Holy City: Chapter Three - Part One
Fontan walked to the brig carrying a small green bag and her report on the cigarette. Larkin, the MP, was waiting at the door. The first streams of sunlight were peaking through the Avaris Valley.
Jannis was sitting at the desk like the day before, coffee mug in the exact same place. Jannis noticed the green bag in Fontan’s hand and made a deduction. “You’re going to give him a shave?”
“The captain ordered me to.”
“Are you going to give him a bath, too?”
Fontan didn’t answer. Jannis got up from the desk and looked at Larkin. “Are you going to help with the shave or are you in charge of the massage.”
Larkin didn’t say anything. His face remained blank. MP’s faces always seemed to be blank.
As Jannis reached the door he looked back one last time and noticed something. “Is that my shaving kit?”
Fontan blushed a little. “The captain said I had to find a…” she stopped. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Damnit, Fontan!” Jannis slammed the door as he left. Fontan turned to Larkin for help. Larkin’s face showed nothing.
“You don’t talk much, do you?” Fontan said.
“Bring him the kit, private.” Larkin replied.
The prisoner was lying face up on his bed with his eyes closed. Fontan could tell he was awake. Something about the tension in the prisoner’s body, the controlled way in which breath escaped from his mouth, gave him away. He was definitely awake and aware that Fontan was watching.
Was this a performance, just as he had performed for the captain the day before? Was he waiting for Fontan to make a mistake, maybe to unlock the cell to check on him and then he would pounce, disarming the young soldier before Fontan had a chance. But Fontan wasn’t going to open the cell for this prisoner. She wasn’t going to allow herself to get that close. Fontan was no hero, she was perfectly happy to keep the locked bars between the two of them.
Fontan slid the shaving kit under the bottom bar of the cell. It came to rest next to the prisoner’s dinner tray from the night before. The beef stew was still in its bowl on top of the tray. The carton of water next to the stew was empty.
What kind of man walks out of the desert and doesn’t eat, Fontan wondered. There hadn’t been a tray the previous day. This was his first chance at a meal, yet he hadn’t eaten. Maybe this was a trick, too. A way to get Fontan to go inside the cell. Just as she wasn’t falling for the pretend sleeping trick, Fontan wasn’t falling for this trick.
“He hasn’t touched his food,” Fontan announced to Larkin who was seated at the wooden desk.
“Can you blame him?”
“He hasn’t eaten anything.”
Fontan could hear the creaking of the chair as Larkin got up. “I’m sure he’s had something. You can’t tell because it’s all mixed up. He’s clever that way.”
Larkin reached the cell and stood over the private’s shoulder. “See, there’s no bread. He ate the bread.”
“Did we give him bread?”
“Stop worrying about the food and get him to shave.”
Larkin walked back to the desk and sat down again. Fontan stayed at the bars, watching the prisoner as he still pretended to sleep. How long was this guy going to keep up this act? Fontan was sure he had been listening to her conversation with Larkin. This annoyed her. This pretense of not caring, of being relaxed, of walking out of a desert without needing any food.
“Wake up!” Fontan yelled, doing her best imitation of Sgt. Kadek.
“I am awake,” the prisoner calmly responded, his eyes still closed.
“There’s a shaving kit on the floor. You’ve been ordered to shave and cut your hair.”
The man’s eyes opened. “I’ve been ordered to?” he said in a surprised voice.
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know you could order civilians to shave in Damasia?”
“If the captain decides it, we can order you to do anything.”
The prisoner sat up on the side of his bed, resting his hands on the frame below. He laughed. This annoyed Fontan even more. “I probably do need a shave,” the prisoner said as he raised his right hand to his beard, smoothing it from one side to the other. Then, slowly, he stood up. He seemed to do everything slowly. Fontan watched from behind the bars in standard guard duty posture, her M30 pointed at the ground, her right index finger resting on the trigger.
He was still wearing the bloody shirt. The dark red had turned brown, blending in with the dirt of his clothes, almost like there had never been any blood, like the stain on his shirt had only been a smear with mud.
The prisoner bent down and took the green pouch from the floor and walked over to the washbasin underneath the cell window. The morning sun was fighting to get into the cell with a thin shaft of pale light. The man looked out the window, placing his head directly in the warmth of that solitary ray. His eyes were closed as he enjoyed the sun. Fontan couldn’t see this. She could only see the unkempt hair on the back of the prisoner’s head.
“Why didn’t you eat last night?” Fontan said, breaking the prisoner’s brief idle.
“I wasn’t hungry.”
“If you really walked through the Aten Desert you would be hungry,”
“Have you ever walked through the Aten Desert?”
“Of course not.”
“Then how would you know if I would be hungry? Be careful not to judge, Pvt. Fontan.”
Fontan winced. She didn’t like the prisoner using her last name. She started to open her mouth to say something and then thought the better of it.
The prisoner unfurled the green pouch. There was a scissors, a razor, a light green hand towel, a small bottle of shaving cream, and a mirror the size of a child’s face. The prisoner carefully laid each of the instruments along the edge of the basin and set the mirror in between the bars of the cell window. He turned back to Fontan who was still standing rigid and alert in guard duty posture.
“This may take a while. You might want to sit down.”
“I stand for eight hours when I’m on guard duty, I can stand while you shave.”
The prisoner turned the tap on the water basin.
“Is there hot water?” he asked, his back once again to Fontan.
“No.”
The man rubbed his beard while looking into the small mirror. “I’m going to miss this beard.”
He turned the tap off and picked up the scissors and began to trim his beard. Minutes passed. Fontan watched the tedious display as she had been trained to, always alert, at least as alert as one can be while watching a man shave, aware the prisoner was in possession of dangerous weapons.
Despite her best efforts, Fontan began to slip away. First it was only a moment here and a moment there. Eventually, an entire unfocused haze covered her eyes. Her thoughts were as far away from that tiny cell as the city of Alexandria.
“How old are you, private?” the prisoner asked, as he put the scissors down and began to apply the shaving cream to what was left of his beard, breaking Fontan’s trance.
“None of your business.” Fontan answered in her toughest voice, which wasn’t that tough.
“You can’t be a day over nineteen.”
“I’m thirty-five days over nineteen.” Fontan proudly responded.
A slight smirk crossed the prisoner’s face because Fontan admitted her age even though she didn’t want to. The prisoner picked up the razor.
“How old are you?” Fontan asked in an attempt at an even tougher voice, which didn’t make her sound any tougher.
“Many days over nineteen, unfortunately.”
“You don’t like giving concrete answers, do you?”
Fontan was fed up with this prisoner. Why couldn’t he just talk directly like most normal people?
The prisoner turned to Fontan, his face full of shaving cream. He looked like a lion that had been playing in the snow. “Okay, I’ll tell you how old I am. But only if you make me a promise.”
“I’m not making you any promises.”
“Then I won’t tell you.”
The prisoner turned back and started to work the razor over his face. The promise gnawed at Fontan. What could this prisoner possibly want from her? It obviously wouldn’t be to let him free or anything like that, the prisoner was too smart for that, it would be something clever, Fontan knew that much, the prisoner was too clever for his own good.
“What’s the promise?” Fontan figured there was no harm in asking. She desperately wanted to know.
The prisoner turned back with a half a face of snow. “I’ll tell you how old I am if you promise not to tell the captain.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Fontan said, confused. “Larkin is ten feet away, he can hear everything we say, he’ll tell the captain if I don’t”
“I’m not concerned about Larkin. I’m concerned about you. If you promise me you won’t tell the captain I will tell you my age.”
Fontan looked over to Larkin who was indeed listening, his ears perked. Fontan thought. On the one hand, this was valuable information. The captain would be impressed with her for getting the prisoner to admit his age. True, it wasn’t the most important intelligence, but it was something, a start in figuring out who this person was. Of course, the captain would only know about this if Larkin told him. If Larkin didn’t tell the captain, Fontan would have to break her promise. Fontan didn’t know why she cared about lying to this prisoner, but she did. It was her word, her honor, if she vowed to keep her word, she didn’t want to break that vow no matter who she made it to.
Which led to the other hand, what if Larkin didn’t tell the captain about the new information, at least not right away. What if he didn’t like Fontan for some reason. Fontan already had suspicions that Larkin didn’t like her or maybe that was just the way all the military police were. But if Larkin wanted to get her into trouble he could wait several days before telling the captain, letting him know that Fontan had kept the information to herself during that time. Fontan would be considered a traitor or a subversive. She had heard stories of harsh punishments for lesser infractions. The captain had placed trust in her by giving her this assignment, if she betrayed that trust, she would certainly be punished. Maybe even sent to the front lines.
Fontan resented the prisoner for putting her in this position. He was playing games. That’s what a spy would do. “It doesn’t make any sense.” Fontan protested.
“That is the offer.” The man calmly said as he continued to remove his beard.
Next Chapter: Chapter Three - Part Two
Previous Chapter: Chapter Two