The Tourmaline (A Princess of Roumania) by Park Paul

Author:Park, Paul [Park, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2006-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

13

The Wrestling Match

PETER WOKE UP with the words of the poem in his ears, as clear as if he’d heard them spoken:

So the sun went down and the stars came out all over the summer sea.

But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.

He lay on his back in a dark room on a white slab of a table, and his hands and feet were bound. But he could move his head, which still ached where the guard had clubbed him from behind. Aristophanes Turkkan had bit his hand. Afterward they had taken him to a different prison, to a private cell.

And they must have drugged his food or something, because he couldn’t remember coming here. How many days had gone by? Had the man really hit him so hard? Above him was a stone, vaulted ceiling. There were barred windows high up on the walls. Sunlight came from them. The air was stuffy and hot. But he was not in prison, Peter decided, because of the statues carved in niches in the left-hand wall. Four stern old men with flowing beards. One was obviously Moses. One was Ezekiel with his wheel. One was Elisha with a raven on his wrist, Peter guessed. His mother had loved myths and Bible stories. One statue was of Daniel, his hand touching the mane of a sleeping lion.

With difficulty Peter turned his head to the other side. He was surprised to see the room stretch out into the darkness, and four living men against the far wall. In contrast to the prophets close at hand, they had their backs to him. They were grouped around an ornate piece of furniture, a sideboard or a desk on which a gas lamp burned. And now Peter could hear they were conversing in low tones that competed with the roaring in his ears. He strained to understand, but could not because they were too far away, and because of the pain in his head, and because they spoke in Turkish.

Occasionally they glanced back toward him. If he had set himself to guess what they were saying, by their looks and glances he would have discovered something of the truth: “Biliyorsun bu küzey—you know in these northern places there is a great deal that modern science does not claim to understand. The magic of today is the science of tomorrow. We men of reason think we have the answer to all things, answers that have banished superstition from the borders of our own country. I must claim that I have seen in my examination a young man not yet twenty-five. But these matters are subjective and are not accessible to proof. You say he is Roumanian? I must confess to you all things are possible, because this is a barbarous race without an understanding of the one sole author of all natural law. And in places where there is no God—surely we have all heard stories of demons who live forever, vampires who live on human flesh.

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