Walter Mosley - The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

“Well, soldier?” the colonel asked.

“I wouldn’t know nuthin’ about anything like that, sir.”

“Are those tears in your eyes, Sergeant Grey?” Riley asked.

“Must be the smoke, sir.”

“Does doing your duty hurt that much?”

Riley was a good man; tall and proud, he never insulted his soldiers because of their race. He respected every man according to one standard. And so when he asked Ptolemy that question, the soldier froze, unable to speak. But in the vision, not a dream but a trancelike memory, Ptolemy inhabited his former self and spoke up.

“Sir, that sergeant said a word to Preston that stung him in his heart. Aftah all we been through, Preston heard in that white man’s one word that he would come back home to the same sorry situation that our mothers and grandmothers and great-great-great-grandmothers suffered under. Preston couldn’t help himself, but still that don’t wash away the blood.”

Ptolemy opened his eyes because the fever was burning his face. He sat up, remembering that Colonel Riley “volunteered” Billy Knight for duty at the front lines when the casualty rate was over ninety percent. He didn’t press charges, because that might have caused a riot among the soldiers.

Billy died a week later. His mother and father received his Purple Heart posthumously.

Ptolemy wondered if his memories were the cause of the fever. Was it hell calling for him?

Running his fingertips along the sheet, he felt a thrill of excitation. He had not experienced so much or so deeply since he was a child. The bottle given to him by Satan, or maybe one of Satan’s agents, sat on the bureau across from his big bed.

His temperature was rising quickly and the strength was draining from his limbs.

He got to his feet and took two quick steps. He had to grab on to the bureau not to fall. He opened the bottle, spilling a dozen tiny pills across the top of the chest of drawers. He had to suck his tongue four times before drawing out enough spit to swallow even one small pill.

Slumping down to the floor, Ptolemy thought about Billy. He was betrayed but did not know it. He was sentenced to death but thought that he was being chosen to fight because of his valor and bravery. He had murdered a man but felt that he was vindicated by his people’s suffering and shame. Ptolemy imagined Knight grinning while he was killing, about to die himself. The executioner’s hand was disguised, and the battlefield substituted for justice.

Ptolemy smiled and opened his eyes. He was on his back on the floor in a room that was once teeming with insects and rodents. A frigid river flowed over his fevered skin and now he was strong and able.

He got to his feet without arthritic pain in his joints. He took a deep breath and went back to his bed, where he could recall history and change it slightly—an old man deified by the whim of evil.

What we doin’ here, Uncle?” Robyn asked after they had gotten off the bus at Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive a few minutes after ten the next morning.

“Goin’ t’see see Mr. Mossa. He a Jerusalemite, a Palestinian he calls it, but he was born in Jerusalem, same place that Christ our Lord was born.”

“This place is full’a rich white people,” Robyn argued. “We shouldn’t be up around here.”

The girl was looking about her, a severe frown etching her lovely dark features. Ptolemy smiled. There was a bench across the street, at the foot of a steep cobblestone road that didn’t allow cars. An old white woman was sitting there. Ptolemy brought his adopted daughter across the street and sat her down at the opposite end.

“I been afraid’a white people my entire life,” the old man said, holding the glowering girl’s hands.

“I ain’t afraid,” she said. “It’s just that we don’t belong up here. My mama told me that.”

“Your mother made you sleep on the floor behind a couch so that her boyfriends didn’t see you,” Ptolemy said.

“So?”

“She didn’t think she was wrong doin’ that, now, did she?”

“No.”

“But she was wrong, wasn’t she?”

“Papa Grey, I just don’t like it up here. I ain’t scared’a no body , but I’m scared I’ll do sumpin’ wrong.”

“I know. That’s why we here together. I’m helpin’ you.”

“If you helpin’ me, then take me home.”

“Did you like bein’ a child?” Ptolemy asked.

Robyn wanted to look down, but she forced herself to gaze into her guardian’s eyes.

“I was happy when my mama died, Papa Grey.” A tear came down her left cheek. “I wanted to be sad an’ lovin’ but I knew that Mama had worked it out for me to go to Aunt Niecie if she died, and I hoped in my heart, even though I didn’t want to, that my mama would pass and I could come out heah. I’m the one you should call the Devil.”

Ptolemy noticed that even though the right eye filled with water it was only the girl’s left eye that shed tears. He thought this must have been an important sign, but the meaning escaped him.

“Then I come to stay wit’ Niecie an’ she put me on a couch in the livin’ room an’ Hilly was always tryin’ to fuck me—excuse my French.”

“I got you on a couch in the livin’ room,” Ptolemy said gently.

“But that’s my couch, an’ it’s a proper bed too. An’ it have drawers like a dresser, an’ you bought me some clothes. An’ anyway you offered me your room an’ all your money an’ you trusted me to do right. An’ you try an’ protect me too. I love you, Papa Grey. I don’t evah want anything to happen to you.”

“Did some’a the men in yo’ mama’s house mess wit’ you?” he asked.

“I don’t wanna talk about that.”

Ptolemy smiled and said, “Okay. But you gotta know that the money I offered you is only a small part’a what I got an’ that we up here today so that you can know how to take care of what I’ma leave to you. So I won’t aks you no questions hurt your heart, but you got to trust me with the rest.”

Her left eye streaming, lips apout, Robyn nodded just barely and Ptolemy smiled. He pulled her up by her forearms until they were on their feet again, walking up to the top of the pedestrian roadway lined with fancy boutiques and stores.

There they came upon a gleaming white and gold store where, above the entrance, the name Mossa in red letters was inlaid across a band of sky-blue mosaic tiles.

“Mr. Grey!” an older man exclaimed.

At first Robyn assumed that he must be a Mexican.

“Mr. Mossa,” Ptolemy replied with equal enthusiasm, “long time no see.”

“How are you, my friend?” the old, ecru-skinned Middle Easterner asked. He took one of Ptolemy’s big hands in both of his, smiling and nodding as he did so.

The shop was crowded with glass cases crammed full with jewelry, coins, and small objects that were from other times and other places. The rest of the room was overflowing with rows of statues, sculptures, paintings on wood, wall hangings, ancient carpets, and large items of gold and silver, marble and jade.

The white stone bust of a small child caught Robyn’s attention. The face seemed so innocent and wise.

“Julius Caesar,” Mossa said to the girl.

“Excuse me?”

“That is a bust of Caesar as a boy.”

“How they know how he looked when he was a kid?”

“He sat for the sculptor, of course,” Mossa said, and then he turned to Ptolemy again.

It slowly dawned upon Robyn what the aging Muslim had said.

“You mean, this thing was made when Caesar was just a little boy?” she asked his back.

“Yes,” Mossa said, turning again. “Everything in my shop is very, very old. I have a room filled with treasures from ancient tombs of Kush and Egypt.”