Читать книгу Mike Bond Bound - Mike Bond - Страница 50

38

THEY CAME DOWN from the mountains to a narrow saddle between two peaks. Lower down the snow thinned then was gone, the soil damp and rocky, here and there bits of goat-gnawed grass. To the right a trail dropped down Jabal Nakiba toward the Christian side; to the left another path descended Dahr el Kadib toward the Muslim side. Distantly to the east Mohammed recognized the shapes of the mountains on the far side of Yammouné valley. “I was here,” he turned to her, “right here at this crossroads – less than a week ago.”

She tugged his sleeve. “Let's go.”

The path dropped steeply eastwards into Yammouné valley. They were in Hezbollah territory now and there were no more mines and no patrols. They came down past where the river comes pouring from a hole in the side of the mountain and down over the pieces of Roman temple, where he had knelt just a few days ago, before he'd known. They followed the goat trail down into sleeping Yammouné at midnight, the town silent but for a single lamb calling for its ewe and the soft cool chuckle of the stream and the smell of banked fires, oak charcoal, and fresh dung, of dry earth and straw.

His father's house was locked and dark. He knocked softly on the neighbors' door. “Yeah!” one whispered, down from the eaves.

“It's me.” Mohammed stepped back into the street, for them to see.

“You're too late. He's dead and buried, bless his soul.”

He didn't expect how badly it would hurt, nor the guilty sense of freedom. “When?”

“It's been two nights.”

“Where's the key?”

“Mother Zazid's.”

“Where's that?” Mohammed felt guilty not knowing where she lived, the woman who'd cared for his own dying father.

“Across the lake.”

Hens began to cluck. “Do you have food? For two days we haven't eaten.”

A woman answered. “We'll bring you something.”

Mohammed tried to climb to his father's sloping roof but his bullet wound was too sore so Rosa did it, tiptoed along the ridgepole and down through the hayloft. He heard her bare feet cross the tile floor; the lock squeaked open. “Welcome home.”

“Don't joke.” He stepped past her into the darkness smelling of cold ashes, dried tea leaves and old bread.

A teenage boy he barely recognized came in sleepily without knocking, with a candle, a basket of cucumbers, cheese, and bread, and a bucket of cold tea. “It's what we have.”

“May Allah bless you, bless his name,” Rosa said.

“You don't believe that!” Mohammed said when the boy left.

“Neither do you. Let's eat.”

It was gone too soon, leaving them hungrier. Beyond the wall the lamb had found its ewe, the hens stopped clucking. They undressed and crawled under blankets on the straw mattress where his father had died.

“To sleep in a bed,” she sighed. “Such luxury!” She slid her hand up his ribs. “I'm sorry about your father.”

“At least I had a chance to see him, one last time.”

“What did he want to tell you?”

“He wanted to make peace. The doctor wanted me to make peace. God wants me to make peace.”

“No one knows what God wants.”

“If I'd never come to see my father I'd never have been wounded and you would never have found me. I'd never have known...”

She tickled his ribs. “Known what?”

“How much I owe you.”

She snuggled closer. “Nonsense.”

He kissed her temple, the skin so soft, the hair so soft, the hair so fine. This is the flesh, he thought, that saved me. By which I am reborn.

THEY HAD BEEN SHELLING so long André could not remember, could not think. There was no air in this sweaty fearful cave where somebody had vomited and the sewer main was broken in the wall, and there comes a point, he realized, when you just no longer care, when the next shell comes down straight for you. It was coming now, loud and angry, won't miss this time, you already know how it'll feel, how it will blow you apart or knock the building in on you, squashing you an inch flat between concrete floors. Is that what happened to you, Yves? Is that why they'd never tell us?

In between the falling shells and the searing jet runs with their awful crunch of buildings and crackle of anti-personnel bombs you could hear the screams of people trapped in a building somewhere, more and more frantic, till either they got out, André decided, or the fire overcame them. Shells were coming down in tandem now, several batteries, shells hitting two and three a second, their constant, uneven wham-wham wham making the ground shake crazily. Things kept falling but still the building hadn't been hit. Maybe it's good luck, he thought, to hide under a place that's sure to come down.

“It's them again,” wailed an old woman in the dark in front of him.

“Quiet!” someone hissed in French. “Grandma hears something.”

But everyone could hear it now, the double-thrusting jets, the fiery air screaming over diamond wings, another Mirage on the same run, low over Christian East Beirut and up the hill into the West. “It's the big one!” someone yelled, and for two or three seconds there was just the jet's departing roar then everything crashed in, crushed in his head, sucked out his mind, into the white.

AFTER MIDNIGHT the shelling died off and Neill stood at his paneless window watching the last of the bright Israeli afterburners streak up into the southwest sky. Behind their roar was the constant crunching of flames; the Israeli Army had shut off the water into Beirut and now the city was burning, so hot the stones themselves were catching fire.

“Where are you, Layla?” he said to the night, remembering layl means night, that she was out there, somewhere, nearer than she'd been in years, almost within reach. Any night now she could be among the new ones entombed under some building, shot down in some street. When he was so close. What if, he thought, I could take her from Mohammed?

The sky was full of smoke, pink on its undersides from the fires up by the Conservatoire. Up there people are trapped and burning alive, Neill thought, and here I stand helpless by my window. That's what I've been all my life – outside the pale. Depersonalized, not able to give, not able to take. He thought of Nicolas and Sammy sleeping in the basement, wondered, does it screw up your sex life, all this bombing?

Come close to me, oh beloved of my soul; the fire is cooling and fleeing under the ashes.

Where are you, Layla?