Read Online The Gendarme by Mark T. Mustian - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mark T. Mustian
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summer, blooms into green. I view the drive home from the hospital with new eyes, noting the shapeliness of the trees gracing Miller Street, the shuck and dive of a pair of cardinals, the stare of a wrinkled old man. Roses, Wadesboro’s pride, burst from planters and gardens, in reds and purples, oranges and pinks. The last of spent pollen yellows lips around puddles. A train murmurs in the distance, its whistle low like a wind. Life continues, with or without me. I touch my head where the metal frame had been fastened. I am still here. I am still a part of it.
Home feels cool and comfortable, strange. I am tired but afraid to sleep, jumpy but slow, sad and elated at alternating intervals. I have little to do yet time passes swiftly. My daughter Lissette calls. We chat about me, about nothing. A stream of visitors forms—someone over, someone calling, someone delivering something. It reminds me of Carol’s last days. Casseroles show up, left by the door like abandoned infants. Flowers arrive, sticky and pungent. I am unable to avoid attention, even as to some degree I feed on it. I brood, I mope, I act like a child. I resent Ted and Violet and the others around me.
I think about the dream. Do I remember these things? I search for my records. I even climb into the attic, much to Ted’s dismay. But it is in the garage that I find it, the box I remember, its top gray, its edges still sharp. I bring it into the light, and read of myself.
The words are clinical and spare. I was taken from a trench in Çanakkale, the battle of Gallipoli, on 29 August 1915. My clothing had been ripped away, my head completely bloodied. From where I was found I was assumed to be British. I was evacuated through several steps to a hospital ship, where I was diagnosed with shrapnel wounds and brain injury. I was not expected to live.
But I did live, for several weeks more. The ship left for Southampton, carrying me with it. We arrived 23 September 1915. I was taken to a military hospital. A coma, the chart indicates. Damage to the parietal lobe.
The writing changes here, someone new has taken over. Not Carol, yet. Notations are made about my nationality. Perhaps my coloring? I am copper-skinned, though not dark. I awoke from my coma on 10 October 1915. “Turk” is scratched in the margin.
I remained in the hospital for another 217 days. The records show that I spoke no English, that I suffered from amnesia. I spent much time sleeping. I developed a fever, then pneumonia. Again, I was not expected to live. But I did.
Carol entered the picture—I recognize her handwriting on the chart. She must have saved this (what patients get their charts?). Gradually, I recovered some of my memory. But the war dragged on. There is a sheaf of paperwork on the issue of what to do with me. Was I a prisoner of war? Should I be repatriated, or exchanged? Carol was a force by this point, advocating on my behalf, turning back officials who wanted to move me. She claimed later there was immediate physical attraction, but I think she felt pity. She succeeded finally in marrying me, to prevent my deportation. I remember our wedding day, a bleak, cloudy afternoon, a robed and wigged judge. Our wedding night was spent in a freighter line’s gritty departure area. Carol had papers, our luggage, and a plan. I have thought many times since of her acts of defiance, first against the authorities, later her own parents. I am still not sure how she did it, or why. But Carol, once determined, was not one to be denied.
I think back on the dream. My injury was early in the war—near its beginning. The deportations must have taken place at about the same time, or after. The records prove what I thought they did, that I was serving in the army then. But Burak, my brother—where was he, and when? Are these his dreams? Does he speak to me now at the end of my life? I grasp at this improbability, I want it to be so. To explain things! But . . . I do not remember. I cannot.
It
Home feels cool and comfortable, strange. I am tired but afraid to sleep, jumpy but slow, sad and elated at alternating intervals. I have little to do yet time passes swiftly. My daughter Lissette calls. We chat about me, about nothing. A stream of visitors forms—someone over, someone calling, someone delivering something. It reminds me of Carol’s last days. Casseroles show up, left by the door like abandoned infants. Flowers arrive, sticky and pungent. I am unable to avoid attention, even as to some degree I feed on it. I brood, I mope, I act like a child. I resent Ted and Violet and the others around me.
I think about the dream. Do I remember these things? I search for my records. I even climb into the attic, much to Ted’s dismay. But it is in the garage that I find it, the box I remember, its top gray, its edges still sharp. I bring it into the light, and read of myself.
The words are clinical and spare. I was taken from a trench in Çanakkale, the battle of Gallipoli, on 29 August 1915. My clothing had been ripped away, my head completely bloodied. From where I was found I was assumed to be British. I was evacuated through several steps to a hospital ship, where I was diagnosed with shrapnel wounds and brain injury. I was not expected to live.
But I did live, for several weeks more. The ship left for Southampton, carrying me with it. We arrived 23 September 1915. I was taken to a military hospital. A coma, the chart indicates. Damage to the parietal lobe.
The writing changes here, someone new has taken over. Not Carol, yet. Notations are made about my nationality. Perhaps my coloring? I am copper-skinned, though not dark. I awoke from my coma on 10 October 1915. “Turk” is scratched in the margin.
I remained in the hospital for another 217 days. The records show that I spoke no English, that I suffered from amnesia. I spent much time sleeping. I developed a fever, then pneumonia. Again, I was not expected to live. But I did.
Carol entered the picture—I recognize her handwriting on the chart. She must have saved this (what patients get their charts?). Gradually, I recovered some of my memory. But the war dragged on. There is a sheaf of paperwork on the issue of what to do with me. Was I a prisoner of war? Should I be repatriated, or exchanged? Carol was a force by this point, advocating on my behalf, turning back officials who wanted to move me. She claimed later there was immediate physical attraction, but I think she felt pity. She succeeded finally in marrying me, to prevent my deportation. I remember our wedding day, a bleak, cloudy afternoon, a robed and wigged judge. Our wedding night was spent in a freighter line’s gritty departure area. Carol had papers, our luggage, and a plan. I have thought many times since of her acts of defiance, first against the authorities, later her own parents. I am still not sure how she did it, or why. But Carol, once determined, was not one to be denied.
I think back on the dream. My injury was early in the war—near its beginning. The deportations must have taken place at about the same time, or after. The records prove what I thought they did, that I was serving in the army then. But Burak, my brother—where was he, and when? Are these his dreams? Does he speak to me now at the end of my life? I grasp at this improbability, I want it to be so. To explain things! But . . . I do not remember. I cannot.
It
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