Free The Gendarme by Mark T. Mustian

is difficult, this absence. I think again on the things I created to take the place of lost memories, even war memories. My valor, my medals. My glory. I have harbored these for so long now they become almost real, a convict’s belief in the truth of his innocence. What is truth without memory? What is now without then? As an immigrant, though, I found the blanks to be helpful, focusing me then on the present, the future. I was determined to make my way in America. I started with nothing and worked my way up. I am proud of my accomplishments, the solid strength of my efforts. Yet at the end of my life these dreams come, and the ground shifts. I find myself in a dark, tilting house.
    Later, I ask Violet to take me to the library. This is a strange request, one Violet raises soft eyebrows to. I have difficulty reading now. I must put on thick glasses, which make my eyes look extra large. But she agrees. We climb into her Explorer. It is a sunny day.
    “Do you think about the afterlife?” she asks.
    We pass Mrs. Fleming’s house. She waves from a window.
    “I think of the present,” I respond. This is true. I do not wish for a religious discussion, if that is where she is heading.
    But she says nothing more. I glance at her. I am ashamed now of my reticence. “Thank you,” I say. “For the driving.”
    She nods.
    I want to touch her, to place my hand on the wheel. She will leave soon, once I recuperate. I know this. I accept my abandonment. Still, we have gotten on well, we have not fought. I have tried not to meddle. This procedure—has she not pushed for it? The extension then of my life. I want to stay on this course for the time that is left us, balancing, steering. It could be years! I will be patient.
    I look at her closely. She has Carol’s jaw. I think of Carol, her parents. Her mother died just after we moved to Wadesboro, but her father lived longer. Carol had left, joined the war effort, and come back to find a home filled with friction: her parents’ anger over her leaving, her marrying without their consent. A foreigner? A dark-skinned foreigner who spoke no English? The discord lessened with her mother’s rapid death, her father softening, fading, sitting each day in an old, browned recliner watching pastors and football and drinking beer from a can. I thought once to ask him if he knew his eldest daughter. Do I know my own children? Eyes and hair and chins given, accepted, but then differences. Distance. Their lives are not mine. I remind myself so.
    We reach the library. I make for the reference section, the encyclopedias. Violet follows at a distance, curious but respectful.
    “What are you looking for?” she asks eventually.
    I shush her, continue my work. I have my big glasses out.
    I am reading about the Armenians, the deportations. There are pictures, similar to the ones in the magazine. I find I must stay away from these, I must concentrate on the text. I am looking for dates, and I find them. The article states that the deportations began in 1915, continuing into 1917, and beyond.
    I close the book. There—1915. I was not there. Almost a century has passed. Why must I dream this?
    I read some more. I find another encyclopedia, another article that discusses this exodus and its circumstances. It explains that the Russians—Christians, like the Armenians—began driving Muslims from the Caucasus in the middle to late 1800s, and that Armenians living in the Caucasus took an active part in this forced relocation. The northern part of Anatolia became inundated with over one million Muslim refugees. When World War I commenced, the Turks in Anatolia feared a continuation of the Russian march into Turkey, aided by their allies, the Armenians.
    I sit back, close my eyes. It is difficult to think of this, to concentrate so. But I continue my search, I find one more article. I must ask the person at the desk for help in using the card catalog—I am not familiar with libraries. Violet has wandered