The Meq Read online

  “Now that sounds like Solomon,” I said.

  He laughed again and I wondered what he knew about me, about us. He seemed at ease, so I asked.

  “What did Solomon tell you about myself and the others?”

  “He said to treat you as I would him—with respect—and to keep an open mind and enjoy myself.”

  “Did he give you any special instructions?”

  “No, only to make sure you and Sailor have anything you need, anytime, anyplace. And if I can, prevent any . . . accidents.” He took his glasses off and cleaned them with the front of his shirt. “You’re probably wondering why Solomon would trust me with this,” he said.

  “Well, yes, I was.”

  He chuckled to himself and said, “I don’t know, really. Based on our first meeting years ago, I would think he might trust me least of all.”

  “What happened?”

  He waved his arm, dismissing the thought, and said, “It is a long story, but just let me say, it was Solomon who saved my life and I am forever grateful to him. If it is only trust he asks of me, then he shall have it without question or doubt.”

  “I know that feeling,” I said, meaning every word and missing the old man as I said it. In the distance, I could hear a Basque woman singing a beautiful ballad accompanied by a guitar and accordion.

  “Sailor says we must leave this place soon,” he said, “and we may have a long journey ahead of us.”

  “Yes, that is true.”

  “I will miss these people and this place, even though I have only just arrived.”

  I looked around at the joy of life and sense of place that was everywhere in Kepa’s camp. “And so will I,” I said.

  We spent the next two weeks at Kepa’s camp making plans to leave. Owen Bramley left early to secure our train and steamship schedules in Boise, where we would rendezvous later. It was decided that Sailor would go by himself with one of Kepa’s sons to San Francisco and then on to Shanghai. Geaxi, Ray, Baju, and myself would go north through British Columbia to Vancouver with Owen Bramley, Pello, and one of his brothers, Joseba, as “chaperones.” It would be easier for Ray and me to have identity papers made in Canada and Sailor said Baju had advised him there was something in Vancouver I must experience as an Egizahar Meq. He said it would be good for Ray to know of it as well, since many Egipurdiko do not even know it exists. He wouldn’t elaborate except to say the time and place were right and we must take advantage. It was absolutely essential that I go “to it and through it.” Whatever it was, Geaxi was not that excited about it, saying, “Once is enough,” but she agreed it was essential and “since it no longer affected Baju, we were safe.” Baju himself was mostly silent, saying only “we must be on the ship in Vancouver by the morning of August 9.”

  When we left Kepa’s camp, everyone gave their long thanks and embraces to Kepa and his wife, Miren. Kepa told me Pello was the youngest and the best and that was why he was sending him with Joseba. He leaned into my ear whispering and asking, “Did you take your telescope?” I whispered, “Of course, it will always be with me as your tattoo is with you.”

  Ray had a harder time leaving than the rest of us. Nova wouldn’t let him go. She was laughing and pulling on his nose and shirt. Finally, he gave her his bowler hat and she let go and he jumped in the wagon. Still laughing, she threw sunflower seeds at him as we were pulling out. He caught nearly every one of them. The last image I saw of Kepa’s camp was Eder and Nova waving, and Eder and Baju exchanging a look I had seen before only on the faces of Mama and Papa.

  In Boise, we met Owen Bramley and went over our plans, times, and routes to meet finally in Shanghai. Sailor’s train left first and even though he was alone, except for Kepa’s son, I knew he would be safe. He had traveled this way for longer than any train or road that carried him had even existed. Only the sea was older. He gave Baju an extended embrace and stepped onto the train without a backward glance. Now that I knew about Deza, everything Sailor did seemed to have something else attached to it. I glanced at Geaxi and instead of watching Sailor depart, she was watching me. I walked over to her and said what I was thinking.

  “He pays a price for his memories, doesn’t he?”

  She paused a moment and said, “No more than every breath.”

  A short time later, we boarded our own train and headed north. We crossed the border into Canada, stopping briefly at a small station with a single agent and no customs. Owen Bramley took care of the paperwork and we were on our way. We passed through a wild and beautiful town in southern British Columbia called Kelowna. Huddled between mountain ranges in a valley made from receding glaciers, it was a paradise of the north with peach trees full and ripe all around. Geaxi was napping, but I woke her up as we passed through and it was the only time she smiled during the whole trip.

  On the afternoon of August 8, 1896, we arrived in Vancouver under a steady rain. An hour later, the sky was clear and the sun was shining. We were told this was a daily occurrence. Ray, the “Weatherman,” said he would be too busy to live here. Baju looked worried and said he hoped it would be clear in the morning.

  We went directly to the docks and the ship on which Owen Bramley had booked passage, the Lotus, a steamer registered in Singapore and owned by Bourdes, the same firm that had employed Antoine Boutrain all those years before. Baju made sure our cabins were on the starboard side, facing east. Pello and Joseba stayed close the whole time, watching every face, but staying slightly out of sight themselves. I knew they were nervous and I knew why. Vancouver was a rough place.

  Still in the midst of the Klondike gold rush and already known as an international port, Vancouver was a new town, a frontier town with all the cardsharps, punks and thieves, whorehouses, saloons, and backstabbing that goes with it. You felt free in such a town, but not necessarily safe. And with Geaxi and me both in the same place, and after what we had sensed in the Denver train station, there was cause for concern. I admired Pello. He showed patience and calm, but kept a steady and keen alertness amid the chaos. I was sure he’d never been in a place like Vancouver.

  We ate in a little saloon on Water Street near Carrall on the edge of the Burrard Inlet. It was called Gassy Jack’s. Someone was playing a loud, out-of-tune piano the whole time we were there. The place was filled with men and women of all kinds from all ends of the earth. It was one place where a group like ours was nothing unusual.

  Owen Bramley ordered for everyone, but it didn’t make any difference, since a huge piece of salmon and a bucket of beans were the only things on the menu. During the meal, I changed places at the table and sat next to Baju. I had to know more about the next day.

  “Tell me what will happen tomorrow,” I said.

  He stopped eating and looked around the table. No one else could hear us over the general racket and discordant notes of the piano. “I will tell you more and we will talk again afterward, but I will tell you this”—he paused and wiped his mouth with a hand towel—“the sun will rise and appear tomorrow and then disappear.”

  I looked at him as if it could not be that simple. “You mean an eclipse?”

  “Yes, an eclipse. A total eclipse of the sun will occur here tomorrow. But to us it is more than that. To the Meq, it is the time of the Bitxileiho, the Strange Window.

  “For reasons we have never known, or have known and forgotten, during an eclipse of the sun, there is a strange”—he paused again and took a drink from a large mug, then went on—“thing that we, the Meq, experience. It is similar to what happens to the Giza when the Stones are used on them, only for us it is more difficult; a deeper place; a wider gap. But it is necessary to know this place, because it is there that you cross with your Ameq in the Zeharkatu. To the Meq, the Bitxileiho is as strange and common and magic and sacred as a drink of water.”

  “Will I feel—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Geaxi answered for both of us. “Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “No, it does not,” I said.

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

  “What is it?” Ray asked.

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