Story: Tourmaline (part five)

Tourmaline

(part five)

The Hidtha seemed all to have become militarized and modern. They were seen in green fatigues, black berets, yellow insignia. But Anton had nothing to do in the evenings. He might learn Swisshelm’s code, if remembering any of Swisshelm’s conversation. Or he might find the phrases underlined.

They were frightening people, the Hidtha.

“Anton.”

She caught him up, trotting the hill in her kitten heels, her little laced boots. Her swirling skirt, and a face so familial he knew, however humiliating, the foolishness must end. No, this was not humiliation; it was another thing. Palma had never liked him. In a moment, he would insult this woman, and the welcoming in her eyes would fade.

“I have never managed to get your name.”

She laughed. “That book of Dad’s. Since the G.R.A. took us over, you know, they have never lost or failed. It’s true. I say it on the street.” She made a performer’s gesture, sweeping an open hand. “So… The glossary might be helpful to you. Just to get started. A lot of the book is taken up with interviews Dad conducted with the old herdsmen, who are dead now.”

This spotty chitchat got them to the door of his building.

He tried early in the morning, after she’d gone home. Hidtha grammar pressed into the brain, through worries of love, a ringing in the ears, a fresh-air smell that pulsed with the wind through the closed window. The day was not warm. He lay on the bed, let a hand drop to the floor. His finger struck some object, and he heard the dismaying sound of a tiny thing tinkling off to a dark corner.

The corners of this house were gnawed by rats, their holes an oblivion between walls. He had managed once, after overtightening his camera’s focusing knob—it had arced away suddenly—to lose a needed thing, an irreplaceable thing. On his stomach he hovered a hand just above the fringe where the rug ended. At the second pass, in a tangle of hair and dust, he got it.

He would walk out to look at the sea. Unless they had a patrol today blocking the causeway. Vonnie’s ring fit Anton’s third finger; and so for safety, he wore it.

Three or four vocabulary words, used in a sentence, enough to go on with. Dd was the sound of a rolled r. Feidda. Ei: ay. Feidda. I am going on a journey.

ehca bei feidda djoui-acht

5

Tourmaline

Tourmaline (part six)

(2016, Stephanie Foster)