if this was news to anyone who knew her – “and I remember him mentioning that guys who served over there are hugely over-represented not, like, in murders, but among, like, homeless people or the druggies living in those run-down old house apartments that are like four stories high and brown and ashy on Sherbourne and Jarvis Streets.”
“Trauma,” Heather whispered mournfully.
“But yeah, no, what Sophie or Stepan said, my dad agrees, it’s a psychology issue with the people they send; they’re already a selected group before they go over there. Explains why we didn’t have an explosion of psycho hobos after World War Two, even though way more people served in the army then.”
“Classism, gotta love it, eh?” Heather drawled.
Stepan wondered to himself, ‘what has gotten into you?’
“It’s not rich or poor; it’s psychology,” Charmaine insisted. “The same kids would be growing up to beat their wives, do drugs, get drug, sexually assault if they stayed here, too. At least over in Afghanistan, Somalia or some place the people can defend themselves.”
“You’d shoot a homeless veteran if he asked you for money?” Heather had forgotten her kuku sabzi, nourishing herself instead on moral superiority.
“If I could, oh my God, yes,” Charmaine answered frankly. “Right when I was coming here, walking like fifty feet away from the restaurant, just across the street, this crazy guy stopped me and asked for change. And when because I was startled, I said, ‘change?’, like asking him, he got pissed, ‘You promise? But you can’t deliver!’” She mocked a gravelly male voice. “Accusing me like I’d committed some crime against him or something. I was thinking, what the fuck, I was just, you know, surprised, like anyone would be when some horrible-smelling bearded guy jumped out at me and asked me for money. Then he went on about how my money can’t buy the change he needs and he’s already paid me more than I can return to him, and I’m over it at this point; like, no way, I don’t owe you shit.” Her dining companions listened in worry or awe. “I mean, I don’t mind giving people panhandling some money as an idea, but don’t come at me as if you’re friggin’ entitled. Anyway, I pushed him aside – washed my hands at least five times after I got in here, don’t worry.”
“He touched you?” Several mouths gasped. “That’s assault!”
“Not really, he stood in my way and I had to brush past him or else walk into traffic. It was gross, though, even if you can’t say it’s on the level of sexual assault. The creepiest part was how he laughed when I went away from him and he said ‘enjoy your meal,’ but, I hadn’t even moved to go inside the restaurant yet, and there’s so many other stores and food places on the street.”
“Lucky guess? Dinner hour?” Geoffrey attempted to demystify things.
“I dunno, maybe I telegraphed something with my body language.”
“How did you know he was a soldier? Or are you just bringing it up because of what we’re talking about now?” Heather asked.
“Uhhh, because of his army clothes and boots. Head to toe, only, with all the flags and rank-symbols ripped off.”
“You can buy those clothes at the surplus store in Kensington.”
“Whatever. He gave me that vibe. I don’t think he wanted to hurt me, but it felt like he enjoyed scaring me, or hoping he could scare me.” Charmaine was equally stubborn as Heather. “A menace to society. Women should be able to protect themselves.”
“Hmm…” Geoffrey uttered, trying to keep space open in the conversation while he processed his thoughts. “I am pretty sure I saw the same guy, but he was at the entrance to the subway, leaning against a building near where the steps come out on the sidewalk. Army clothes, sort of a duffel bag but I guess you could carry it as a backpack, with the shoulder strap. I paid special attention to him because he was sitting there, just sitting there, meditating, like a Buddha. If it is the same guy, he wasn’t bothering anybody. Perhaps it’s because your dad is a cop; usually they have had a lot of bad experiences with the law by the time they’re at that stage.”
“How would he know, though?” Charmaine laughed.
“I…I don’t know! Could be it’s the way you carry yourself. People can always tell an undercover cop.” It was hard to claim that the spunky, gregarious Charmaine – all five-foot-three of her, came across as in any way suggesting “police.”
Nonetheless, in her mind, she was very much her father’s daughter. A Facebook post by Stepan both depicting and describing the latter-day ‘artifact’ he and Sophie had purchased in Chinatown the other day was fresh in her thoughts. Buddha…White-people-influenced Buddha…Hipsters, who are sane to the highest degree of boring herdmindedness, will sit cross-legged atop some special, pigeon-haunted nook or pedestal, palms on knees or fingers clasped in a gesture everyone passing by will assume must be a symbol of some principle relating to the energy flow of the universe or other mumbo-jumbo. They do it for attention, fleeing either direction interaction or a thin and disinterested crowd. One never encounters their pseudo-Oriental spiritual practices in the Rouge, let alone Muskoka.
If a hobo is sitting silently, demanding nothing, decrying nothing, then he is either stoned out of his mind or he is attempting to appear utterly shattered and catatonic, that he might excite more pity and faster fill his coin-cup or upturned baseball cap. Neither possibility fit either of the descriptions of the man.
Whatever argument there had been was smoothed over with the geniality induced by a full stomach. Contrary to the norm for reunions of old fellow schoolmates, no one who had bothered to show was established enough in life to inspire soul-crushing shame, nor was anyone poor enough to feel shame and lose all desire to propagate the nation. This state of affairs did not go unnoticed.
Due to the coincidence of their residences’ location and their friendship being maintained better than in former times, Sophie, Stepan and Charmaine left together as the diner party dissolved with much affected adjusting of clothes and patting of bellies.
Charmaine raised the idea before it could escape her: “Which of us was it, d’you think, invited the rest of us?” The others stared at her dumbfounded. “Think about it, nobody was really the ‘host.’”
“Huh,” Stepan was enlightened. “You’re alright. I guess we didn’t notice because we all know each other and nobody’s got a beef, or jealousy or anything.”
“Think harder! You don’t think, maybe, somebody wanted us to beef?”
“Wanted us to have a reunion, and turn on each other? Like something out of Gossip Girl?”
“Well, we all have a history, things we never resolved; went our different ways…” Charmaine’s mental energies surged like a storm-fed river but could not find the right channel to flood into.
Sophie smiled politely. Yet, she bought it. It all did seem too much for mere coincidence. “Was anyone supposed to come who didn’t make it?”
Stepan shrugged. “Don’t know, except Delilah but she wouldn’t do some crazy psychological scheme. And there’s no easy way to figure it out now, is there?”
In silence, trying to think of something else to banter about, they strolled along Dundas Street, taking in the evening tableaux. Stepan meant to pop into an LCBO, since it was nearly closing time and he needed some Taylor Fladgate for the cupboard. Sophie stuck an arm across his chest. “Better not…”
The LCBO was bustling but the sidewalk between them and it contained drama that intrigued, as long as one didn’t smell or touch it. There was one of those stairways flanked by brick abutments which lead to below-street shops in certain old districts of downtown, like College and Dundas-Spadina, usually stores that sell niche goods which don’t pay for above-ground rent, such as anime DVDs, Chinese books, and pet supplies. It was clear from the discussion that this matter involved Tung Hoi Fish Centre and not Star Video, which may have been a defunct shell as far as anyone could tell from the darkness and the sun-faded posters covering the windows. A cold breeze reminded the wandering trio that it was not yet summer and of the importance of regular showers, also…but, for all of them, though only Charmaine would admit it, this was too spicy a scene to walk away from. One participant, backed against the abutment, was a classic downtown ‘street person’: disheveled, ruggedly bearded, clad in an olive drab coat (better burned than laundered). The other participants appeared to be a father and daughter who ran a family business.
The hobo seemed to know both of the shopkeepers – and the law. Only snippets of the conversation were legible past the effects of alcohol, madness and traffic noise. “…See, that’s where you’re wrong, pal,” the hobo said, in a voice strangely familiar. “You can’t do citizens’ arrest!”
“What you mean? I can’t do!” The man, a stout Vietnamese or Cantonese in a striped polo, growled. “This my store! I catch you robbing my store, I arrest you, wait for police.”
“That’s right!” His daughter advanced menacingly, stopping as she wrinkled her nose. “We won’t hurt you, okay, but you can’t just break the law. This is our family’s livelihood!” She had obviously been to university. Her father’s glare suggested he didn’t agree with his daughter’s restrictive use-of-force policies.
“Doesn’t work like that, pal, sorry. To make a citizens’ arrest, you have to actually see me commit a felony and not lose sight of me at all between then and when you make the arrest. If you took security training, that’s exactly what they would have taught you.”
“He’s right, you know,” Charmaine whispered to her friends.
“Smart hobo,” Stepan nodded.
The trio clunk back beyond the corners of a side street where the light of a restaurant patio and a rare ash tree partially concealed them when a cruiser rolled up. Someone had called the cops. There was a broad, confident smirk all over the hobo’s face; his soulful eyes glinting, trusting that reason would prevail over pettiness and paranoia.
The three friends were transfixed. Of course, there was the morbid curiosity of a little drama which affected none of them personally…but there was something extra; some undisclosed ingredient to this moment which gave it a truly irresistible savour…
One of the two cops in the cruiser stepped out and dealt with the situation in textbook fashion, walking between the parties. As the conversation developed, his voice dropped and his eyes widened. He must have handled plenty of weirdos and freaks already, but this was something new.
“Did he say what I think he say? The store owner, I mean.” Stepan was incredulous.
“Yep,” answered Charmaine. “The shopkeeper said the homeless guy is stealing fish. That’s what I heard, anyway.”
“Is that a metaphor for harassing his daughter?”
“Nope…”
As if to double down on the insanity, the shopkeeper demanded the cop search the accused’s pockets to detect if there were stolen tropical fish being smuggled out in them, or perhaps a lionhead or oranda. “Sir, you can’t arrest somebody, as a citizens’ arrest, for something you say happened on a prior occasion, over a week ago.”
“Told ya.” The hobo jabbed his chin at the shopkeepers. “I fought for your rights. But I guess you people miss living under tyranny.”
“Check his pockets!” The shopkeeper demanded, unplacated.
The cop sighed, clearly not wanting to have to handle the suspect or breath the air emanating off him for longer than he had to. “Sir, could you turn out your pockets, just so we can see ‘n be sure for this gentleman’s sake, that you didn’t take anything from his store.”
A barely noticeable tension shot through the officer as the hobo complied with a slowness and deliberation that were a fraction beyond the normal…The trio noticed, too; it was as if the guy meant to manipulate his jacket pockets in such a way that they appeared to be opened, while a small pouch of fabric remained inside the lip of the jacket shell.
If it that was the case, luck was not on the downbeat man’s side. A small transparent object ‘clicked’ on the pavement. The officer picked it up. A vial of something. “You mean to tell me what this is? Hashish oil?”
The hobo maintained a cold silence for a moment. “It’s not a fucking goldfish now, is it?”
“No, no, looks like hashish oil to me. What do you use this for? For yourself? Sell it?”
“To forget the nightmares by which I earned your ingratitude,” the hobo spoke with startling eloquence. “All of you.”
Stepan shuddered. The hobo did not twist his head far enough to actually look at them. Regardless, it felt like he meant to address them; like he knew they were there, although Stepan made sure not to ponder too much whether he was interested in them as mere spectating pedestrians, or as something more…
The policeman did not seem to grasp what the fellow was getting at. His facial muscles twitched nervously; he motioned for his partner in the car.
“…Don’t be scared; I’m not asking you to be scared,” the hobo begged the cop as if he felt sorry for him. “Gosh, eh, isn’t it funny how we can share so much, then some experience comes along; some twist of Fate, and we just…change, man; different directions…and we can’t see the other side. We don’t want to.” Again the man turned, with his shoulders too, this time. For the barest second he made eye contact, or, at least, Stepan imagined he did.
Yeah, for sure, life can be rough sometimes like that.” The cop concurred, edging backwards, hands held ever so slightly away from his hops, elbows starting to bend. “I’m gonna have to take this here though.” He indicated the vial in his hand. “We’re not gonna arrest you on simple possession; I’m okay to leave you with a warning, but we gotta figure out this thing between you and Mr. and Mrs. Nguyen here, ‘kay buddy?”
“You checked my pockets. Did you find anything that could possibly have been stolen from this man’s store – unless he wishes to admit to being a drug dealer?”
“No, sir, I didn’t.”
“He stole my fish! More five, six fish!” Mr. Nguyen fumed. “You have to arrest him, send him to jail, make him pay back my money!”
The notion of a shoplifter purloining ranchus and cichlids by stuffing them in his coat pockets was food for thought: did he eat them, perhaps cooked in some camping stove made from discarded tin cans? Alas, scholarly reflection on the fascinating topic was interrupted by a new twist in the situation, less bizarre but more likely to make it onto the news. In response to the cop’s gesture requesting assistance, his partner stepped out of the cruiser, hands near holstered nightstick and tazer.
Presumably, the cops intended to prevent escalation by demonstrating to the smelly, belligerent suspect that ‘overwhelming force’ was ready in generous portions and he would be wise to remain passive. It had the opposite effect. Stepan perceived that the hobo’s body and gaze turned to confront the sudden challenge; the shopkeepers were forgotten as if they weren’t there.
“You!” he half-yelled, half-bawled, throat crackling wetly. A wildness overtook him, his character transformed from disruptive yet pitiable street person to a pure, primal threat. The only possible reaction was to stop the threat as quickly and firmly as possible, or, in the case of Stepan, Sophie, Charmaine and the bystanders who’d broken from their commuting and trinket shopping to gawk at the proceedings hoping that someone braver and better armed than themselves would put a stop to things.
The policeman was feeling overwhelmed. He wasn’t worried, though – frequently, more than one sane and fit cop was required to subdue an unruly individual jacked up on alcohol, drugs, and traumatic flashbacks. Nobody was anticipating what happened next, least of all Constable Sutraj Singh Malhotra, who was caught off guard when this one among countless unhoused CAMH clients he’d politely shooed off of commercial premises in his young career would snap like an overstretched elastic, pressing him on top of the hood of his own cruiser before he’d finished telling the miscreant that he understood his difficulties but he had to move along now…
The warping sheet metal, the swearing and shouting of the cops and the chatter over the police radio plunged that section of sidewalk into a vision of urbanity befitting the early season of Law & Order. The three friends’ knees flexed, heads bent low, but nothing save a gunshot ringing out could have driven them from their excellent vantage point. “O-M-G!” Sophie squealed.
“Do you think they’re gonna…?” Before Stepan finished his question, a bursting hissss’ was added to the orchestra of crude violence and the hobo was rolling only the curb, knuckles grinding into his face, throat gagging. The cop he’d just assaulted was still lying bent backwards over the hood, holding out his can of pepper spray with one arm while shielding his face with the other. His partner quickly moved to cuff the offender and drag him into the back seat. Stepan thought about a song he’d encountered on YouTube some years prior: “That’s why I’m riding on the Cherry Beach Express; my ribs are broken and my face is in a mess…”
* * *
Sophie tapped the cannister delicately so that she would not feel compelled to rush to wash her hands after feeding the fish. The swarm of guppies materialized out of the groves of Anacharis and driftwood arches, devouring the ochre flakes like a wind-blown fire devouring a prairie farm. She stepped back and admired the aquarium and its surroundings: the stalwart faux ebony cabinet, the weighty books, the rug with woven Kalashnikovs and Mi8’s behind it carrying a warm red-purple colour scheme to contrast with the greens in the fish tank, and the alabaster sculpture of the ancient sage’s head. Sophie approvingly, then began sorting through DVDs on a nearby shelf. “Brideshead Revisited? The Heat and the Dust?…I’m feeling something languid and glamorous…”
“Sorry,” Stepan wore his anxiety on his sleeve. “I was thinking…”
“Of something depressing? Not allowed here! So we need something to get lost in. Either the Heat and the Dust or…The Night of Counting the Years? Oooh!”
“Not depressing, I suppose, just…do you remember the homeless dude fighting with the cops after we left the restaurant the other night?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t he look familiar to you? His face, if you took off the beard and dirt, of course?”
“Maybe, I dunno.” Sophie pressed a finger to her lips.
“I couldn’t help thinking, afterwards, there was some relationship to his being there, after all of us had reconnected, caught up on old times…”
“I see it, now, hmm…” Sophie’s eyes rested upon the Buddha, sitting impassively in disembodied meditation.
“I couldn’t help thinking, how different our lives would have been, if we’d made a single different choice back then. Agh! Where have I seen that face before?!?”
“It’s…” Sophie mused, barely audible, gaze not moving from the enigmatic sculpture. “It’s a lesson from the universe; a ‘sign’ not to take the path of anger and breaking our own reason with drugs and resentment. Don’t you think? We received a lot of lessons from each other growing up, you’re right. Makes us grateful we weren’t in some factory school.”
“Oh, I was gonna say,” Stepan corrected her, “That he looked like the hobo who used to harass patrons outside the Reference Library, but I think that was someone else. Ate the pigeons, supposedly – at least that was the rumour.”
“Eww! So, The Night of Counting the Years it is.”
終
Snow to Sand: Poetry, Stories and Musings from Canada, the Caribbean and Ukraine 